The
Muslim revolution 'hiding in plain
sight' By Spengler
"The
great and still ongoing declines in fertility that
are sweeping through the Muslim world most
assuredly qualify as a "revolution" - a quiet
revolution, to be sure - but a revolution in which
hundreds of millions of adults are already
participating: and one which stands to transform
the future," writes demographer Nicholas Eberstadt
in the June 2012 issue of Policy Review, the
journal of Stanford University's Hoover
Institution. [1]
Eberstadt and co-author
Apoorva Shah conclude, "The remarkable fertility
declines [sic] now unfolding throughout the Muslim
world is one of the most important demographic
developments in our era. Yet it has been 'hiding
in plain sight' - that is to say, it has somehow
gone unrecognized and overlooked by all but a
handful of observers, even by specialists in the
realm of population
studies. Needless to
say, such an oversight is more than passing
strange, and we do not propose to account for it
here."
As Eberstadt and Shah indicate, the
evidence has been in the public domain for years,
and well known to demographers. "In most of the
Islamic world it's amazing, the decline in
fertility that has happened,'' Hania Zlotnik, head
of the United Nations' population research branch,
told the New York Times in 2009. [2] As early as
2008, a study by the Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis concluded, "A first analysis of the Iran
2006 census results shows a sensationally low
fertility level of 1.9 for the whole country and
only 1.5 for the Tehran area (which has about 8
million people) ... A decline in the TFR [total
fertility rate] of more than 5.0 in roughly two
decades is a world record in fertility decline."
Nonetheless, as Eberstadt muses, none but
a handful of observers in the world of public
policy world took notice. As one among this
handful - Eberstadt and Shah kindly cite my 2011
book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is
Dying, Too) - I also find it "passing strange"
that the fastest demographic decline in recorded
history has evoked so little interest. Perhaps the
explanation is that the facts, however startling,
do not suit the political narratives either of the
mainstream left or right.
Demographic
decline belies the liberal belief, encapsulated in
President Barack Obama's June 4, 2009 Cairo
speech, that a modernizing Muslim world can become
a friendly partner of the United States. At the
same time, the demographics make short work of the
so-called realist argument that America can
promote stability in regions with Muslim
majorities by backing pro-Western autocracies.
But they also undermine the mainstream
conservative view that nation-building, regime
change, or support for pro-democracy movements can
redeem Muslim countries. The Muslim demographic
spiral bespeaks, rather, a dismal future of
chaotic and disruptive decline in many of the most
important Muslim countries, including adversaries
like Iran as well as such putative allies as
Turkey.
None of the well-defined currents
in the American foreign policy debate, in short,
is inclined to consider an uncertain future in
which American ministrations must fail, because
the societies in question are failing. The
implications are unpleasant to consider, so the
foreign policy establishment of both parties
prefers not to consider them at all. In fact, it
would be unsettling if Americans were to conclude
too glibly that many Muslim-majority countries
have little to expect apart from decline and
deterioration. Nonetheless the evidence points to
this conclusion.
The Muslim world's
affliction is spiritual rather than material, as
Prof Eberstadt argues eloquently, if indirectly.
None of the usual quantitative predictors of
population growth appear to explain the fact that
Muslim countries show the fastest population
decline of any segment of the world's population.
Statistically, he shows, it is the fact of
being Muslim as such that has the most
significance of all the variables that might
explain population decline! That is a startling
assertion, even if it is embedded in what at first
glance seems a dry statistical exposition.
Eberstadt and Shah comment:
People in the Ummah can be expected,
today, to have fewer children than people in
non-Muslim societies. Why should this be so?
"Developmentalist" theories, with their emphasis
on the primacy of material and structural
transformations, cannot offer much insight into
this mystery ... "Developmentalist" perspectives
cannot explain the great changes underway in
many of these countries and territories - in
fact, various metrics of socioeconomic
modernization serve as much poorer predictors of
fertility change for Muslim-majority populations
than for non-Muslim populations.
