shall the religious inherit the earth?

Guardian | Europe, 2020. The Islamists have stormed to power across the continent. Every French woman is forced to be veiled. Holland's gay clubs have been relocated to San Francisco.

Welcome to "Eurabia", Canadian author Mark Steyn's fantasy of what Europe will look like in a decade. According to Steyn's US bestseller America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Muslims are breeding like "mosquitoes", whereas the "European races" are "too self-absorbed to breed". Failure in the bedroom is allowing for the "recolonisation of Europe by Islam".

Steyn stands upon the more poisonous shores of anti-Muslim rhetoric. But the idea of Muslims breeding their way to power is becoming mainstream. Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Catholic theologian George Weigel have all warned of a Europe walking blindly into a Muslim-dominated future. Now the liberal academic Eric Kaufmann, a political scientist at Birkbeck College, London, has entered the fray. In his new book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, based on data from demographic studies in Europe, America and Israel, Kaufmann adds a new twist to the Eurabia thesis. Don't worry so much about Muslims, he suggests. Just be very afraid of fundamentalists of all stripes.