تسخیری در کار نیست!

چکیده فارسی

عنوان: تسخیری در کار نیست!

 آمار رسمی درباره مسلمانان بریتانیا، فرانسه و بلژیک چه می گوید و چرا مسئله واقعی اروپا ادغام است نه شمار

چکیده: در سال های اخیر روایت «تسخیر اروپا به دست مسلمانان» در رسانه ها و شبکه های اجتماعی بارها تکرار شده است، به ویژه درباره بریتانیا، فرانسه و بلژیک. این مقاله مروری این ادعا را با آمار رسمی و پژوهش های معتبر اروپایی می سنجد. بر پایه سرشماری ۲۰۲۱، مسلمانان ۶٫۵ درصد جمعیت انگلستان و ولز را تشکیل می دهند. پیمایش مشترک موسسه ملی آمار و موسسه ملی مطالعات جمعیتی فرانسه سهم مسلمانان را در میان بزرگسالان ۱۸ تا ۵۹ ساله ۱۰ درصد نشان می دهد و در بلژیک، که آمار رسمی دینی ندارد، برآوردها حدود ۷ تا ۸ درصد است. حتی در بدبینانه ترین سناریوی مهاجرت، سهم مسلمانان در این سه کشور تا سال ۲۰۵۰ کمتر از یک پنجم جمعیت خواهد بود و فاصله باروری نیز رو به کاهش است. در مقابل، شهروندان این کشورها سهم مسلمانان را سه تا چهار برابر بیش از واقعیت تخمین می زنند. با این حال، مقاله از واقعیت هایی که توجه جدی می طلبد چشم نمی پوشد: تمرکز جمعیت در برخی محله ها، محرومیت اقتصادی و اجتماعی و پایداری بالای هویت دینی. نتیجه آنکه هشدار «تسخیر» بیش از آنکه بر واقعیت آماری تکیه داشته باشد، هیاهوی رسانه ای است و مسئله اصلی اروپا ادغام و حکمرانی است، نه شمار.

کلیدواژه ها: مسلمانان اروپا، جمعیت شناسی، نظریه جایگزینی بزرگ، ادغام، بریتانیا، فرانسه، بلژیک

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/takeover-isnt-what-official-data-say-muslims-britain-mahdavian-sadr-0s2he

The Takeover That Isn’t

What official data say about Muslims in Britain, France and Belgium, and why the real debate is about integration, not numbers

Dr. Mehdi Mahdavian Sadr

Every few months a video, a book or a political speech announces that Europe is about to become Muslim. London is said to be lost, Brussels already majority Muslim, France a decade away from Islamic rule. These claims travel fast, and they rarely arrive with a single official statistic attached.

I wanted to test them against the numbers that European statistical offices and serious researchers actually publish, focusing on the three countries most often named: the United Kingdom, France and Belgium. The short answer is that the takeover story does not survive contact with the data. The longer answer is more interesting, because the same data also show real changes that deserve a sober discussion rather than either panic or denial.

Where the story comes from

The idea has a history. In 2005 the writer Bat Ye’or popularised the term “Eurabia”, claiming that European elites were quietly handing the continent over to the Arab world. In 2011 the French author Renaud Camus published Le Grand Remplacement, arguing that native Europeans were being deliberately replaced through immigration and higher minority birth rates. The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue notes that the replacement idea was taken up by identitarian movements across Europe and later appeared in the manifesto of the man who attacked two mosques in Christchurch in 2019 (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, n.d.).

That history matters for one reason. These are not demographic forecasts that happen to be gloomy; they are political narratives that start from a conclusion and then go looking for numbers. The fair test is to start from the numbers instead.

The United Kingdom: a census that asks

Britain offers the best evidence, because its census asks about religion. In England and Wales, 3.9 million people described themselves as Muslim in 2021, or 6.5 per cent of the population, up from 4.9 per cent in 2011 (Office for National Statistics [ONS], 2022). Christians, at 46.2 per cent, fell below half for the first time. The main beneficiary of that decline was not Islam, however, but the 37.2 per cent who reported no religion at all.

The growth is real, and it has a clear demographic engine. The median age of Muslims in England and Wales is 27, thirteen years below the national median of 40 (ONS, 2023a). A young population keeps growing even without new arrivals, simply because more of its members are at the age of starting families.

