Mark Steyn, in the very first paragraph of his epic early 2006 article, “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” the prototype draft for his best-selling book, America Alone:
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the western world will survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands— probably—just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate.
Flash-forward to 2011, and a post at Small Dead Animals on “Accommodations:”
For years now large groups of kneeling Muslim men in France have been gathering en masse to pray in the streets, often blocking native French pedestrians’ access to the sidewalks, while local gendarmes look the other way.
In the interests of accommodating the public-access needs of the native French, a Muslim group has graciously stepped forward with a simple and straightforward solution: they are asking Church of France authorities to allow them to use empty Catholic churches:
Hassan M. Ben Barek, a spokesman for the (Banlieuses Respect) Collective, said the measure would “prevent Muslims from having to pray on the streets” and being “politicians’ hostages”.
No word yet on whether Jews and Catholics will be granted permission to pray in mosques during off-peak hours.
Well, it all depends on which religion they pray in, I suppose.
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