Not to
put too fine a point on it: Proponents of
"developmentalism" are confronted by the awkward
fact that fertility decline over the past
generation has been more rapid in the Arab
states than virtually anywhere else on earth -
while well-informed observers lament the
exceptionally poor development record of the
Arab countries over that very period. Put
another way: Materialist theories would appear
to come up short when pressed to account for the
dimensions of fertility change registered in
large parts of the Ummah over the past
generation. An approach that focuses on parental
attitudes and desires, their role in affecting
behavior that results in achieved family size,
and the manner in which attitudes about desired
family size can change with or without marked
socioeconomic change may prove more fruitful
here.
While pointing out the
inadequacy of "materialist" explanations of Muslim
demographic decline, Eberstadt and Shah do not go
so far as to offer a spiritual explanation
(although they generously to "salute" my
"wide-ranging and provocative exposition" in
How Civilizations Die).
In my book,
I contend that faith and fertility are
inseparable, because a nation that has faith in
its future will bring new generations into the
world, while a nation that has lost faith in
itself will not trouble to do so. The faith of
Christians and Jews can thrive in modernity -
witness America and Israel, by many gauges the
most modern among industrial nations as well as
the most religious and most fertile. But modernity
and Islam appear incompatible. As soon as Muslims
(and especially Muslim women) become literate,
fertility drops below replacement, as in Iran,
Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia.
As noted,
Eberstadt and Shah demonstrate that none of the
usual predictors of population growth rates (gross
domestic product per capita, literacy, and so
forth) explain the much lower fertility of Muslim
(and especially Arab Muslim countries) within the
universe of developing countries. The best
explanation is the bare fact of having a Muslim
majority. As I observe in my book, though, among
the universe of Muslim countries itself, though,
the literacy rate is a very strong predictor of
relative fertility and population growth.
30 Muslim-majority countries, literacy
vs population growth Source: United
Nations, author's calculations
This
analysis is consistent with Eberstadt and Shah's
implicit argument that spiritual rather than
material circumstances explain the Muslim
fertility decline. Education in this case is a
proxy for the transition of Muslims, and
especially Muslim women, out of traditional
society into a modernity that does not host Muslim
mores. Where data is available within individual
Muslim countries, I reported in my book,
demographers have found a close relationship
between fertility and education by cohort of
population. Exemplary in this regard is the
IIASA's 2008 paper "Education and the World's Most
Rapid Fertility Decline in Iran," by a team of
demographers headed by Wolfgang Lutz. [3]
Sketching the potential consequences of
the demographic revolution for the Ummah,
Eberstadt and Shah call attention to the economic
consequences of rapid aging in poor countries, a
problem I characterized as a "train wreck." They
warn of the impact of rapid population aging on
relatively low income levels":
The lower a country or territory's
fertility, the more powerful the demographic
pressure for population aging over the
subsequent generation. With extremely rapid
fertility decline - and the descent into
sub-replacement fertility - a number of
Muslim-majority populations are already set on
course for very rapid population aging. Over a
dozen Muslim-majority populations, under current
US Census Bureau projections, would have higher
fractions of their national populations over the
age of 65 by 2040 than the US. today. Today
these same places enjoy only a fraction of US
per capita income levels ... How these societies
will meet the needs of their graying populations
on relatively low income levels may prove to be
one of the more surprising and unanticipated
challenges of the fertility revolution now
underway in the Ummah.
Eberstadt and
Shah have put their finger on the crucial issue,
one which Western strategists dare not ignore.
Iran is keenly aware of its demographic decline -
its leaders and elite have wrung their hands about
the problem in public for years. The imminent
decline and prospective collapse of Iranian
society under the crushing burden of a fast-aging
population constitutes a strong motive for Iran to
assert itself today, while it still can. Iran
knows that it must break out, or break down. It
does not seek stability and preservation of its
existing power, as President Obama has stated on a
number of occasions, for Iran's leaders know that
stability means a catastrophic and terminal
decline. It has nothing to lose and everything to
gain by taking strategic risks, for example,
nuclear weapons development.
For this
among other reasons, Eberstadt's and Shah's new
paper is a timely and important contribution to a
strategic debate of existential importance to the
West.
Notes 1. See here.
2. Neil MacFarquar, "U.N. Sees Falling Middle
East Fertility Rates,", in The New York Times,
April 3, 2009. 3. See here.
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