Reading The Economist often reminds me of listening to David J. Bier of the CATO Institute blather about the wonders of open borders.
I keep meaning to write about Bier and will get to it soon, but the essential quality in both cases is a stubborn determination to build cases on theoretical principles, unleavened by any grasp of the real-world realities that shape how those principles play out once implemented.
Bier caught my attention several times, but the most emblematic moment that stuck with me was that many of the objections we have to open borders leading to masses of illegal immigrants sucking down public resources would evaporate if only we eliminated the welfare state.
Uh, yeah, so what? That's like arguing that jumping off a building would present no problem if we could fly, or if gravity didn't exist. True enough, I suppose, but irrelevant when physics is acknowledged. Similarly, once somebody is in the United States, we aren't going to let them starve or deny them medical care, so wishing away that problem is fundamentally dishonest.
The Economist pulls the same trick when it comes to the mass migration of Muslims into Europe. Their claim is that the problem isn't Islam or Muslims, but Islamists and the growing willingness of younger Muslims to embrace violence to impose it on others.
Uh, yeah. So? They sort of go together, don'tcha know?
Imagine saying this when you just had an entire grooming gang scandal, deal with intermittent terror attacks and honor killings, and increasingly experience your domestic politics becoming consumed with foreign blood feuds.
— Corey Walker 🇺🇸 (@CoreyWriting) September 10, 2026
This gaslighting is why the far right is ascendant… https://t.co/32dod6DwfC
Noting that not all Muslims will slit your throat or rape your daughter is hardly an argument for the continuation of mass Islamic migration. That some Muslims integrate and that many of their children do well in school is a trivially true fact that tells you absolutely nothing other than that individuals are different, and even within groups that statistically are more likely to collect welfare, commit crimes, rape girls and women, and attack people who don't share their beliefs, there are plenty of good people.
So what? You don't make public policy based on the exceptions, or even the bare majority. If importing vast numbers of people, a third or a half of whom will cause enormous problems and drain the public purse, you should not do it. It's no different than following a policy where we let all felons out of jail under the correct assumption that some of them will never reoffend.
The real danger to Europe is different: of extremism fuelled by Islamism (the belief that the state should enforce Islamic principles) and by social-media-driven right-wing paranoia. The left makes this worse by denying the modest but real threats Islamism poses. So do politicians in the centre, by keeping quiet lest they attract accusations of racism. This dynamic could indeed harm Europe’s liberal democracies—not by replacing them with a caliphate, but by slowing integration and favouring policies that would do lasting harm to their freedoms.
The most extreme fears are easily debunked. Even after record migration from majority-Muslim countries, Muslims now make up just 6% of Europe’s population of well over 500m. Although new arrivals typically have more children than the native-born do, fertility rates tend to converge within two generations. That is a long way from civilisational erasure.
In fact, most Muslim immigrants want to get on in their new home, not impose on it a version of the societies they have just left. Their children tend to do better than their parents at school. In Britain 67% of Bangladeshis who sat standard tests in 2021 were enrolled in university by age 19, compared with 38% of white Britons. Many Muslims are involved in mainstream politics: witness Britain’s home secretary and London’s mayor. In important ways Muslim attitudes can resemble those of other Europeans. In polling we commissioned among British Muslims, we found little resistance to women working.
What, then, is setting so many Europeans against Islam? Plenty of Muslims hold illiberal views—we report in this issue on the killing of an openly gay imam in South Africa. In Britain, our polling finds, 52% of Muslims think homosexuality is wrong, and young Muslims (41% of under-35s) are more likely than their elders (25%) to believe violence can be justified if someone insults the prophet.
If I told you that 42 percent of a group whose members under 35 (the vast majority of Muslim immigrants fit into this category) believe that violence against anybody who disagrees with them on their religion deserves to be assaulted or killed, would you recommend importing millions of them?
Obviously not. It is insane. It's the basket-of-apples problem. Would you buy a basket of apples where 42 percent of them could poison you, hoping that the ones you eat or feed your children won't be one of them?
And that's not all of it: studies show that the second generation of Muslim immigrants are MORE, not less, radicalized. And mosques are often led by the radicalizers, and the mosques are popping up everywhere.
California Islamic scholar Uthman Farooq:
— SonofLiberty357 (@SonofLiberty357) June 29, 2026
“No one can stop Islam in America. This is NOT your country, this is OUR country. This is the land of Allah. If you want to live in a place with no Muslims, I suggest you go to hell.” pic.twitter.com/Lrin8ehMC7
The evidence is everywhere around us. We can see it. It's in the crime statistics. It's shown in the rape gang victims, the marches, the takeover of the streets for prayers. The street interviews with Muslims explaining how they hate the dominant culture.
And it's even in the politicians who rise to the top of the political pile, who are quite open about their disdain for the dominant culture that welcomed them.
Humza Yousef famously rose to the pinnacle of power in Scotland, yet he gave a speech on the floor of Parliament excoriating his country for being too "white."
I don't think there's ever a bad time to post this video reminding the world of what Humza Yousef genuinely thinks of Scottish people. I've never heard the word "white" imbued with such utter contempt. People like Humza are directly responsible for the situation in the UK. https://t.co/4mnG9Ev4aR pic.twitter.com/cQJpLILpUn
— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) August 6, 2024
Sorry, The Economist may celebrate how Yousef integrated, but he is no more integrated than the college professors who vow to destroy Western Culture. They may technically be, but they don't benefit society.
We can't do much about excluding our fellow citizens, although we can quit elevating them to positions of power and influence, but we sure can keep the mass migration of Muslims from continuing.
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