Overall, Europe is rapidly becoming “post-Christian,” inserting in its place a religion of good intentions. This could well, as the saying goes, lead to a hellish outcome.

Certainly, vague humanitarian sentiments may not be much of a match for the beliefs of a much stronger religious community, with powerful and ancient values, and still with a strong attachment to family. Previous waves of immigrants – including those of the 1960s – entered a confident society with strong values and a decent birthrate. Today, they confront a European society that does not much believe in anything but a post-modernist faith in their own emotions.

As Europe’s Muslim population continues to surge rapidly, particularly in northern Europe, these old European values – religious but also civil – can be expected to erode further. As the Daily Mail’s Peter Hitchens has pointed out, immigrants to Anglophone countries, in relatively small numbers, generally adjust to the prevailing pluralistic values of the new societies. Now, he suggests, Europe faces an “unstoppable demographic revolution in which Europe (including, alas, our islands) merges its culture and its economy with North Africa and the Middle East. If we let this happen, Europe would lose almost all the things that make others want to live there.”