welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the politics of demographics a recent pew research report predicts muslim populations around the world will increase significantly compared to other population groups for some of these findings are reason for grave concern for others it's a stormy kiko. can. you discuss the repercussions of muslim population growth i'm joined by anders graves and alberg he is from the stop islamization of europe in manchester we go to mohamed shafique he is chief executive in founding member of the ramadan foundation and in brussels we cross to elizabeth called that she is senior advisor to the trans atlantic council on migration at the migration policy institute and another member of our cross talk team you know on the hunger all right panel you can jump in anytime you want that is crosstalk rules anderson if i can go to you first an

interesting comment when we had the libyan leader khadafi to visit europe he went to italy on a two day visit and he's quoted in saying islam should become the religion of the whole of europe well not might happen one day but it won't be because of muslim muslim immigration is because of the secularization of a good parts of europe. yeah yeah but i also believe that we the europe and also russia is going to be muslim if we don't do anything to stop it these numbers also show it even saying these numbers is too low because in denmark they talk about two hundred twenty seven thousand muslims now we haven't heard this these numbers for the last fifteen years so i don't understand it and even then you statistic they don't make statistic after religion so i don't understand how they can get these numbers that's another thing well if i go to elizabeth in brussels i

rely quite a bit on the pew research i found to be very good and reliable over the years and they estimate that as of two thousand and ten the report just came out only six percent of europe's population is muslim and they're predicting for two thousand and thirty eight percent. i mean what's the brouhaha here. so i mean you have to look at you have to look at this in the much broader context and this is a global analysis as well so right so dry delving down into year you see the figures are much more nuanced and i think it's important right from the outset to point out that as the pew research center themselves. this is not necessarily about religious muslims these are people who would self identify as muslim so that could mean in terms of ethnicity or in terms of social grouping this is not necessarily a religious demarcation so the number of religious muslims is likely much less you know muhammad if i say within your ok go ahead finish up go ahead. i would just

want to point out that within europe the changes that would take place between twenty ten and twenty thirty will differ from country to country this isn't going to be a sort of an even sweep mohamed if i can go to you you know looking at this pew research you could actually come to use it whatever. you want to i mean you can say oh my goodness the population growth is here and they really go into great detail is that we look they look at the demographics we look at a certain generation there can be if i can use the term prolific in their in their in their growth but then that's going to slow down dramatically after two thousand and thirty just because different groups are in different demographic waters but nonetheless looking at this research you can see how people could jump to one conclusion or another. well i think what it demonstrates is that muslims are part of the d.n.a. of your utopian society or have been for hundreds of years and will continue to be for hundreds of years there are people on the margins of society like like our guest who who think that islam or for islamization that islam is somehow taking

over western europe or europe it's deeply offensive it's not true muslims are happily living in countries for example here in the united kingdom we're very proud to be british we live in this country will born in this country we're happy to accept the will put on the christian country but we're also multi-faith society to recognise is people have the right to practice their faith live their lives according to their faith are this constant obsession with demonizing islam or muslims that has become endemic within europe is deeply worrying not just for the muslim community but for the whole of europe and what it demonstrates to you is a it's the same thing again and again that happened to the jews in iraq to the second world war it's the same sort of oppression in a run up to the holocaust and now we're having the same thing be labelled against muslims it's unexceptable these these sort of lies and these sort of propaganda that somehow muslims are here to take over door over europe is not true and i think

people who engage in such battles and such arguments are doing so from a point of prejudice and clearly a point of colloquial on your fascism ok and if there was a lot said there would you like to know i had i really like to reply to it you say that it's the same as the juice on the second world war i don't know about the was running around and burning the streets raping women and so on like they're doing copenhagen and also to have spears treatments. in germany they didn't so you can't come with this. conclusion. well i think what you've got to do is you've got to accept my friend then your whole argument of demonizing the muslims is it's just not true you know you can demonstrate. the jewel case is there are individual cases in copenhagen or anywhere else of

