The Westernization of Muslim Demographics
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought”
"Israel Hayom”, June 1, 2012
http://bit.ly/KDDExS
The dramatic Westernization of Muslim demographics contrasts conventional "wisdom.” It requires the re-thinking of economic, social and national security assumptions and the re-evaluation of related policy.
For example, the fertility rates of young Arabs in Judea and Samaria has
converged - at three births per woman - with the respective fertility rates
of young Israeli Arabs and Jews, while (mostly secular) Jewish fertility
rate trends upwards and Arab fertility rates trend downwards.
The Arab fertility rate in Judea and Samaria is declining faster as a
derivative of modernity: urbanization (70% rural in 1967 vs. 75% urban in
2012), expanded education especially among women (most of whom complete high
school and increasingly attend community colleges), enhanced career
mentality and growing integration into the workforce among women
(reproductive process starts later and ends earlier), all time-high median
wedding age and divorce rate, minimal teen pregnancy (common in 1967 but
rare in 2012), family planning and secularization.
According to How Civilizations Die by David Goldman, "Spengler” (Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 2011), "as Muslim fertility shrinks at a rate demographers
have never seen before, it is converging on Europe's low fertility… Iranian
women in their 20s, who grew up with five or six siblings, will bear only
one or two children during their lifetimes…. By the middle of this century,
the belt of Muslim countries from Morocco to Iran will become as gray as
depopulating Europe (p. x)…”
"Demographers have identified several different factors associated with
population decline: urbanization, education and literacy.... Children in
traditional societies had an economic value, as agricultural labor and as
providers for elderly parents; urbanization and pension systems turned
children into a cost rather than a source of income…. Dozens of new studies
document the link between religious belief and fertility (p. xv)…. [An]
Iranian twenty-five year old's mother married in her teens and had several
children by her mid-twenties. Her daughter has postponed family formation,
or foregone it altogether, and spent her most fertile years on education and
work…. World fertility has fallen by about two children per woman in the
past half century – from about 4.5 children per woman to about 2.5.
Fertility in the Muslim world has fallen two or three times faster than the
world average (pp. 2-3)…. Across the entire Muslim world,
university-educated Muslim women bear children at the same rate as their
in-fecund European counterparts (p.5-6)…. The only Muslim countries where
women still give birth to seven or eight children are the poorest and least
literate: Mali, Niger, Somalia and Afghanistan…. Iran's secular government
under the late Shah put enormous efforts into education during the 1970s and
1980s…. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution slowed but could not stop
the literacy movement (p. 11)….”
Hania Zlotnik, Director, UN Population Division, stated that "In most of the
Islamic world it's amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened.”
Eight of the 15 countries that experienced the biggest drop in population
growth since 1980 are in the Middle East.
David Goldman, "Spengler,” states that "the only advanced country [other
than the USA] to sustain high fertility rates is Israel (p. 199)….”
He criticizes Israeli leaders who based their policy on erroneous
demographic assumptions: "Israeli concessions in the first decade of the
21th century [Rabin's Oslo, Sharon's uprooting of Jewish communities in Gaza
and Olmert's unprecedented proposed concessions] were motivated by fear that
Arab fecundity would swamp Israel's Jewish population. In actuality, quite
the opposite was occurring (p. 200)….
In fact, Israel's 2012 Jewish fertility rate – three births per woman – is
higher than all Arab countries, other than Sudan, Yemen, Iraq and Jordan,
which trend downward. The average Israeli-born Jewish mother exceeds three
births. Moreover, Israel's robust demography yields uniquely promising
economic, social, technological and national security ramifications.
According to Goldman, "Israel will have more young people than Italy or
Spain, and as many as Germany, by the end of the century, if fertility
remains unchanged. A century and a half after the holocaust, the Jewish
State will have more military-age men, and will be able to field a larger
land army, than Germany (pp. 201-2).”
Israel's rising (especially secular) Jewish fertility rate is in direct
correlation to its relatively high-level optimism, collective
responsibility, generational continuity (roots and future), patriotism,
tradition, faith and value-driven education. Israel's demographic tailwind
is even more powerful, when considering the potential of 500,000 Olim during
the next ten years.
The demographic, economic, military and diplomatic resources at the disposal
of Israel in 2012 are dramatically superior to those available to Herzl in
1900, Ben Gurion in 1948 and Shamir in 1992. Anyone suggesting that Jews are
doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River, that there is a
demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish State and that the Jewish
State must concede Jewish Geography in order to secure Jewish Demography, is
either grossly mistaken or outrageously misleading!
Shabbat Shalom and have a pleasant weekend,
Yoram Ettinger, http://www.TheEttingerReport.Com
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
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