It seems that diversity and multiculturalism, along with political-correctness, form the “core ethos” of Western societies.

Despite brave words by the former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the “failure” of multiculturalism, nothing has changed – except for the worse.

Brown's words were lost when he left office. Merkel on her part clearly “repented” of her statements by opening the borders of her country to >1 million Muslim migrants in 2015 alone.

Francois Hollande said he was in war with Islamic terrorism after the Paris attacks, and then proceeded to 'fight' it with “solidarity” marches (we now know where we went wrong with Germany's Hitler, a few marches through London would have stopped his attack on Czechoslovakia cold).

I live in a “minority city” in the U.K., where no ethic group are in majority, all are ranked at less than 50% of the population. That, in itself, is not a worry. I do not care about the pigmentation of someone's skin, but I do care about the “pigmentation” of someone's mind, and how that shapes his/her attitude towards those around them.

We are told here in the West that diversity and “multiculturalism” are Good Things. Anyone who disagrees is instantly labelled an “-ist” or a “-phobe” – racist, xenophobe or Islamophobe for example.

However, noble those “Good Things” may be, unfortunately the whole world, certainly the Muslim world, is not warmly embracing diversity and multiculturalism. Solid demographic figures are hard to find, but clearly diversity is only being enthusiastically embraced in Europe, North America and Australasia only.

 

The Middle East and North Africa. Anyone not totally oblivious to world events must by now know that millennia-old Christian communities in much of these areas are facing annihilation.

With but few exceptions, this fate has already befallen the even older Jewish communities of those areas. Most were expelled in “retaliation” for the formation of Israel. Somewhat ironically, the total number of Jews expelled from those Muslim areas were roughly equal to the number of 'Palestinians' who rather willingly left Israel after the founding of the Jewish State in 1948.

Overall non-Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa face persecution that ranges from general harassment through property confiscation (Turkey) and violence up to outright genocide (ISIL et al).

It is also worth pointing out that all the countries listed above were part of the Eastern Roman Empire prior to the advent of Islam. Thus the Christian populations (where extant) are, generally, the residual of ancient Churches – though it is also true to say that some are “reborn” Churches.

As an aside this latest wave of lethal “kaffarophobia” makes the oft-touted “rising tide of Islamophobia” in the West seem the merest ripple and ignores the entirely rational fear of Islam inculcated in their victims by the murderous actions of Muslims (minority or not) worldwide.

I will now consider some of the individual Countries in the area:

 

Lebanon, a formerly Christian majority country (84% in 1926), now has a dwindling Christian minority. This process accelerated with the admission of 'Palestinian' refugees in 1949-1950 and swiftly resulted in the Christians being made into a minority. According to this source by 1985 Christians were down to 25% of the population. I should note that other sources suggest it may be nearer 35-40%, but since no census has been taken in the last 80 years or so there are no definite figures, but what no-one disputes is that they have gone from majority to minority and that this happened after the Palestinian refugees arrived.

Under Lebanon's convoluted constitution the President must be a Maronite Christian but Lebanon has not had a President since 2014 because the Muslim group Hezbollah (a designated terrorist group in several countries) refuses to form a quora for the election thus undermining the constitution and further eroding the place of Christians within Lebanon.

 

Turkey, in the early 20th century there were the genocides of the Armenian and Greek-Pontic Christians, along with the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Nestorians.

In 1913, the Turkish Ottoman government of the supposedly liberal “Committee of Union and Progress” initiated a program of forcible Turkification of non-Turkish minorities. Starting in 1915 the government turned to deliberate extermination of indigenous and Christian ethnic groups.

These are facts which the Turkish body politic still blithely denies today.

To be more precise, the genocides were typically perpetrated by the Muslim neighbours of these victims with the blessing and permission of the state, not the state's soldiers.

As a result Turkey's Christian population plummeted from nearly 20% in 1914 to 2.5% (two point five percent) in 1927 and kept declining so that today it is <0.2% (zero point two).

How much longer before the non-Muslim population is effectively zero?

 

ISIL. Reports coming out of ISIL's lands (2014-2015) by those non-Muslims who managed to escape death inform us that the same pattern in genocide is happening again. The murders and genocides are not carried out by ISIL's “Mujaheddin” (“Soldiers of Allah”) but by the victims' Muslim neighbours, some of whom the non-Muslims have lived alongside “for centuries” and whom they held as “close friends” (see for instance here, here, here, here and here) These same neighbours turned on the non-Muslims with joyous shouts of “Allahu Akbar!”, the victory-cry of Muslims from the earliest days of Islam.

 

Jordan's Christian population has been in slow decline for over 50 years. To date it stands at about 2.2%. Jordan has the reputation of being a liberal and tolerant country (though this is less so for those choosing to leave Islam). Post “Arab Spring” and into the “Islamist winter” the influx of less tolerant migrants has been a decrease in Jordanian liberality. (source).

 

Syria. Until the current war started Syria was a safe-haven for Christians (like Jordan), but it is now a very dangerous place for Muslims and especially non-Muslims except for those in protected minority-majority locations.

 

Iraq. As is well known Iraq's non-Muslim population plummeted with the fragmentation of Iraq into rival Sunni and Shia areas. Sunni/Shia fratricide has caught non-Muslim groups in the crossfire. Most have either fled (first to Syria, then elsewhere) or else are now found in the Kurdish parts of the Country, where tolerance is still more practised.

 

Egypt. Home to the indigenous Coptic Christian community. This community may be anywhere from 3% to 20% of the overall population. The most likely figures give Muslims as 90% and Christians 10%, thus the Copts somewhat less. Other religions are negligible.

Egypt's Copts have long been persecuted (also here and here) often with at least tacit state complicity. Whilst this took place under the relatively secular Sadat and Mubarak the election of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi caused an upswing in anti-Coptic violence to levels unprecedented in modern times. With his ouster and replacement by the relatively secular al-Sisi, the level of persecution has dropped back to approximately the previous levels, partly due to a crack-down on the Islamists of the Muslim-Brotherhood.

 

Algeria is >99% Muslim. Mere handfuls of Jews and Christians remain.

 

Morocco. Like Algeria Morocco is ~99% Muslim with Christianity making up much of the rest. Most of Morocco's Jews “emigrated” after the formation of Israel. Morocco has stringent laws against converting out of Islam or doing anything deemed to “shake the faith of Muslims”. Most atheists, converts and lapsed Muslims remain “in the closet” to avoid persecution. Despite claims to the contrary there is rather limited freedom of religion in Morocco where constitutional “guarantees” are contradicted by statute law and societal pressures (or worse).

 

Tunisia. Again ~99% Muslim. This was the source of the “Arab Spring”, but as is so often the case since that time the influence of ultra-conservative Islamists has grown in Tunisia with a concomitant decrease in religious freedoms. Conversion out of Islam is highly frowned upon and atheists are under especial pressures.

 

The Gulf (GCC) states. Whilst most of these states are officially “tolerant” the provision for the immigrant non-Muslim populations is woefully inadequate and many non-Muslims are forced to practice their faiths and worship in secret. This is especially so in Saudi Arabia which allows officially allows no other religion but Islam and has severe penalties for anyone displaying religious items or caught at a non-Islamic (and even some strands of Islam) religious services.

Some GCC states do have Churches, but Christian congregations are typically tightly monitored and severely restricted in what they may do.

The lack of provision is also seen as an opportunity for the conversion of these workers who may receive all manner of blandishments to do so.

Many of these workers are single and few are able to true “put down roots” in the GCC states.