criminals operating but to suggest the whole community a whole faith system is responsible in some sort of peculiar way as you are doing is deeply responsible i'm actually i think for example if you want to talk about child abuse. and danish people probably represents ninety five percent of the population so i think you need to start looking a bit closer to home for the problems in your society rather than just plain muslims because we're easy we're an easy scapegoat ok elizabeth i'm going to you and i don't let's go to our source has been sitting there very patiently at the same time and if we can reflect upon this report it was big and angela merkel's comment about the failure of multiculturalism and least in germany i mean how do we find the mix right here because there is a long tradition of integration of different peoples in different societies i mean american we have a growing muslim community in the united states as well it's going to be very very small as a matter of fact by two thousand and thirty it will be the same size of the jewish community however you define it as you pointed out earlier in the united states but

still you have this you know hysterical in the united states about the growth of a minority community so i mean if we can go back to merkel's comments i mean in looking at this this research or do we need to find a new way a new mix a new way of approaching this because it is causing a lot of hysterical and it does have a lot of political fallout as well. well i think there's a popular belgian or academic here who once told me you can't declare a policy failed until you've tried it properly and one of the arguments made is germany really only started active integration policies around a decade ago too so to announce what ten years later we failed in this endeavor seems a little premature there was a sense of benign neglect in germany for at least one generation and that involved in this sort of exclusion of the children of migrants and poor educational outcomes that went addressed for an entire generation so you actually do have to invest a huge amount to to set those trends straight i think it's important also not just

to look at the negative trends which we have a tendency to do in europe we look at educational gaps we don't tend to look at the success stories and people who do. quite incredible things within a generation and one thing that i do think is important is that this isn't just an integration policy for those who are rife if we're talking about we start talking about european values and social contracts that that applies to a whole communities and not just. how many want their go ahead no i just. mean this debate has been about foreigners versus europeans for those people of my generation who were born in europe who are proud to be british are proud to be a european citizen you know we are british we are european and so this argument that just because we are muslims or just because we follow the feet of islam that

somehow we're not acceptable in western societies is the problem this whole debate of multiculturalism has been about people giving up their faith or people giving up their way of life that's not going to happen if multiculturalism is about respecting each other have been told wins for each other yes disagreeing from time to time but having respect and tolerance and that. it's a good thing it should be celebrated but if multiculturalism is about the muslim community or the immigrants who come into any particular society giving up their culture or their ethnicity or their beliefs then that's that's not acceptable and that's a form of multiculturalism the people would oppose and there's a i'm going to you know i mean your organization i mean your beef with the day they don't foreigners in particular in your case we're talking about here is a muslims they don't integrate or are they just as they just don't have a place in europe in your opinion. i don't see the muslims

who want to follow the koran and follow it exactly they don't have any place in europe and europe is not islamic and have not been muslim country never they have been here i think i think you know i think the writer on that you know you ask you right i'm sorry with respect and muslims have been part of the d.n.a. of europe for centuries and. twentieth century is deeply quite patronize you know i think it's wrong i mean i get it demonstrates that you're a man of the far right the you're a man you're closely associated with the far right than a mainstream society muslims are being part of europe for generations to suggest there's some ominous signs of telling me to essentially it sir. with century muslims if they have been in my country there have been they have been studying the real base in the last thirty years so this is not in centuries a well have been muslims have been muslims have been muslims in bosnia and that's

all what we know about it and they were there because of there was many compiler wasn't allowed in so many people have they were if you are a wall eyed this is a point that the friend from from the from cooper nagin some somehow thinks that the bosnia war was caused by the bosnian muslims nope i don't know by disserves it demonstrates to you his agenda is about opposing islam opposing muslims always constantly attacking our faith i don't know you need to post i know you need to if he's an associate himself if you are so she eighteen yourself would just serbians if you associate yourself with the massacres and the genocide that was committed bosnia shows your true colors this is not what it's about chris. rock after a short break we'll continue our discussion on muslim population growth stay with arkie. you. steve.

