by Giulio Meotti
Midday on a mild, almost hot Monday in mid-December, and the muezzins of West London were chanting the glory of Allah and how there was no other God…”. Thus opens “1985”, the prophetic novel by Anthony Burgess, the author of “A Clockwork Orange”. He wrote it in 1978 and it looks like the portrait of Europe in 2023…
The Islamic call to prayer (Adhan) is now resounding in Stockholm, reports Samnytt news. The Adhan was recorded in the capital. In Sweden, three mosques have received permission from the authorities to use loudspeakers to broadcast prayers in Botkyrka, Karlskrona and Växjö. But no permits for Muslim prayer calls have been issued in Stockholm. Despite this, Swedes in the capital have repeatedly witnessed the Adhan being imposed on non-Muslims.
Sweden had 8 percent Muslims in 2016. In 2050 it will have 11 percent Muslims if immigration stops completely, 21 percent if it remains “normal”, 31 percent if it continues at the same pace of the last years. And further on? According to an aacademic analysis by Professor Kyösti Tarvainen, in just over a generation Muslims will be the majority in Sweden.
Not bad for the country that boasted of being “the least religious in the West”. There was the transition of an entire people from Christianity to atheism. A Gallup poll said that only in China there are more atheists than in Sweden. David Thurfjell in a book called it “Det Gudlösa Folket”. The people without God. Speaking with Dagen, theologian Alan Hirsch said: “Christianity is decaying throughout the Western world and here it can die out in a generation.
No more.
In a conversation this week lwith the Tribune Juive, the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, author of the great novel “2084”, says: “Islam is today the second religion in Europe, but undoubtedly the first in terms of number of practitioners. I see Islam establishing itself in the West and it has imprinted powerful evolutions which little by little change the internal structure of the West. Laxity and the art of retreat are in place and have formed the minds of people to the point that we no longer even know whether a mortar shell in broad daylight in Paris is incivility, barbarism or jihadism.”
“Europe is falling apart and is on a slope, absorbing blow by blow without being able to respond. But Europe would be too stupid not to understand that the weak have no future in the world to come and that globalization is not peace alnd prosperity for all as it naively believed, but a battleground between the strong”.
And a clash of religions.
How can you not feel a certain shiver reading an investigation by the Belgian newspaper La Libre last week? “Out of 97 parishes in the Brussels Region, there are only 12 priests under the age of 60”. 36 out of 110 churches in Brussels are set to close in the face of declining numbers of faithful. “Even the basilica of Koekelberg (Sacred Heart) is today affected by the absence of a priest”.
This week’s RTL informs us: “Only one in 40 Belgians attends a church – or 2.5 percent of the population – compared to one in two in the 1960s. The average age in churches is (very) high, a marriage out of 10, three out of 10 baptisms and four out of ten burials are Catholic, most of the churches risk closing and some buildings have already been transformed into hotels, cultural centres, shops or discotheques. Is this the end of Catholics?”.
Then you have to read another Belgian journalistic investigation of magazine Le Vif: “Of the 65 mosques in Brussels, according to the Belgian Muslim Executive, 10 are large enough to regularly accommodate 1,000 people. They are financed by the faithful, foreign states (the Turkish Diyanet, the Saudi Islamic World League), Middle Eastern foundations or private individuals, but also parareligious activities that generate considerable income. In some large Brussels mosques, collections for the construction of a new mosque have been able to bring in up to 150,000 euros during the Ramadan period”.
One day the future masters of Belgium will change the name of dozens of cities, Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Saint-Gilles, Saint-Josse, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Jette-Saint-Pierre, Saint-Job and the underground stations (Sainte -Catherine, Saint-Guidon).
Anthony Burgess was a real writer and he saw a weakened West. “The church I attended as a child in Manchester has since been deconsecrated” Burgess said in 1991. “Now it is a mosque. I am not a philosopher, I am not a priest. What does the Pope say? He says nothing. Not a word on the demographic problem. Perhaps the weakness of the West is the death of Christianity or perhaps the death of liberalism: I don’t know”.
How sad, this new Europe!