In many respects these non-Muslim workers exist in a parallel (and inferior) society which does not directly impinge on the Muslims of the GCC who often see them as inferiors.

In practice the position of the non-Muslim in the GCC is that of the Dhimmi. (Source).

 

Selected other Countries and areas of the world.

 

China is ethnically diverse  and has been so for millennia, there is no predicted substantial increase or decrease in any of the minority groups, according to demographic history and projections, the Han being ~90% of the total population.

That said, the policy of China would seem to be to reduce diversity, as it does with the immigration of the Han to Tibet.

 

Africa has 3000 distinct ethnic groups, 2000 languages and is home to the most genetically diverse people on Earth. So diverse that two Africans can be more genetically different from each other than a Chinese and a European are from each other.  (Source.)

In terms of religion Africa is primarily split between Islam and Christianity. There are 9 Countries with a 90%+ Christian population compared to 15 with a 90%+ Muslim population.

Perhaps more telling statistically is that there are nine Muslim Countries that are equally or “more Muslim” than the “most Christian” Christian country (São Tomé and Príncipe which has population of < 200,000 as of 2014) (Source.) and that of the fifteen Countries with the highest populations of “other religions” only two have Muslim majorities whereas seven are Christian majority. (The rest are either “other religion” majorities or no one religious group dominates.)

Whilst there might be many reasons for these facts one interpretation is that, overall, Islam in Africa is less tolerant of the “other” than Christianity.

Pew Forum reports that from 2010 to 2050 the percentages of the various religious groups in sub-Saharan Africa will alter little (note: some figures are already within the margin of error). The biggest change will be a gradual shift of a few percentage points towards Islam due to higher fertility rates amongst Muslims across the continent. (A trend that is evident in such comparisons world-wide on a regional basis.)

Overall the point is that there is not going to be much change in the diversity of African Cultures in the next forty years, but that what change there is will be towards a greater presence of Islam.

 

India. Over the next forty years the demographic projections show that Hindus will decline from >80% to ~77% and this will be largely at the expense of a burgeoning Muslim population that in absolute terms will grow by 76%, again due to higher fertility rates. Other minorities will remain roughly constant in percentage terms which means in absolute terms their populations will also increase, but far more slowly.

 

South America is overwhelmingly Christian (with the exception of Uruguay which is secularising) most of whom are Roman Catholic. However, in most of these countries there are small groups of “other” religions that span those found throughout the world, Argentina has (relatively) large Muslim and Jewish populations for example.

Importantly these states have all legislated for full freedom of religion so that their minorities are able to flourish and prosper.

Again the implications are that there will be a slow increase in diversity but that these Countries will remain essentially Christian for the foreseeable future.

 

Russia is (probably) a majority Christian country. Estimates range from 46-76% Christian, with Russian and other Orthodox faiths making up the vast majority (40-~70%) of the total. Russia is home to over 185 ethnic groups designated as nationalities which range in numbers from the tens of thousands to the tens of millions. It is also predominantly Russian in the sense that those identifying as Russian have formed ~80% of the total population over the last 90 years. Other ethnicities vary but most are in the 1% or less class which makes accurate tracking of trends difficult (even with Russian/USSR census data). Muslims are the second largest group, 6.4-8% overall, but are split into many different groups and traditions some of which are “unaffiliated”, that is they do not identify as Sunni, Shia, etc. Muslims are majorities in Chechenia, Ingushetia, Dagestan (82.6%), and Kabardino-Balkaria (55.4%) and the largest groups in Karachay-Cherkessia (48.0%), Bashkortostan (38.6%) and Tatarstan (33.7%). This data comes from surveys, the Russian census does not track religion.

Russia is also home to representatives of the world's other religions and also some “native religions” and neo-pagan groups which indicates that post the Soviet era religious freedoms have blossomed.

Overall there has been little shift in the demographics in the period 1926-2010, thus Russia is similar in some ways to Africa with a diverse yet roughly stable ethnic and religious mix.

 

The wider Muslim world.

Much of the Muslim world is the result of conquest of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other lands, yet many Muslim Countries are remarkably, and increasingly, mono-cultural and mono-religious as shown above with respect to North Africa and the Middle East.

The cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh are relevant because they are two “newly-minted” Muslim Countries and the changes over time are fully documented. They also form a relevant contrast with modern India which came into being at the same time as Pakistan which later split into the Countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

 

Pakistan was formed in 1947 at which time “almost 23% of its population was non-Muslim. Today, the proportion of non-Muslims has declined to approximately 3 percent.” So writes Farahnaz Ispahani. This decrease is (obviously) absolute (i.e. pure numbers) as well as relative (percentage terms). By the end of the 1960s the entire Jewish population was lost due to persecution. Whilst Hindus and Sikhs continue to migrate to India in response to persecution, the Christian minority has no such obvious safe-haven available.

In Pakistan indoctrination starts in the schools with text books telling pupils that non-Muslims are “the enemies of Islam”, “evil” and other such things. These texts are often the ones that non-Muslims are forced to use as well, thus confirming their “subjugated” status.

But such persecution is not limited to “other” religions as we would normally understand them. Both Shia and Ahmadhi Muslims are also persecuted in Pakistan. Again quoting Farahnaz: “Ahmadis who have been declared non-Muslim by the writ of the state, and non-Muslim minorities such as Christians, Hindus and Sikhs have been the targets of suicide bomb attacks on their neighborhoods, had community members converted to Islam against their will, and had their houses of worship attacked and bombed even while they were inhabited by worshipers... well-to-do Hindus have been the primary targets of the ransom kidnappings. The numbers of minority Muslims and non-Muslims subjected to these purposeful attacks have increased significantly and the crimes committed have become more heinous. Those accused of “blasphemy” have sometimes been burnt alive outside police stations with no culprits identified or punished.”

Christians are generally not subject to ransom-kidnappings because they are (typically) already reduced to the most menial of jobs within Pakistani society and desperately poor.

The forced conversions of minorities is largely that of women. Typically a non-Muslim woman is raped then forced to convert (often under the threat of death) and marry her rapist. Sometimes a whole community is “asked” to convert to Islam.

Such pressures will force people to flee or convert (almost literally at sword-point) to escape persecution and death.

A point to note is that whilst such persecutions of the non-Muslim have accelerated as Pakistan Islamised, such persecutions took place from the state.

According to some (including Farahnaz) Pakistan was supposed to be “secular” in its inception and it is true that Jinnah had a relatively broad based first cabinet. She writes: “Reflecting his secular views, Mr. Jinnah nominated a Hindu, several Shias (of whom he was one) and an Ahmadi to Pakistan’s first cabinet”, but not a single Sikh or Christian.

The fact that Pakistan was set up as a state to be governed by the Muslim league (of which Jinnah was a leading member) and the “use of Islamic slogans and Islam during the 1946 elections preceding independence and in defining Pakistani nationhood immediately after independence” (Farahnaz again) implies that any such “secular” gestures were largely window-dressing, quite possibly to make partition less unpalatable the British and the rest of the Indian politicians.

The very name “Pakistan” means “pure land”. How could a state set up for and by Muslims be a “pure land” whilst it had co-equal religious minorities on its soil?

Islam can only tolerate minorities as Dhimmis and only allows “the people of the book” (primarily Jews and Christians) even that much tolerance. In India under the Moghul empire(s) the concept of dhimmitude was extended to Hindus and Buddhists for the expedient reason that the Muslim invaders simply could not kill them all, despite repeatedly making hills of Hindu heads (See M.A. Khan's “Islamic Jihad”) and destroying thousands of temples for loot.

