Pope Francis has on more than one occasion spoken with respect about Islam and Islamic believers, and after his visit to Burma he said, “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya”, referring to the persecuted Muslim people there.
Of course it is right that there should be mutual respect between world faiths, and we must defend each other where religion is persecuted.
And yet there will inevitably be some concern at the latest demographic projections about the increase in Muslim populations in Britain and Europe. Pew Research (the leading authority on religious statistics) calculates that in just over 30 years’ time about 17 per cent of the British population will be Muslim – and 4.4 per cent of the Irish population.
The numbers and percentages vary noticeably in different European countries. Sweden will be over 30 per cent Muslim, according to the figures. Germany will be over 19 per cent and France and Belgium around 18 per cent. But Poland, Lithuania and Latvia will be less than one per cent Muslim, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia will also be low in Muslim percentages. So the picture is, overall, uneven.
The projected growth figures derive not just from immigration, but also from greater fertility among Muslim women.
Major changes in population profile can cause stresses and strains, and it would be naïve to deny that. In France, where intellectuals have such influence on national thinking, there is also an increase in critical attitudes among intellectuals who suggest that these population shifts will bring about a deep, fundamental alteration of the national culture.
A leading French writer, Renaud Camus (no relation to Albert Camus), has coined a phrase now echoing through the intelligentsia: le grand remplacement – “the great replacement” (of populations). Camus, the author of more than 100 books, claims that all Western nations are faced with “ethnic and civilisational substitution” – that is, migrant culture gradually replacing the host culture. Camus says he is not anti-immigrant: he would be as concerned if Japanese or African culture was being “replaced”.
We should be discussing the fact that a “replacement” of the host culture is taking place. Other French thinkers, such as Michel Houellebecq, Michel Onfray, Éric Zemmour and Alain de Benoist have also questioned how European society and culture will alter with these developments.
We should be aware of these intellectual currents. We need to speak, tolerantly and respectfully, about these dramatic demographic changes – but questioning honestly how our Christian heritage will be shaped by any “great replacement”.
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The Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, has caused some offence by saying that we should “pray” that little Prince George turns out to be gay, because this would make the Church of England more “inclusive”.
Prince George is a small child of four years of age, and it’s surely distasteful that his future sexual orientation should be speculated on in this way. He is a person, not an instrument whose purpose is to prompt social change.
However, I have heard similar aspirations in a different context. I have heard mothers who adored their very enchanting young sons wonder aloud whether they could nudge the boy towards being gay.
“If he were gay, then I’d never lose him to another woman,” is a phrase that has been uttered, half jokingly.
Many a psychological truth is spoken in jest.
But such wishes, I have noted, often had no impact whatsoever on the young person in question. It is frequently nature that is the deciding influence in these matters, not clerics or maters.
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Nick Clegg surely has a point when he says that social mobility in Britain has been hindered by “a snobbish attitude” towards technical education, which is so often considered of lesser value than an academic one.
In Germany, becoming an engineer is regarded with equal esteem as becoming a lawyer – an engineer in Germany may be addressed “Herr Doktor-Ingenieur”.
In British crossword puzzles, by contrast, when the clue is “motor mechanic”, the answer is “engineer”.
Yet this downgrading of skills such as engineering may be reversed by the advent of electronic engineering, which is so central to all the gadgets we use. And a jolly good thing too.
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