Let's hope the sleepwalker is right

From the Financial Times of London on the recent spate of books predicting the coming of the new continent of Eurasia from the influx of radicalized muslims:

Until a few years ago, mainstream European opinion would have shrugged off rising Muslim populations as unworthy of debate. But that is no longer the case. Just this week in Britain, there has been heated argument over the wearing of the veil by school teachers and the radicalisation of Muslim students. One recent poll found that nearly one-third of young British Muslims agreed that the July 2005 bombings in London were "justified because of British support for the war on terror".

That is a truly alarming picture. But it is also a snapshot. There is no doubt that tensions between Muslims and other Europeans are unprecedentedly high after September 11 2001, the Iraq war, riots in Paris and terrorism in London, Madrid and Amsterdam. It is certainly possible that things will just get worse. But it is not inevitable. Zachary Shore, author of Breeding Bin Ladens (Johns Hopkins) and the only one of the American authors to have taken the trouble to talk to a lot of European Muslims, sees Europe’s Muslim population as poised "at a critical fork in the road: one trail leads them to western integration, the other sets a course for alienation and possible extremism".

European governments are acutely aware of this and are changing policies in response. The British are rethinking their "multicultural" approach to immigration; the French are considering positive discrimination; the Danes have cracked down on arranged marriages. Who knows -- some of these policies may even work. If they do not, politics and policies will change again. Of all the many scenarios for the future of Europe, perhaps the least likely is that Europeans simply sleep-walk off a cliff.