In 1949 Liaquat Ali Khan, stated that “Pakistan was founded because Muslims of this subcontinent wanted to build up their lives in accordance with the teachings and traditions of Islam.” (Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Debates, Volume V, March 12, 1949, pp. 2-5.) whilst ramming through a resolution that made Pakistani law subservient to Sharia, thus ensuring that non-Muslims would be second-class citizens and their constitutionally “guaranteed” rights worthless (to see how rights “guaranteed” in one article may be negated by another see the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” and a commentary, many others are available as well).

With Pakistan's trajectory set according to Islamic norms things have progressively got worse for non-Muslims.

Some writers estimate that Pakistan's minority communities will be “effectively extinct” within the next decade or so. So much for diversity and multiculturalism in Pakistan.

 

Bangladesh was formed in 1971, since then the religious minorities declined from 19.80% in 1971 to 9.00% in 2014. On an annual basis this rate of decline is similar to that of Pakistan.

Here the Christian and Buddhist populations (%ages) have grown slightly whereas it is the Hindus that have fallen greatly (source). The Jews were non-existent, having left the area whilst it was still “East Pakistan”.

Also similar to Pakistan is Bangladesh's modern constitutional anti-non-Muslim biases and official reluctance to act against those attacking non-Muslims - which amounts at times to state-collusion in both Countries.

The same source referred to above recounts the torture, rape, murder, forced conversions etc. that have pressurised minority communities in Bangladesh. The author notes that in Bangladesh “98.68% of the rape victims are minority [women] and rapists happen  to  be  the  cadres  of  the ruling  [Muslim] parties.”

Like Pakistan, Bangladesh had a short-lived “secular era” in which tolerance was greater, but which rapidly transmogrified into a more Islamic era with the concomitant increase in persecution of minorities, in this case with Hindus bearing the brunt.

Bangladesh is also garnering a reputation as a place where it is very dangerous to be an atheist or a secularist.

On the BBC world service on 11th May 2106 there were two news items in juxtaposition.

One was about the persecution of Rohinga Muslims by Myanmar's extremist nationalist Buddhists, the other was about the violence by Malays against other groups (note my word choices here which reflect the BBC's).

Whilst much was made of the religions of victim and perpetrator in the first item, in the second the meat of the article was presaged with a segment on how Muslim tolerance was the norm in Malaysia and the main part of the article made no mention of religion at all.

The first point of note is that the Rohinga victims were defined as “Muslims” but the Malay perpetrators were not. Taken together the articles implied that Muslims are only Muslim when being persecuted, not when persecuting.

How often have we been told that “Islamic extremists” have “nothing to do with Islam”?

Thus we see how word-choice affects and is affected by prejudice and perception.

A second point is that the “Rohingas” comprise not only the (disputed) Rohinga ethnicity but Muslim emigres from Bangladesh who have illegally entered Myanmar. The round of violence that got the “Rohingas” in the news world-wide as the victims of persecution was initiated when “Rohingas” attacked, raped and killed some Buddhist girls and women.

Some reports indicate that the actual perpetrators were Bangladeshi emigres who carried with them their attitudes to non-Muslim populations and presumed that since they could rape and kill non-Muslims with impunity in Bangladesh they could do so in Myanmar. In this they proved mistaken and for once a non-Muslim community retaliated against Muslims.

(The irony here is that Muslims regularly “retaliate”, often lethally, against any perceived slight, never mind something as serious as rape or murder and very few in the western media bother about such events, those frequent assaults and mass-murders are simply ignored.)

 

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation. It is also home to six state-recognised religions, Islam (predominant), Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. According to the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP), there are about 245 “non-official” religions in Indonesia. Demographically the populations of the “official” religions are more-or-less stable, with Islam hovering around the 87% mark for the last forty years and Christianity at about 9.5%.

“Protestantism” is showing an increase but this is largely from the Chinese ethnic minority, those from Islam are “pressured” to 'revert' to Islam.

Indonesia's predominant form of Islam, “Islam Nusantara” is (or was) relatively tolerant (at least compared to many other forms) and gives other minorities some freedoms, thus Indonesia is often touted as the face of “moderate” Islam.

Yet the Indonesian army and Muslim militia were responsible for religion-based massacres of Christians in East Timor - see Wikipedia entries on east Timor for example.

In recent years Indonesia's Islam has come under increasing influence from “Islamists”. Evidence from Open Doors and other sources (also here, here for example) suggest that tolerance by the Muslim majority is declining as the influence of Islamist organisations increases. An example is Jamaah Islamiyah which, amongst other atrocities, carried out the bombings in Bali, a predominantly Hindu part of Indonesia.

Ahmedhi Muslims have also been attacked and killed by “Islamists”.

The Islamists greatest triumph to date is that Aceh province is ruled under Sharia law. Aceh province is one of the most highly Islamised provinces (98% Sunni Muslim). The Islamification of Aceh accelerated after the passage of the “Special Autonomy Law” in 2001 and again after the 2004 Tsunami, when non-Muslims struggled to get aid to rebuild and so emigrated to other provinces. Sharia was fully implemented in 2009 and other provinces are enacting Sharia “bylaws” (sources here, here, here and here for example).

Today there is an air of increasing Islamic intolerance within Indonesia which bodes ill for the future of its minorities (see also here, here, here and here for example).

Something I have not dwelt on, but equally cannot pass over without comment is that in most of the world equality is advancing and gender discrimination is in (slow) retreat. Such is not the case in many Muslim-majority Countries and communities and the more Islamic a country is, the more unlikely is progress on gender equality. See here, here, here and here for example.

There are many other Muslim-majority Countries and Countries with large Muslim minorities around the world where non-Muslims, those “not Muslim enough” or the “wrong type” of Muslim are persecuted to varying degrees; Eritrea, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria (Boko Haraam), Sudan, Somalia (al Shabaab) spring to mind to name but a few and as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote: “...the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania.”

The Pew report referenced above also projects that whilst there will be substantial Muslim migration into the “Christian world” of Europe, North America and Australasia there will be little Christian migration to the Muslim world.

These projections were made before the Syrian crisis erupted in full and so the migration levels to Europe in particular are hugely underestimated; Pew estimated ~610 thousand by 2050, a number exceeded in 2015 alone almost by a factor of two.

Christians are expected to migrate to the GCC Countries, but these are purely to fulfil the workforce requirements of those lands, but despite this they – and all other religious/ethnic groups – will still be less than 1% of the total (notwithstanding the fact that “Qataris” represent a mere 15% of Qatar's population – all the rest are semi-transient “guest” workers for example).

A further point to recall is that the majority of these “guest” workers do not settle, buy houses, form their own communities, build places of worship, raise families and so forth (western expat workers are often better provided for); whereas the Muslim migrants to the “Christian world” are able to do all these as of right.

Again this points to the trend that whilst non-Muslim Countries, primarily in the Northern hemisphere, can expect to continue to experience increasing diversity due to the increase in Muslim populations migrating from the M.E., North Africa, Afghanistan etc., Muslim Countries will not show increases in diversity due to inward immigration at all; indeed the flow of non-Muslims (where such populations are still extant) is also outward (GCC excepted) and due to persecution, thus Muslim Countries, overall, are due to become even more mono-cultural and less religiously diverse than they are at present, at least for those with non-negligible non-Muslim populations.