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the market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. and you can see. to. welcome back cross talk computable to remind you we're speaking about muslim demographics. and. students. but first let's see what russians think about islam well muslims take over the world a recent report sparks concerns for some claiming the growth rate of muslims double complete at the non muslims over the next twenty years researchers suggest

immigration and hot fertility rates are the reasons but will this date apostates lambe a phobia already high around the world. the public opinion agency live out of santa ask russians they consider this land to be an aggressive religion fifty percent of the respondents as said they do and that the forty percent do not agree with that statement still the question today is what approach should be taken to face this changing reality. ok elizabeth in brussels i'd like to go to you and i to kind of change gears here because i think it's something that's being over missed in this report is what spiked my interest in it in considering the when we look at demographics of this report but we look at politics as well and we've seen politics very polarized and insincere all europeans are sort of the european aspect of this but you know if you look at you know you could say sixty percent of the population is a small anywhere but if they become politically active then they can be make

a difference in politics in coalitions because most of these countries are going parliamentary democracy so you'll have some people demonizing them as we've been and we've been pointed out on this program but other people say hey look we need the muslim voted for going to be able to create a coalition i mean could you see kind of turn the other way because these people are going to be citizens ok many of them are in the european union they have passports and they can vote and as their numbers get bigger even if it's two or three or four percent it would depending on the country they could be a game changer in a political situation. well i think it's there's no need to talk in the future tense i mean people of muslim descent already participate in politics to quite quite a deep degree in some countries certainly in the u.k. in germany the head of the green party is. the child protection parents you also have the mayor of rotterdam who is also muslim origin and you do have the

significant numbers of muslims who are getting increasingly politically active so they are part of a broad framework of of politics i think one thing that it's often overlooked is the fact that people might have a margin as opinion based towards muslims but also within the muslim community itself people have different political views people have different expectations of their own government as well so i think it's difficult to sort of look at. that there will be a particular party that a community will forge towards but similarly looking at the far right groups that have emerged in europe over the past decades it's too simplistic to say that they are all anti muslim in nature a lot of them have a broader framework in terms of being more broadly anti immigration being concerned about population levels in different countries but then also in central eastern europe you see far right groups focusing in on the roma population the indigenous

ethnic minority within their countries and not really looking at muslim immigration a tool from home and if i can go to you and me in britain do you come across. british muslims that are tory and you know and then others that are labor i mean you're not the same population i think it was but pointed out a very good thing is to do more views within the larger community too i mean you can't be buttonholed so easily. well traditionally the british pakistani and british muslim community have been aligned with the labor party here tony blair and gordon brown's political party but since the war in iraq people have been looking more to the conservative party and to the liberal democrats which is a third party here in the united kingdom what it really says to you peter is that british muslims are actively involved in politics we have over twenty seven ethnic minority members of parliament we have i think six or eight muslim members of parliament we have a member in a british government a cabinet of muslim descent we have a former member of gordon brown's cabinet as

a member of the senior member of his government what it demonstrates treats him in particular terms is that politicians recognise that muslims are an integral part of our societies that there are extremists on all sides as we've been seen on the shore today who try to pull communities apart and what we've all got to do in europe is come together and not let the extremists drivers apart we've got common values we've got a common ideals bring us together and that's that's what we should be for casino and not want not what divides us but rather what unites us anders who says you said something in the beginning of the program that i find interesting is that if you if your holy book is the koran you can't be a european citizen in a in a sense that i think all of us would agree on i don't understand that. ok i'll explain it. in the koran it's a lot of us who tell about how christians have to be mistreated cute.

