Prophecies are like stopped clocks. They come true sooner or later, but meanwhile, it’s hard to know what time it is. When the Sept. 11, 2001, Islamist attacks reoriented America’s strategic priorities, prophesies of the end of Europe ensued: Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It and Melanie Phillips Londonistan (both 2006), Walter Laqueuer’s The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent(2007), Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009) and Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe (2017). Each was vilified. All their predictions are being fulfilled.

It is worth asking why massacres perpetrated by Arab Muslims on American soil precipitated predictions of Europe’s demise. True, the 9/11 attackers used Europe as a base. Egypt made Mohammed Atta an architect, but it was the al-Aqsa mosque in Hamburg that made him a mass murderer. True, weak security in Europe weakened the security of America. But Islamist terrorism was only one of the novelties that drove the analysts to their pessimistic conclusions. Most of them were looking at demography (the science of population), and how this would alter the culture and politics of European societies.