Phillipe Fargues is the author of the article “Demographic Islamization: non-Muslims in Muslim Countries”. In which he states that there are four mechanisms by which the non-Muslim populations were (and are being) lost:

conversion,

higher Muslim fertility rates,

replacement of non-Muslims by inward Muslim migration and

intermarriage which, he states, “automatically gives birth to a Muslim second generation”.

Fargues' listing of conversion glosses a point. In many Muslim majority states the non-Muslim exists today as a de facto though not de jure Dhimmi. In history the nature of dhimmitude was much more overt and often regulated by law rather than custom (as it is today). In either case, however, this usage provides a pressure – sometimes lethal depending on circumstance – to “persuade” the “Kafir” to convert to Islam.

History is replete with cases of Dhimmi populations which were massacred for a (putative) breach of their “protection contract” or Dhimmah (also spelt as “dhimma”).

As mentioned above Muslim fertility rates are always higher than that of the local non-Muslims. This is a fact that can be seen in all regions of the world. Even in those Countries where Muslim fertility rates are down to (or even slightly below) replacement rates, it is still higher than minority group fertility rates (where such minorities still exist).

A further neatly glossed point in Fargues' article is the nature of intermarriage.

That “intermarriage ... gives birth to a Muslim second generation” is more than just a turn of phrase, rather it points to the fact that “intermarriage” means Muslim males marrying non-Muslim females (often as second, third or fourth wives), not non-Muslim males marrying Muslim women. The latter is punishable by death under most formulations of Sharia. Even today the idea of a Muslim woman “marrying out” can easily spark outrage or riot as can the mere suspicion of such a thing.

Thus the effect of “intermarriage” - sometimes forcible as found in Pakistan and Bangladesh to name but two Countries and which amounts to a form of sex-slavery – is to remove females from the non-Muslim population and thus ensure their decline through the simple expedient of limiting their reproduction.

To that list I would add massacre.

All too often the invading Muslims massacred the males of the community and enslaved their women and children, making sex-slaves of the former – and sometimes that latter too. (See M.A. Khan's “Islamic Jihad”, Tidiane N'Diaye “Le génocide voilé”- "the veiled genocide" & “Étude de la traite négrière arabo-musulmane” - "study of the Arab-Muslim negro [slave] trade" and Dario Fernandez-Morera “The myth of the Andalusian paradise”).

This combination, massacre and sex-slaving, not only removes the males from the indigenous population it also forces the now enslaved females to bear Muslim offspring. It too, to borrow a phrase from Defargues, “automatically gives birth to a Muslim second generation” by the effective removal of the non-Muslim population as a distinct entity.

Add to this the effect of Dhimmitude on suppressing the desire to bring children into the world and one can clearly see a mechanism by which Muslim Countries grow progressively more Muslim over time.

Taken together, the invariably higher Muslim fertility rate and the process of “intermarriage” (as defined above) means that over time Muslims inevitably come to dominate. This occurs whether the initial wave was conquest or migration. In the case of conquest the replacement of the indigenous population is accelerated by massacre and sex-slavery, thus the only difference is found in the pace with which the population shifts in favour of Muslims.

Demographic changes in history are seldom documented, but they do exist in outline at least for the Caliphate of “Andalusia”.

This is the Caliphate of the “golden age” of Islam wherein all peoples of all religions lived in freedom, peace and harmony in the “convivencia” – or so we are often told.

Dario Fernandez-Morera in his meticulously researched and referenced book “The myth of the Andalusian paradise” offers a counterpoint to the hagiography of (in particular) anglophone writers on “Andalusia”.

He shows quite clearly that massacre, sex-slavery and marriage of Christian women to Mussalmen all contributed to the rapid decline of the Christian population as did the imposition of Dhimmitude and the concomitant destruction of Churches, crosses, Christian symbology and “treasure” of all types.

All too often the Christians were offered the Islamic formula of “become Muslim, become Dhimmi or become dead” with slavery for those (mostly women and children) who survived any resistance.

A further means of the Islamisation of al-Andalus was via 'treaties'.

The Christians who did not resist the invasions were granted what they thought were generous peace-treaties. In reality they were receiving “Hudna” - fixed term armistices - or perhaps even “Tahdaia”, which whenever the Muslims wished could be legally “abrogated” under Sharia, allowing unexpected attacks on those who thought they were “at peace” with the invading Muslims. (Even Muslim writers in “Andalusia” acknowledged that this amounted to 'legalised' treachery on the part of the Muslims.)

The propensity of the Ummayads and their successors to behead, crucify or impale probably did not help the Christian Dhimmis feel more secure in this Islamic “paradise”, thus many Christians fled to the remaining areas under Christian control when they could.

Today we see similar “punishments” and consequences being meted out by ISIL (though impalement seems to have passed them by to date).

Christians in “Andalusia” lived as Dhimmis. There were strict and discriminatory rules governing the practice of their religion and general interaction with Muslims. For instance, the legal testimony of a non-Muslim in a case against a Muslim was worthless in the eyes of the Muslim courts.

There is a pattern within the Muslim-dominant world that can be seen throughout history from the disappearance or massive reduction of the “other” in Muslim-dominant countries – a pattern that continues today and is most clear (and well documented) in the Middle East, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey: wherever Islam comes to dominate it will then subjugate and tends to eradicate non-Muslim cultures whether in a literal “hills of heads” sense, via dhimmitude or simple replacement (fertility rates and “intermarriage”), no matter what “flavour” of Islam or ethnicity of Muslim we are considering. A part of this is the elimination of the religious edifices and symbols of other faiths.

Islam is not monolithic but this pattern exists within all “flavours” of Islam.

That some Countries long under Muslim domination still have relatively substantial non-Muslim populations is not so much a testament to Islamic “tolerance” as to the awe-inspiringly deep sense of faith and the passive resistance of said minorities to the pressures of dhimmitude and periodic persecution and massacre. Egypt is a case in point.

Today, with the easy movement of people, many such minorities are finally choosing to leave the lands or persecution and move to those where, at present at least, they can find peace and freedom.

To that it has to be added that in many cases the Islamic authorities saw Dhimmis as “cash cows” whom they could milk whenever they needed extra resources. A famous (or infamous) letter ascribed to Umar says (in part): “if we take dhimmis and share them out [as slaves], what will be left for the Muslims who come after us? By God, Muslims would not find a man to talk to and profit from his [i.e. the Dhimmi's] labours.”

Thus there often was (and still is) an ambivalent or even double-minded view of non-Muslim minorities.

By now the point should be pellucidly clear.

It is only in the “West” (Europe, North America etc.) that diversity and multiculturalism are touted as inherently “good things” to be actively pursued.

Apart from this area there are few if any Countries actively pursuing such aims, in much of the world the level of diversity is set to remain roughly constant but the pressures (where present) are towards the formation of mono-cultural societies and in the case of Muslim-dominant countries mono-religious ones as well – even to the extent of being Sunni or Shia rather than just “Muslim”. Implicit is that in many respects “globalisation” - at least in its “integrationist” sense – will largely bypass the Muslim-dominant world which is tending towards segregationism and/or mono-culturalism and religious uniformity.

I am certainly not making the case, even backhandedly, that immigration and diversity are inherently “bad things”. But I would say that allowing indiscriminate immigration can be a bad thing. For example: a country can gain nothing “good” but only misfortune by welcoming certain people, who—by virtue of their ingrained religious and cultural thinking—are committed to the destruction of the ways and ethos of that country. Neither do I believe that multiculturalism and diversity should demand the suicide of indigenous cultures anywhere in the world.

Put in a nutshell: either the West or the rest of the world is wrong about the inherent benefits of religious diversity and multiculturalism - and my money is on the rest of the world.

