This post is just a short notice to all those who lean right and believe politicians who are panicking about the increase of the percentage of Muslims in Europe and the transformation of Europe and European culture.
The only threatening transformation is that Europe will become even more closed, hard to access and hard to settle in.
Have you ever thought about how hard it is obtain a job or residency permit in Europe for people outside the EU? This applies to Japanese, Russians, US citizens, all the South Americans, Canadians and so on. The countries where people are being let into the EU are mostly either countries that have been colonized, plundered and repressed for hundreds of years by the British Empire, France, Belgium, and other EU members or countries where poverty or wars create such miserable circumstances to live that any well-off country has a moral duty to help at least a number of people.
The current swollen migration changed this pattern a bit: people are arriving from war thorn regions in masses - from Irak, from Syria, from Afghanistan, from the borderlands of Pakistan, from Somalia. But so are people from poor countries and regions who just want a chance for an easier life.
I think a region as well off as the EU does not have any right to refuse a sustainable number of immigrants either way, but it surely is true that nor the EU nor any of the member states - not even the ever-so-proud-of-its-fence Hungarian government - has any good ideas on how to deal with security screenings and background checks in a practical and fast way. And that's a must.
Nevertheless, the most important thing of course is to support as many people as we can to provide the chance for a normal life for them. The rest - how we solve the security checks, how we solve their integration, how we solve their education, etc. - are all just secondary administrative questions. They are difficult questions but this is not an argument against letting people in need into Europe. They are questions which need to be solved by smart professionals. I won't even address ridiculous and cruel opinions like PM Orban's according to which we can just refuse anyone to enter Hungary. I wish we could refuse to listen to PM Orban anymore, but as long as his party is in charge of governing the state media channels will echo even his farts and hail them as words of a true genius.
After this cursory treatment of the principles which underpin my stance let's look at a few numbers. Many European citizens are worried about the percentage of Arabs amongst the population and there are plenty of very well paid 'experts' who are nothing but professional scare mongers. The facts are the following:
Germany has a population of roughly 81 million people at the moment. Out of this, about 2,7 million are Turkish, who are not Arabs and even if some of them are believers they are by no means radical. About 600 000 are Arab. Now this means that if Germany would accept 800 000 refugees and migrants this year and the next its population would swell to about 83,5 Millions and there would be 800 000 + 800 000 + 600 000 Arabs totaling at 2 200 000 (which is still more than the real numbers, since many of the current Immigrants are Asians and Africans and not Arabs, but let's over estimate things a bit). This would still be only about 2,5 percent of the population. Europe's total population is about 500 million. 2 200 200 would be less than 0,5 percent of that, and that is not only the number of Arab people coming to Europe but the number of all the people coming to Europe, assuming they all stay in Germany.
According to estimates of the French state they have a Muslim population of about 8-10% of the total population in a country of about 61 million people, that is about 5-6 million Muslims. Even if Germany were to accept all 800 000 people this year and the next - which they will not: they have already started sending people back - we would be talking at most about 8 200 000 Arabs (not all of them believers, and only a handful of them radical believers) in Europe, which is still less than 1,5% of the total population of the EU. Fair enough, there are large Arab populations in Europe in other countries, for example in the Netherlands, the UK, or in Sweden. But even if you would take all these numbers into account the total of Arab people (not all of whom are Muslims) would be well below 3% percent of the total of the population of the EU. Add to this that not all Muslims are serious believers, and that not all serious believers are radicals. Also add to this that not all radical believers would be willing to commit crimes or violence - that is only a tiny fraction of people.
So, taken everything together, the danger that Europe will be transformed by immigration or that Europe would be changed into a Muslim or Islamic political organization are nonexistent.
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