Islam Triumphant?

Osama bin Laden prophesies that Islam will triumph over the West by God's right, by His will and by His power. On its face, this is a preposterous boast. There is simply no comparison between the military power of the Muslim world and that of the West, indeed of the United States alone. Islam, even in its pure form as understood by bin Laden, in Taliban-led Afghanistan, could hardly stand a few weeks against America's sophisticated military wizardry. On paper, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had one of the largest armies in the world and it fell in days, disintegrating as a fighting force before U.S. might.

Bin Laden's more recent fatwas place more hope in the power of irregular warfare, of popular Islamic insurgencies. Yet, historically, terrorism has been understood as the weapon of the weak, of forces unable to conduct direct combat. It is true that irregular forces were victorious even against U.S. arms in Vietnam but it required a nearby sanctuary, in a nation-state on its northern border, one backed by traditional armed forces that provided most of the muscle to the insurgency. If America had had the will to invade North Vietnam, it would certainly have won. Terrorist insurgency also was triumphant in the wars for colonial liberation following World War II. But that war had sapped the human and material resources of the imperial powers, which could not afterwards summon the will required for victory.

So bin Laden is correct that will is an important element in determining who will win. But it makes a great difference how and where the insurgency is fought. A superior military will win set battles but it is difficult to govern intransient insurgencies over the long run. This is why the first president George H.W. Bush did not remain to administer Iraq after the first Gulf war. The French lost their will in territorial Algeria and remote Indochina but they are quite ruthlessly successful against terrorism in France . While there is debate in the U.S. about invading and occupying Iraq, there is none about fighting terrorism against the homeland. Indeed, many opposed to the second Iraq war feared that the enormous difficulty of bringing peace to that nation of three nations would sap the will for fighting the insurgency. Even a very pro-active George W. Bush Administration seems to be ready to withdraw after the December 2005 "permanent" election in Iraq so as to conserve forces for the wider fight against extremist terrorism. With American force conserved, it does not seem possible for fundamentalist Islam to win a terrorist war against the U.S. either.

What about bin Laden's claim to have God's right on his side? Few in the relativistic West can take this seriously. Some, primarily Muslims, say he does not speak for all Islam so he cannot claim the mantle of its morality nor its promise of ultimate world dominion, which preferably would be peacefully attained in any event. A very few, mostly on the religious right, are willing to question Islam's acceptance of force even as an option and to defend Western and Christian values as superior, with a greater moral claim to prevail. George W. Bush presents an interesting variant, claiming that bin Laden does not represent Islam but also that all of the rest of the word's morality -- not that of Christianity or Western rationality alone--stands against him and his radical followers and it will prevail by the right of its universal values of democracy and freedom.

Much of the world, however, believes simple morality, common respect and everyday piety are more important than democracy and freedom in determining God's right. The major worldwide indictment of the West and the U.S. in particular is that they are assaulting the rest of humanity with ubiquitous images of personal immorality and commercial avarice. Many defenders of the West agree that much of Hollywood, television, the Internet, music, dress, diet and the rest is a moral disgrace and are embarrassed that these images represent the U.S. to much of the world. The United States actually is the most religious of the Western nations but this fact is not generally portrayed in its media, with the result that Hollywood basically determines what other peoples think of the U.S. and the West.

Even within the United States, there is a great division regarding whether these images are harmful or immoral or not. In America, people talk of red and blue states, groups and peoples who to a great degree divide over whether these images are good, or at least harmless, and those who find them immoral and pernicious. This divide occurs over behavior too. Religious attendance has declined-- does it matter? Some think yes and some no. Crime is high by world standards: is it caused by society or is it from immorality? Marriage is less common in the U.S. than it was: is this immorality or just an alternative lifestyle? Divorce went from 0.3 per 1,000 population in 1860 and shot up more than ten times higher to 3.5 a century later, and then up again to 4.7 pretty much ever since. Can Western societies survive with such widespread behavior or does it make no difference? Under Islam, marriage is strong and divorce is infrequent.

The most necessary requirement for a nation to survive is to have people. While it takes 2.1 children per childbearing aged woman to maintain population, the U.S. European-ethnic replacement rate has slipped to 1.8. Whatever its merits, immigration has been necessary to keep population sustained for the long run. Even with great immigration to the United States, however, overall child bearing is just at the replacement rate, barely so at only 2.0 children per potential mother.

It is in the area of population that Islam has the best claim to triumph over the West. It is clear from history that large nations set world policy and determine world power. The world data make it very clear that the West is declining and Islam is exploding. Overall, Islam is forecast to grow by 100 percent in population over the next half-century and Christianity (even including its only nominal adherents in Europe ) by only 50 percent. While Christianity would still be larger by three billion to two, it would decline precipitously in Europe and become centered in the poorer and smaller countries of South America, Africa and Asia, often as minority populations. While United Nations population projections are only estimates, they are the best available and they document the stark trends.

Of the 43 countries that will have an absolute decline in population over the next fifty years, not one is Islamic. The one possible exception is Kazakhstan but it is more soviet than Muslim and is basically secular, at least for now. Cuba is another declining state that is nominally secular. Five additional states in decline are African. But 34 of the 43, or 80 percent, are European. In addition, two Western-oriented Asian nations, Japan and South Korea, round out the list of decliners. Of the ten nations with the largest increases in population, 60 percent are Islamic, three have large Muslim minorities and only one has few Muslims. By 2050, six of the ten countries with the highest population increases over this period will be Muslim.

The world of 2050 will be very different from the present. Today, of the top five countries in population -- representing half of the world's people and the power numbers bring --none are Muslim. By 2050, two will enter the club. Of the top ten, representing almost 60 percent of world population, today only one is Muslim. In 2050 five or half of the largest nations will be Muslim -- Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Ethiopia -- and two additional of the ten will have very large Islamic minorities. Only the U.S. and Brazil could be considered Western of the largest ten. The U.S. will remain at number three in population, after India and China, which slips to second. However, the United States will drop from 6.3 percent of the world population today to only 4.6 percent in 2050.

Consequently, Islam will become a major international force through weight of population in a mere fifty years. The five major Muslim powers will represent 17.5 percent of the world's people, about equal to India's and almost four times that of the U.S. Europe will no longer be a world force. And what will be Islam's largest nation, Pakistan, already has nuclear weapons. Whether this vastly increased strength for Muslims results from God's right must remain His secret but the facts about the changes in relative power speak for themselves. Nothing is irreversible, and America's population replacement has sunk in the past --confronting the dangers of World War II and the hedonism of the 1970s -- and it recovered both times to near replacement. Still, future demographics are pretty much set already. Islam has taken His injunction to "increase and multiply" to heart and the results will change the political dynamics of the planet for the foreseeable future.

Most Muslims obviously are not terrorists or world violence would be much greater, although the extremists do have some degree of popular support and benefit from general gains in strength. Controlling terrorism will be difficult but it is another matter entirely. Whatever faults they or their religion may have, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are deeply religious, worship often, and consider earnestly the other injunctions of a Ten Commandments and Torah that are binding also on them. Much of the West does not seem to take these as seriously, especially the multiply part. Perhaps this piety makes no difference in the real world scheme of things like war and terrorism, but its long-term population consequences cannot be dismissed so easily.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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