Some Thoughts on Diversity and Multiculturalism.
Jon MC
It seems that diversity and multiculturalism, along with political-correctness, form the “core ethos” of Western societies.
Despite brave words by the former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the “failure” of multiculturalism, nothing has changed – except for the worse.
Brown's words were lost when he left office. Merkel on her part clearly “repented” of her statements by opening the borders of her country to >1 million Muslim migrants in 2015 alone.
Francois Hollande said he was in war with Islamic terrorism after the Paris attacks, and then proceeded to 'fight' it with “solidarity” marches (we now know where we went wrong with Germany's Hitler, a few marches through London would have stopped his attack on Czechoslovakia cold).
I live in a “minority city” in the U.K., where no ethic group are in majority, all are ranked at less than 50% of the population. That, in itself, is not a worry. I don’t not care about the pigmentation of people's skin, but I do care about the “pigmentation” of people's mind, and how that shapes their attitude toward those around them.
We are told here in the West that diversity and “multiculturalism” are Good Things. Anyone who disagrees is instantly labelled an “-ist” or a “-phobe” – racist, xenophobe or Islamophobe for example.
However, noble those “Good Things” may be, unfortunately the whole world, certainly the Muslim world, is not warmly embracing diversity and multiculturalism. Solid demographic figures are hard to find, but clearly diversity is only being enthusiastically embraced in Europe, North America and Australasia only.
The Middle East and North Africa. Anyone not totally oblivious to world events must by now know that millennia-old Christian communities in much of these areas are facing annihilation.
With but few exceptions, this fate has already befallen the even older Jewish communities of those areas. Most were expelled in “retaliation” for the formation of Israel. Somewhat ironically, the total number of Jews expelled from those Muslim areas were roughly equal to the number of 'Palestinians' who rather willingly left Israel after the founding of the Jewish State in 1948.
Overall non-Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa face persecution that ranges from general harassment through property confiscation (Turkey) and violence up to outright genocide (ISIL et al).
It is also worth pointing out that all the countries listed above were part of the Eastern Roman Empire prior to the advent of Islam. Thus the Christian populations (where extant) are, generally, the residual of ancient Churches – though it is also true to say that some are “reborn” Churches.
As an aside this latest wave of lethal “kaffarophobia” makes the oft-touted “rising tide of Islamophobia” in the West seem the merest ripple and ignores the entirely rational fear of Islam inculcated in their victims by the murderous actions of Muslims (minority or not) worldwide.
I will now consider some of the individual Countries in the area:
Lebanon, a formerly Christian majority country (84% in 1926), now has a dwindling Christian minority. This process accelerated with the admission of 'Palestinian' refugees in 1949-1950 and swiftly resulted in the Christians being made into a minority. According to this source by 1985 Christians were down to 25% of the population. I should note that other sources suggest it may be nearer 35-40%, but since no census has been taken in the last 80 years or so there are no definite figures, but what no-one disputes is that they have gone from majority to minority and that this happened after the Palestinian refugees arrived.
Under Lebanon's convoluted constitution the President must be a Maronite Christian but Lebanon has not had a President since 2014 because the Muslim group Hezbollah (a designated terrorist group in several countries) refuses to form a quora for the election thus undermining the constitution and further eroding the place of Christians within Lebanon.
Turkey, in the early 20th century there were the genocides of the Armenian and Greek-Pontic Christians, along with the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Nestorians.
In 1913, the Turkish Ottoman government of the supposedly liberal “Committee of Union and Progress” initiated a program of forcible Turkification of non-Turkish minorities. Starting in 1915 the government turned to deliberate extermination of indigenous and Christian ethnic groups.
These are facts which the Turkish body politic still blithely denies today.
To be more precise, the genocides were typically perpetrated by the Muslim neighbours of these victims with the blessing and permission of the state, not the state's soldiers.
As a result Turkey's Christian population plummeted from nearly 20% in 1914 to 2.5% (two point five percent) in 1927 and kept declining so that today it is <0.2% (zero point two).
How much longer before the non-Muslim population is effectively zero?
ISIL. Reports coming out of ISIL's lands (2014-2015) by those non-Muslims who managed to escape death inform us that the same pattern in genocide is happening again. The murders and genocides are not carried out by ISIL's “Mujaheddin” (“Soldiers of Allah”) but by the victims' Muslim neighbours, some of whom the non-Muslims have lived alongside “for centuries” and whom they held as “close friends” (see for instance here, here, here, here and here) These same neighbours turned on the non-Muslims with joyous shouts of “Allahu Akbar!”, the victory-cry of Muslims from the earliest days of Islam.
Jordan's Christian population has been in slow decline for over 50 years. To date it stands at about 2.2%. Jordan has the reputation of being a liberal and tolerant country (though this is less so for those choosing to leave Islam). Post “Arab Spring” and into the “Islamist winter” the influx of less tolerant migrants has been a decrease in Jordanian liberality. (source).
Syria. Until the current war started Syria was a safe-haven for Christians (like Jordan), but it is now a very dangerous place for Muslims and especially non-Muslims except for those in protected minority-majority locations.
Iraq. As is well known Iraq's non-Muslim population plummeted with the fragmentation of Iraq into rival Sunni and Shia areas. Sunni/Shia fratricide has caught non-Muslim groups in the crossfire. Most have either fled (first to Syria, then elsewhere) or else are now found in the Kurdish parts of the Country, where tolerance is still more practised.
Egypt. Home to the indigenous Coptic Christian community. This community may be anywhere from 3% to 20% of the overall population. The most likely figures give Muslims as 90% and Christians 10%, thus the Copts somewhat less. Other religions are negligible.
Egypt's Copts have long been persecuted (also here and here) often with at least tacit state complicity. Whilst this took place under the relatively secular Sadat and Mubarak the election of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi caused an upswing in anti-Coptic violence to levels unprecedented in modern times. With his ouster and replacement by the relatively secular al-Sisi, the level of persecution has dropped back to approximately the previous levels, partly due to a crack-down on the Islamists of the Muslim-Brotherhood.
Algeria is >99% Muslim. Mere handfuls of Jews and Christians remain.
Morocco. Like Algeria Morocco is ~99% Muslim with Christianity making up much of the rest. Most of Morocco's Jews “emigrated” after the formation of Israel. Morocco has stringent laws against converting out of Islam or doing anything deemed to “shake the faith of Muslims”. Most atheists, converts and lapsed Muslims remain “in the closet” to avoid persecution. Despite claims to the contrary there is rather limited freedom of religion in Morocco where constitutional “guarantees” are contradicted by statute law and societal pressures (or worse).
Tunisia. Again ~99% Muslim. This was the source of the “Arab Spring”, but as is so often the case since that time the influence of ultra-conservative Islamists has grown in Tunisia with a concomitant decrease in religious freedoms. Conversion out of Islam is highly frowned upon and atheists are under especial pressures.
The Gulf (GCC) states. Whilst most of these states are officially “tolerant” the provision for the immigrant non-Muslim populations is woefully inadequate and many non-Muslims are forced to practice their faiths and worship in secret. This is especially so in Saudi Arabia which allows officially allows no other religion but Islam and has severe penalties for anyone displaying religious items or caught at a non-Islamic (and even some strands of Islam) religious services.
Some GCC states do have Churches, but Christian congregations are typically tightly monitored and severely restricted in what they may do.
The lack of provision is also seen as an opportunity for the conversion of these workers who may receive all manner of blandishments to do so.
Many of these workers are single and few are able to true “put down roots” in the GCC states.
In many respects these non-Muslim workers exist in a parallel (and inferior) society which does not directly impinge on the Muslims of the GCC who often see them as inferiors.
