Europe can and will become irrelevant if it doesn't do more to promote its unique Judeo-Christian heritage, its languages, its national culture, ... And if it succeeds in whitewashing all of us into armies of consumer, it risks demise either by a nationalistic backlash or by today's Muslim minority which is the fastest growing segment of the European population. Most Muslims living in Europe haven't abandoned their cultural and religious values - and this will come to the foreground as soon as their communities are numerically and financially strong enough.

As the responses to Frank Scnittger's diary show, most of us here believe that we identify european values as stemming more from enlightenment values of questioning than the Judeo-Christian certainties which preceeded them.

Beware of associating muslims with a homogenous culture of arabism that is alleged to be opposed to democracy. It just ain't so. Also the concept of muslims outbreeding and swamping us is associated with right-wing militarist fantasists such as Mark Steyn in the US and is exemplified by Johann Hari's scary essay Ship of Fools

Steyn's thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The "European races" i.e., white people - "are too self-absorbed to breed," but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be " large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015" as Europe is ceded to al Qaeda and "Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia."

He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures - he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping.

Plus, I am curious at your rather blase acceptance that it is a legitimate national aspiration to acquire a culturally homogenous country by the process of burning a few mosques. Kinda glosses over the other stuff that goes with mosque burning. We know that the serbians did more than kill a few muslims as a part of their mosque burning programme and it is frankly worrying when you allow the suggestion that such things are all part of the necessary knockabout of nation creation in what the rest of us hope is a civilised europe for the 21st century.

keep to the Fen Causeway