Concentration explains much of the visibility. In Tower Hamlets, the borough with the highest share, 39.9 per cent of residents identified as Muslim in 2021 (ONS, 2023b). Yet the same census shows that this share rose by less than two percentage points in a decade, from 38.0 per cent. A neighbourhood can look transformed to a visitor while the national figure stays in single digits.

France: a large survey instead of a census

France does not ask about religion in its census, so claims about French Muslims often rest on guesswork. The most reliable figure comes from the Trajectories and Origins survey (TeO2), run by the national statistics office INSEE and the demographic institute INED in 2019–20. Among adults aged 18 to 59 in metropolitan France, 10 per cent declared themselves Muslim, 29 per cent Catholic and 51 per cent of no religion (INSEE, 2023). Because the survey leaves out older age groups, among whom Muslims are fewer, the share for the whole population is lower; the Pew Research Center put it at 8.8 per cent in 2016 (Pew Research Center, 2017b).

The same survey contains a finding that critics of the takeover narrative should not brush aside. Islam is passed on within families more reliably than any other faith in France: 91 per cent of people raised in a Muslim household still follow their parents’ religion, compared with 67 per cent of those raised Catholic (INSEE, 2023). Muslim identity in France is durable. Durable, though, is not the same as expanding without limit.

Belgium: estimates, and a capital city of rumours

Belgium keeps no official statistics on religion, which leaves a gap that rumour fills easily. Estimates usually work backwards from nationality and country of origin. Pew’s estimate for 2016 was about 870,000 Muslims, or 7.6 per cent of the population, as reported by the Belgian public broadcaster (VRT NWS, 2017).

Brussels is where the numbers are highest and the claims loudest. When a local politician asserted in 2018 that Muslims would form a majority of the capital region by 2030, the Brussels news outlet BRUZZ checked it. The sociologist Jan Hertogen, whose estimates are among the highest in circulation, put the Muslim share of the region at about 25 per cent, rising to around 30 per cent at most by 2030; a demographer at the Free University of Brussels called 25 per cent a generous figure. BRUZZ rated the claim largely false (BRUZZ, 2018). Hertogen’s own projections do have a few municipalities, such as Molenbeek, passing 50 per cent by 2030. But a municipality is not a country, and the region as a whole is nowhere near a majority.

Looking ahead: what the projections say

The most widely cited projections come from the Pew Research Center, which modelled Europe’s Muslim population to 2050 under three migration scenarios: none at all, regular migration without refugees, and a repeat of the record refugee flows of 2014–16 every year. For the EU, Norway and Switzerland combined, the Muslim share was 4.9 per cent in 2016 and would reach 7.4, 11.2 or 14 per cent respectively (Pew Research Center, 2017a).

Even in the most extreme scenario, Muslims would make up fewer than one in five people in each of these three countries by the middle of the century. The only European country where Pew’s high scenario approaches a third is Sweden, at 30.6 per cent. That scenario also looks less likely now than when it was published: asylum applications to the EU+ fell to about 822,000 in 2025, the lowest level since 2021 (EUAA, 2026).

Fertility, the other pillar of the takeover story, is converging. Pew projected that the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim women in Europe would narrow from one child per woman in 2015–20 to 0.7 by 2045–50 (Pew Research Center, 2017a). In France, INED researchers found that immigrant women had 2.6 children on average in 2017, against 1.8 for native-born women. Because they account for a minority of mothers, however, they lift the national fertility rate by only 0.1 child, from 1.8 to 1.9 (Volant et al., 2019).

The perception gap

If the numbers are this modest, why does the fear feel so plausible to so many people? Part of the answer is that the public misjudges the size of minorities badly. In a 2016 Ipsos survey, the French guessed that 31 per cent of their compatriots were Muslim, against an actual figure of about 7.5 per cent. Belgians guessed 23 per cent against about 7 per cent, and Britons 15 per cent against 4.8 per cent. Asked about 2020, the French expected 40 per cent; the projection was 8.3 per cent (The Irish Times, 2016).

These errors are not random. Muslims are concentrated in large cities, they are younger than average and therefore more visible in schools and public spaces, and they feature heavily in news coverage about security and conflict. A minority that appears constantly in headlines starts to feel like a majority, and that feeling becomes the raw material the takeover narrative works with.