In practice the position of the non-Muslim in the GCC is that of the Dhimmi. (Source).
Selected other Countries and areas of the world.
China is ethnically diverse  and has been so for millennia, there is no predicted substantial increase or decrease in any of the minority groups, according to demographic history and projections, the Han being ~90% of the total population.
That said, the policy of China would seem to be to reduce diversity, as it does with the immigration of the Han to Tibet.
Africa has 3000 distinct ethnic groups, 2000 languages and is home to the most genetically diverse people on Earth. So diverse that two Africans can be more genetically different from each other than a Chinese and a European are from each other.  (Source.)
In terms of religion Africa is primarily split between Islam and Christianity. There are 9 Countries with a 90%+ Christian population compared to 15 with a 90%+ Muslim population.
Perhaps more telling statistically is that there are nine Muslim Countries that are equally or “more Muslim” than the “most Christian” Christian country (São Tomé and Príncipe which has population of < 200,000 as of 2014) (Source.) and that of the fifteen Countries with the highest populations of “other religions” only two have Muslim majorities whereas seven are Christian majority. (The rest are either “other religion” majorities or no one religious group dominates.)
Whilst there might be many reasons for these facts one interpretation is that, overall, Islam in Africa is less tolerant of the “other” than Christianity.
Pew Forum reports that from 2010 to 2050 the percentages of the various religious groups in sub-Saharan Africa will alter little (note: some figures are already within the margin of error). The biggest change will be a gradual shift of a few percentage points towards Islam due to higher fertility rates amongst Muslims across the continent. (A trend that is evident in such comparisons world-wide on a regional basis.)
Overall the point is that there is not going to be much change in the diversity of African Cultures in the next forty years, but that what change there is will be towards a greater presence of Islam.
India. Over the next forty years the demographic projections show that Hindus will decline from >80% to ~77% and this will be largely at the expense of a burgeoning Muslim population that in absolute terms will grow by 76%, again due to higher fertility rates. Other minorities will remain roughly constant in percentage terms which means in absolute terms their populations will also increase, but far more slowly.
South America is overwhelmingly Christian (with the exception of Uruguay which is secularising) most of whom are Roman Catholic. However, in most of these countries there are small groups of “other” religions that span those found throughout the world, Argentina has (relatively) large Muslim and Jewish populations for example.
Importantly these states have all legislated for full freedom of religion so that their minorities are able to flourish and prosper.
Again the implications are that there will be a slow increase in diversity but that these Countries will remain essentially Christian for the foreseeable future.
Russia is (probably) a majority Christian country. Estimates range from 46-76% Christian, with Russian and other Orthodox faiths making up the vast majority (40-~70%) of the total. Russia is home to over 185 ethnic groups designated as nationalities which range in numbers from the tens of thousands to the tens of millions. It is also predominantly Russian in the sense that those identifying as Russian have formed ~80% of the total population over the last 90 years. Other ethnicities vary but most are in the 1% or less class which makes accurate tracking of trends difficult (even with Russian/USSR census data). Muslims are the second largest group, 6.4-8% overall, but are split into many different groups and traditions some of which are “unaffiliated”, that is they do not identify as Sunni, Shia, etc. Muslims are majorities in Chechenia, Ingushetia, Dagestan (82.6%), and Kabardino-Balkaria (55.4%) and the largest groups in Karachay-Cherkessia (48.0%), Bashkortostan (38.6%) and Tatarstan (33.7%). This data comes from surveys, the Russian census does not track religion.
Russia is also home to representatives of the world's other religions and also some “native religions” and neo-pagan groups which indicates that post the Soviet era religious freedoms have blossomed.
Overall there has been little shift in the demographics in the period 1926-2010, thus Russia is similar in some ways to Africa with a diverse yet roughly stable ethnic and religious mix.
The wider Muslim world.
Much of the Muslim world is the result of conquest of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other lands, yet many Muslim Countries are remarkably, and increasingly, mono-cultural and mono-religious as shown above with respect to North Africa and the Middle East.
The cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh are relevant because they are two “newly-minted” Muslim Countries and the changes over time are fully documented. They also form a relevant contrast with modern India which came into being at the same time as Pakistan which later split into the Countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Pakistan was formed in 1947 at which time “almost 23% of its population was non-Muslim. Today, the proportion of non-Muslims has declined to approximately 3 percent.” So writes Farahnaz Ispahani. This decrease is (obviously) absolute (i.e. pure numbers) as well as relative (percentage terms). By the end of the 1960s the entire Jewish population was lost due to persecution. Whilst Hindus and Sikhs continue to migrate to India in response to persecution, the Christian minority has no such obvious safe-haven available.
In Pakistan indoctrination starts in the schools with text books telling pupils that non-Muslims are “the enemies of Islam”, “evil” and other such things. These texts are often the ones that non-Muslims are forced to use as well, thus confirming their “subjugated” status.
But such persecution is not limited to “other” religions as we would normally understand them. Both Shia and Ahmadhi Muslims are also persecuted in Pakistan. Again quoting Farahnaz: “Ahmadis who have been declared non-Muslim by the writ of the state, and non-Muslim minorities such as Christians, Hindus and Sikhs have been the targets of suicide bomb attacks on their neighborhoods, had community members converted to Islam against their will, and had their houses of worship attacked and bombed even while they were inhabited by worshipers... well-to-do Hindus have been the primary targets of the ransom kidnappings. The numbers of minority Muslims and non-Muslims subjected to these purposeful attacks have increased significantly and the crimes committed have become more heinous. Those accused of “blasphemy” have sometimes been burnt alive outside police stations with no culprits identified or punished.”
Christians are generally not subject to ransom-kidnappings because they are (typically) already reduced to the most menial of jobs within Pakistani society and desperately poor.
The forced conversions of minorities is largely that of women. Typically a non-Muslim woman is raped then forced to convert (often under the threat of death) and marry her rapist. Sometimes a whole community is “asked” to convert to Islam.
Such pressures will force people to flee or convert (almost literally at sword-point) to escape persecution and death.
A point to note is that whilst such persecutions of the non-Muslim have accelerated as Pakistan Islamised, such persecutions took place from the state.
According to some (including Farahnaz) Pakistan was supposed to be “secular” in its inception and it is true that Jinnah had a relatively broad based first cabinet. She writes: “Reflecting his secular views, Mr. Jinnah nominated a Hindu, several Shias (of whom he was one) and an Ahmadi to Pakistan’s first cabinet”, but not a single Sikh or Christian.
The fact that Pakistan was set up as a state to be governed by the Muslim league (of which Jinnah was a leading member) and the “use of Islamic slogans and Islam during the 1946 elections preceding independence and in defining Pakistani nationhood immediately after independence” (Farahnaz again) implies that any such “secular” gestures were largely window-dressing, quite possibly to make partition less unpalatable the British and the rest of the Indian politicians.
The very name “Pakistan” means “pure land”. How could a state set up for and by Muslims be a “pure land” whilst it had co-equal religious minorities on its soil?
Islam can only tolerate minorities as Dhimmis and only allows “the people of the book” (primarily Jews and Christians) even that much tolerance. In India under the Moghul empire(s) the concept of dhimmitude was extended to Hindus and Buddhists for the expedient reason that the Muslim invaders simply could not kill them all, despite repeatedly making hills of Hindu heads (See M.A. Khan's “Islamic Jihad”) and destroying thousands of temples for loot.
