Prospects for the Death of Europe: Islam, Christianity, the Future Identity of Europe

A recent theme recurs in the writing of cultural critics, like journalist, Douglas Murray and the speculative novelists, such as Michel Houellebecq, author of Submission, and Jean Raspail, creator of the influential and controversial rightwing work, The Camp of the Saints. All agree that Europe finds itself poised on the brink of carelessly losing its distinctive identity. These authors concur in blaming a combination of cultural and social sources for Continent’s malaise. One the one side is the mass immigration of Muslims from conservative Islamic states and their resistance to integration into the European value mainstream. On the other side, European elites have been indifferent to and arguably complicit in Islamization, while the neglected population of traditionalist working class citizens have rebelled along racist and xenophobic lines. The alienation of the elites from the idea of Europe as a Christian civilization further feeds Europe’s crisis of confused identity. In response to these disturbing scenarios, the present author questions the assumption of a program of “saving a culture,” explores the comparative character of European national character versus the United States as immigrant nation. What are the difficulties of an actual re-Christianization, in light of European secularism, the obstacles to Tariq Ramadan’s European Islam? Are Muslim immigrants in Europe fated to remain an unassimilable entity?