What is real, and deserves attention

None of this means that nothing is changing, or that every concern is invented. Three things in the data deserve a serious conversation.

The first is concentration. National percentages can hide local realities in which schools, housing and public services are under strain, and in which residents of every background may feel that change is moving faster than institutions can adapt.

The second is socio-economic disadvantage. The 2021 census found an employment rate of 51.4 per cent among Muslims in England and Wales, against 70.9 per cent for the population as a whole, and 32.7 per cent of Muslims living in overcrowded homes, against 8.4 per cent overall (ONS, 2023c). Disadvantage on this scale feeds alienation on one side and resentment on the other. It is a policy problem long before it is a cultural one.

The third is identity. The French finding that 91 per cent of those raised Muslim remain Muslim shows that Islam in Europe is not simply fading with each generation, as some once assumed. A durable religious minority is not a threat by definition, but it does ask states to think seriously about pluralism, secular institutions and equal citizenship, rather than assuming that assimilation will take care of itself.

These are questions of integration and governance. They are real and they are difficult. What they are not is evidence of a demographic conquest.

Counting instead of guessing

The takeover story survives by blending three things: a real increase from a small base, heavy concentration in a handful of cities, and a public that already overestimates the Muslim population three to four times over. Strip out the exaggeration and what remains is a Europe in which Muslims are a growing, young and durable minority, likely to make up somewhere between one in ten and fewer than one in five people in Britain, France and Belgium by 2050.

That is a significant social change, and it deserves careful policy. It is also a very long way from a continent being captured. Treating integration problems as an invasion makes them harder to solve, because it turns neighbours into enemies and policy into panic. Europe will be better served by counting carefully than by guessing loudly.

References

BRUZZ. (2018, April 9). Factcheck: Moslims in 2030 in de meerderheid in Brussel? https://www.bruzz.be/samenleving/factcheck-moslims-2030-de-meerderheid-brussel-2018-04-09

CREST. (2018). British Muslims: Demography and communities. Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats. https://crestresearch.ac.uk/download/2331/18-011-01-british-muslims-communities.pdf

EUAA. (2026, March 3). EU+ asylum applications down by one fifth in 2025, amid shifting geopolitical dynamics[Press release]. European Union Agency for Asylum. https://euaa.europa.eu/news-events/eu-asylum-applications-down-one-fifth-2025-amid-shifting-geopolitical-dynamics

INSEE. (2023). Religious diversity in France: Intergenerational transmissions and practices by origins. In Immigrés et descendants d’immigrés (Insee Références). https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/fichier/7342918/IMMFRA23-D2-en.pdf

Institute for Strategic Dialogue. (n.d.). The “Great Replacement” [Explainer]. https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-explainer/the-great-replacement/

Office for National Statistics. (2022, November 29). Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

Office for National Statistics. (2023a, January 30). Religion by age and sex, England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/religionbyageandsexenglandandwales/census2021

Office for National Statistics. (2023b). How life has changed in Tower Hamlets: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/censusareachanges/E09000030

Office for National Statistics. (2023c). Religion by housing, health, employment, and education, England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/religionbyhousinghealthemploymentandeducationenglandandwales/census2021

Pew Research Center. (2017a, November 29). Europe’s growing Muslim population. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

Pew Research Center. (2017b, November 29). 5 facts about the Muslim population in Europe. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/11/29/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/

The Irish Times. (2016). Public perception of Muslim numbers in Europe higher than reality. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/public-perception-of-muslim-numbers-in-europe-higher-than-reality-1.2906334

The Local. (2017, December 1). How France’s Muslim population will grow in the future. https://www.thelocal.fr/20171201/how-frances-muslim-population-will-grow-in-the-future

Volant, S., Pison, G., & Héran, F. (2019). La France a la plus forte fécondité d’Europe. Est-ce dû aux immigrées? Population & Sociétés, 568. INED. https://www.ined.fr/fichier/s_rubrique/29430/population.et.societes.568.2019.fecondite.immigrees.fr.pdf

VRT NWS. (2017, November 30). Mogelijk dubbel zoveel moslims in België tegen 2050. https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2017/11/30/mogelijk-dubbel-zoveel-moslims-in-belgie-tegen-2050/