In 1949 Liaquat Ali Khan, stated that “Pakistan was founded because Muslims of this subcontinent wanted to build up their lives in accordance with the teachings and traditions of Islam.” (Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Debates, Volume V, March 12, 1949, pp. 2-5.) whilst ramming through a resolution that made Pakistani law subservient to Sharia, thus ensuring that non-Muslims would be second-class citizens and their constitutionally “guaranteed” rights worthless (to see how rights “guaranteed” in one article may be negated by another see the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” and a commentary, many others are available as well).
With Pakistan's trajectory set according to Islamic norms things have progressively got worse for non-Muslims.
Some writers estimate that Pakistan's minority communities will be “effectively extinct” within the next decade or so. So much for diversity and multiculturalism in Pakistan.
Bangladesh was formed in 1971, since then the religious minorities declined from 19.80% in 1971 to 9.00% in 2014. On an annual basis this rate of decline is similar to that of Pakistan.
Here the Christian and Buddhist populations (%ages) have grown slightly whereas it is the Hindus that have fallen greatly (source). The Jews were non-existent, having left the area whilst it was still “East Pakistan”.
Also similar to Pakistan is Bangladesh's modern constitutional anti-non-Muslim biases and official reluctance to act against those attacking non-Muslims - which amounts at times to state-collusion in both Countries.
The same source referred to above recounts the torture, rape, murder, forced conversions etc. that have pressurised minority communities in Bangladesh. The author notes that in Bangladesh “98.68% of the rape victims are minority [women] and rapists happen  to  be  the  cadres  of  the ruling  [Muslim] parties.”
Like Pakistan, Bangladesh had a short-lived “secular era” in which tolerance was greater, but which rapidly transmogrified into a more Islamic era with the concomitant increase in persecution of minorities, in this case with Hindus bearing the brunt.
Bangladesh is also garnering a reputation as a place where it is very dangerous to be an atheist or a secularist.
On the BBC world service on 11th May 2106 there were two news items in juxtaposition.
One was about the persecution of Rohinga Muslims by Myanmar's extremist nationalist Buddhists, the other was about the violence by Malays against other groups (note my word choices here which reflect the BBC's).
Whilst much was made of the religions of victim and perpetrator in the first item, in the second the meat of the article was presaged with a segment on how Muslim tolerance was the norm in Malaysia and the main part of the article made no mention of religion at all.
The first point of note is that the Rohinga victims were defined as “Muslims” but the Malay perpetrators were not. Taken together the articles implied that Muslims are only Muslim when being persecuted, not when persecuting.
How often have we been told that “Islamic extremists” have “nothing to do with Islam”?
Thus we see how word-choice affects and is affected by prejudice and perception.
A second point is that the “Rohingas” comprise not only the (disputed) Rohinga ethnicity but Muslim emigres from Bangladesh who have illegally entered Myanmar. The round of violence that got the “Rohingas” in the news world-wide as the victims of persecution was initiated when “Rohingas” attacked, raped and killed some Buddhist girls and women.
Some reports indicate that the actual perpetrators were Bangladeshi emigres who carried with them their attitudes to non-Muslim populations and presumed that since they could rape and kill non-Muslims with impunity in Bangladesh they could do so in Myanmar. In this they proved mistaken and for once a non-Muslim community retaliated against Muslims.
(The irony here is that Muslims regularly “retaliate”, often lethally, against any perceived slight, never mind something as serious as rape or murder and very few in the western media bother about such events, those frequent assaults and mass-murders are simply ignored.)
Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation. It is also home to six state-recognised religions, Islam (predominant), Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. According to the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP), there are about 245 “non-official” religions in Indonesia. Demographically the populations of the “official” religions are more-or-less stable, with Islam hovering around the 87% mark for the last forty years and Christianity at about 9.5%.
“Protestantism” is showing an increase but this is largely from the Chinese ethnic minority, those from Islam are “pressured” to 'revert' to Islam.
Indonesia's predominant form of Islam, “Islam Nusantara” is (or was) relatively tolerant (at least compared to many other forms) and gives other minorities some freedoms, thus Indonesia is often touted as the face of “moderate” Islam.
Yet the Indonesian army and Muslim militia were responsible for religion-based massacres of Christians in East Timor - see Wikipedia entries on east Timor for example.
In recent years Indonesia's Islam has come under increasing influence from “Islamists”. Evidence from Open Doors and other sources (also here, here for example) suggest that tolerance by the Muslim majority is declining as the influence of Islamist organisations increases. An example is Jamaah Islamiyah which, amongst other atrocities, carried out the bombings in Bali, a predominantly Hindu part of Indonesia.
Ahmedhi Muslims have also been attacked and killed by “Islamists”.
The Islamists greatest triumph to date is that Aceh province is ruled under Sharia law. Aceh province is one of the most highly Islamised provinces (98% Sunni Muslim). The Islamification of Aceh accelerated after the passage of the “Special Autonomy Law” in 2001 and again after the 2004 Tsunami, when non-Muslims struggled to get aid to rebuild and so emigrated to other provinces. Sharia was fully implemented in 2009 and other provinces are enacting Sharia “bylaws” (sources here, here, here and here for example).
Today there is an air of increasing Islamic intolerance within Indonesia which bodes ill for the future of its minorities (see also here, here, here and here for example).
Something I have not dwelt on, but equally cannot pass over without comment is that in most of the world equality is advancing and gender discrimination is in (slow) retreat. Such is not the case in many Muslim-majority Countries and communities and the more Islamic a country is, the more unlikely is progress on gender equality. See here, here, here and here for example.
There are many other Muslim-majority Countries and Countries with large Muslim minorities around the world where non-Muslims, those “not Muslim enough” or the “wrong type” of Muslim are persecuted to varying degrees; Eritrea, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria (Boko Haraam), Sudan, Somalia (al Shabaab) spring to mind to name but a few and as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote: “...the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania.”
The Pew report referenced above also projects that whilst there will be substantial Muslim migration into the “Christian world” of Europe, North America and Australasia there will be little Christian migration to the Muslim world.
These projections were made before the Syrian crisis erupted in full and so the migration levels to Europe in particular are hugely underestimated; Pew estimated ~610 thousand by 2050, a number exceeded in 2015 alone almost by a factor of two.
Christians are expected to migrate to the GCC Countries, but these are purely to fulfil the workforce requirements of those lands, but despite this they – and all other religious/ethnic groups – will still be less than 1% of the total (notwithstanding the fact that “Qataris” represent a mere 15% of Qatar's population – all the rest are semi-transient “guest” workers for example).
A further point to recall is that the majority of these “guest” workers do not settle, buy houses, form their own communities, build places of worship, raise families and so forth (western expat workers are often better provided for); whereas the Muslim migrants to the “Christian world” are able to do all these as of right.
Again this points to the trend that whilst non-Muslim Countries, primarily in the Northern hemisphere, can expect to continue to experience increasing diversity due to the increase in Muslim populations migrating from the M.E., North Africa, Afghanistan etc., Muslim Countries will not show increases in diversity due to inward immigration at all; indeed the flow of non-Muslims (where such populations are still extant) is also outward (GCC excepted) and due to persecution, thus Muslim Countries, overall, are due to become even more mono-cultural and less religiously diverse than they are at present, at least for those with non-negligible non-Muslim populations.
Phillipe Fargues is the author of the article “Demographic Islamization: non-Muslims in Muslim Countries”. In which he states that there are four mechanisms by which the non-Muslim populations were (and are being) lost:
conversion,
higher Muslim fertility rates,
replacement of non-Muslims by inward Muslim migration and
intermarriage which, he states, “automatically gives birth to a Muslim second generation”.
Fargues' listing of conversion glosses a point. In many Muslim majority states the non-Muslim exists today as a de facto though not de jure Dhimmi. In history the nature of dhimmitude was much more overt and often regulated by law rather than custom (as it is today). In either case, however, this usage provides a pressure – sometimes lethal depending on circumstance – to “persuade” the “Kafir” to convert to Islam.
History is replete with cases of Dhimmi populations which were massacred for a (putative) breach of their “protection contract” or Dhimmah (also spelt as “dhimma”).
As mentioned above Muslim fertility rates are always higher than that of the local non-Muslims. This is a fact that can be seen in all regions of the world. Even in those Countries where Muslim fertility rates are down to (or even slightly below) replacement rates, it is still higher than minority group fertility rates (where such minorities still exist).
A further neatly glossed point in Fargues' article is the nature of intermarriage.
That “intermarriage ... gives birth to a Muslim second generation” is more than just a turn of phrase, rather it points to the fact that “intermarriage” means Muslim males marrying non-Muslim females (often as second, third or fourth wives), not non-Muslim males marrying Muslim women. The latter is punishable by death under most formulations of Sharia. Even today the idea of a Muslim woman “marrying out” can easily spark outrage or riot as can the mere suspicion of such a thing.
Thus the effect of “intermarriage” - sometimes forcible as found in Pakistan and Bangladesh to name but two Countries and which amounts to a form of sex-slavery – is to remove females from the non-Muslim population and thus ensure their decline through the simple expedient of limiting their reproduction.
To that list I would add massacre.
All too often the invading Muslims massacred the males of the community and enslaved their women and children, making sex-slaves of the former – and sometimes that latter too. (See M.A. Khan's “Islamic Jihad”, Tidiane N'Diaye “Le génocide voilé”- "the veiled genocide" & “Étude de la traite négrière arabo-musulmane” - "study of the Arab-Muslim negro [slave] trade" and Dario Fernandez-Morera “The myth of the Andalusian paradise”).
This combination, massacre and sex-slaving, not only removes the males from the indigenous population it also forces the now enslaved females to bear Muslim offspring. It too, to borrow a phrase from Defargues, “automatically gives birth to a Muslim second generation” by the effective removal of the non-Muslim population as a distinct entity.
Add to this the effect of Dhimmitude on suppressing the desire to bring children into the world and one can clearly see a mechanism by which Muslim Countries grow progressively more Muslim over time.
Taken together, the invariably higher Muslim fertility rate and the process of “intermarriage” (as defined above) means that over time Muslims inevitably come to dominate. This occurs whether the initial wave was conquest or migration. In the case of conquest the replacement of the indigenous population is accelerated by massacre and sex-slavery, thus the only difference is found in the pace with which the population shifts in favour of Muslims.
Demographic changes in history are seldom documented, but they do exist in outline at least for the Caliphate of “Andalusia”.
This is the Caliphate of the “golden age” of Islam wherein all peoples of all religions lived in freedom, peace and harmony in the “convivencia” – or so we are often told.
Dario Fernandez-Morera in his meticulously researched and referenced book “The myth of the Andalusian paradise” offers a counterpoint to the hagiography of (in particular) anglophone writers on “Andalusia”.
He shows quite clearly that massacre, sex-slavery and marriage of Christian women to Mussalmen all contributed to the rapid decline of the Christian population as did the imposition of Dhimmitude and the concomitant destruction of Churches, crosses, Christian symbology and “treasure” of all types.
All too often the Christians were offered the Islamic formula of “become Muslim, become Dhimmi or become dead” with slavery for those (mostly women and children) who survived any resistance.
A further means of the Islamisation of al-Andalus was via 'treaties'.
The Christians who did not resist the invasions were granted what they thought were generous peace-treaties. In reality they were receiving “Hudna” - fixed term armistices - or perhaps even “Tahdaia”, which whenever the Muslims wished could be legally “abrogated” under Sharia, allowing unexpected attacks on those who thought they were “at peace” with the invading Muslims. (Even Muslim writers in “Andalusia” acknowledged that this amounted to 'legalised' treachery on the part of the Muslims.)
The propensity of the Ummayads and their successors to behead, crucify or impale probably did not help the Christian Dhimmis feel more secure in this Islamic “paradise”, thus many Christians fled to the remaining areas under Christian control when they could.
Today we see similar “punishments” and consequences being meted out by ISIL (though impalement seems to have passed them by to date).
Christians in “Andalusia” lived as Dhimmis. There were strict and discriminatory rules governing the practice of their religion and general interaction with Muslims. For instance, the legal testimony of a non-Muslim in a case against a Muslim was worthless in the eyes of the Muslim courts.
There is a pattern within the Muslim-dominant world that can be seen throughout history from the disappearance or massive reduction of the “other” in Muslim-dominant countries – a pattern that continues today and is most clear (and well documented) in the Middle East, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey: wherever Islam comes to dominate it will then subjugate and tends to eradicate non-Muslim cultures whether in a literal “hills of heads” sense, via dhimmitude or simple replacement (fertility rates and “intermarriage”), no matter what “flavour” of Islam or ethnicity of Muslim we are considering. A part of this is the elimination of the religious edifices and symbols of other faiths.
Islam is not monolithic but this pattern exists within all “flavours” of Islam.
That some Countries long under Muslim domination still have relatively substantial non-Muslim populations is not so much a testament to Islamic “tolerance” as to the awe-inspiringly deep sense of faith and the passive resistance of said minorities to the pressures of dhimmitude and periodic persecution and massacre. Egypt is a case in point.
Today, with the easy movement of people, many such minorities are finally choosing to leave the lands or persecution and move to those where, at present at least, they can find peace and freedom.
To that it has to be added that in many cases the Islamic authorities saw Dhimmis as “cash cows” whom they could milk whenever they needed extra resources. A famous (or infamous) letter ascribed to Umar says (in part): “if we take dhimmis and share them out [as slaves], what will be left for the Muslims who come after us? By God, Muslims would not find a man to talk to and profit from his [i.e. the Dhimmi's] labours.”
Thus there often was (and still is) an ambivalent or even double-minded view of non-Muslim minorities.
By now the point should be pellucidly clear.
It is only in the “West” (Europe, North America etc.) that diversity and multiculturalism are touted as inherently “good things” to be actively pursued.
Apart from this area there are few if any Countries actively pursuing such aims, in much of the world the level of diversity is set to remain roughly constant but the pressures (where present) are towards the formation of mono-cultural societies and in the case of Muslim-dominant countries mono-religious ones as well – even to the extent of being Sunni or Shia rather than just “Muslim”. Implicit is that in many respects “globalisation” - at least in its “integrationist” sense – will largely bypass the Muslim-dominant world which is tending towards segregationism and/or mono-culturalism and religious uniformity.
I am certainly not making the case, even backhandedly, that immigration and diversity are inherently “bad things”. But I would say that allowing indiscriminate immigration can be a bad thing. For example: a country can gain nothing “good” but only misfortune by welcoming certain people, who—by virtue of their ingrained religious and cultural thinking—are committed to the destruction of the ways and ethos of that country. Neither do I believe that multiculturalism and diversity should demand the suicide of indigenous cultures anywhere in the world.
Put in a nutshell: either the West or the rest of the world is wrong about the inherent benefits of religious diversity and multiculturalism - and my money is on the rest of the world.

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