hot water in the stomach and so on put in teens we can't have a religion who have a book. how to kill their neighbor us. they have to take away these kind of sayings from the qur'an pull out these things and then we can start to talk about integration but so long time that how is our how i mean you hear way through a coup for us to a coup for us then they have to understand we can't have them here. ok mohammed do you want if they want to integrate they want to to accept our democracy is ok then no problem but it is an audio is a very small country we have to sign our diplomacy we are five yellow is no no do you have fifty million people yes it is five million people rio and denmark and we have tried for certain years to integrate the muslims we have just seen we nearly have a civil war in denmark. the police but i think you have to enjoy that if your eyes are on fire no no no no no protect the firemen or the m.p.'s before the drive into

the get troops priest is strong out of the ghettos because they have a cross in the car i'm so young so you can't let us priestesses race because he's going to say i mean this is my only point is this is this is amiss and this is part of problem we we have we have wacky individuals like the man from denmark who is making varied controversial comments about the a some make they thought the stomach book you know the bible the torah the sikh religious scriptures i have other stories about things that were relevant in the past that's another as relevant today. torah well if you if you will let me finish i would i would say to you this the british or muslim community the european muslims who live in this part of the world will born here we were part of this country we are part of the d.n.a. of all of this society we have no ambition to take over europe we just want to live our lives there to the best of our ability to treat our neighbors with respect and preach peace and tolerance unlike you who wants to promote division who is

quibbling to what the what was happening to the jews integral to the second world war and the holocaust you are the people who are encouraging the division and hatred but i think there's no place in europe to our solution you know now i have to go into is there is no place in your answer because like yourself what's the worst that used to running around in the streets and burning hardly it's only us and the institution no they won't stop to to put the jews together with the muslims was not true where you are with respect i think it's central i think if you you know you spend this d.n.a. of europe if you lose the chance to look in the really regular. all right. i think i just said i had. to go ahead go ahead i promise i'll be brief i mean if you say the point the point i'm making about the experience of the jews if you look at the newspaper articles i studied the second world war for college i studied the constant demonization of the faith community the jewish community being blamed for

every single problem every single crime the newspaper articles that's what i'm talking about it's a similar atmosphere. that is was hopping on your friend in denmark. who is not having the russian argument he's coming from a prejudiced point of view have a very right. gentlemen please ok and i to go back to something you said earlier in the program and we were talking about anglo merkel's comments and we're looking at this pew report on the muslim the demographics in europe what you said you know ten years wasn't enough i mean should they just keep doing it you know we'll let's all be fair maybe merkel just said this for political points i mean she's a politician ok but i mean what do we take pieces of that and keep in mind what the demographics are going to be or do we do something very different and in looking at

you know sitting there in brussels you probably have a broader view and looking at all the trends inside of europe. well i think there are sort of three pieces the first is directly to your point and that is that integration is is never going to be finished in a sense our our communities our identities are constantly going to be changing so there's never going to be a point where everyone can throw their hands up and go success we've done it with finished let's go home so there just has to be that constant sense of. community and whether everyone is investing in that community and there is a feeling that in some communities that some people participate and some people don't and i would say that's true of a certain ex-pat community as far as it's considered it could be true of certain immigrant communities and i mean in the sense of europeans living in different cities and different countries the second part is that part of this debate is not actually about immigration or about muslim immigration it's about a fear of change and speed of change that's occurring in europe globalization our

economic shifts the fact that so much is changing around us and we seem to have so little control over those changing factors and immigration is to a certain extent a visible part of that and muslim immigration probably the most visible part of that or the most identifiable part of that and that feeds into people's sense of fear and change and the third parties is well what do you do about it and one thing that strikes me is that we do we do talk about european values and i sit here in brussels and i know how much. those who work in the you struggle with the concept of european values and being able to articulate them beyond we are liberal democracies and we believe in certain fundamental human rights but there is the question of what is the what is it what does it mean to be a citizen of a european country what does national identity mean what is that contract between the synch citizenry and the government and how do how do we asked people to join a community when we're not entirely sure what the rules of the game are within that

community themselves and i think that was a much bigger debate that could be. he had within europe and really taking the focus off the narrow group that saying ok so how how how do we identify ourselves in the twenty first century that is rapidly changing well on that optimistic note here many thanks to my guests today in alberta manchester and in brussels and thanks to our viewers for watching if you r.t. so you next time and remember across talking. to.

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