71 Percent of Belgians Think Islam is Incompatible With Their Society
According to a new study, the vast majority of native Belgians feel “more and more invaded” by Islamic immigrants, and think Islam is “not compatible with the values of [Belgian society]”.
The French newspaper Valeurs Actuelles reports:
This is a disavowal without appeal for the Belgian multicultural myth. A study, published last week and carried out at the initiative of the RTBF and the newspaper Le Soir, concludes that seven out of ten Belgians have the impression of attending a Muslim conquest of their country.
This poll, conducted on a panel of 4734 people, indicates that 74% of respondents consider Islam an intolerant religion (against 38% for Judaism and 14% for Catholicism). They are 71% judging it incompatible “with the values of [their] society” .
60% of respondents see the presence of a Muslim community in Belgium as “a threat to the identity of [their] country,” much to the chagrin of the Belgian public television which sees “the finding of a society inhabited by the fear and rejection of otherness. “ Two-thirds of Belgians feel ” increasingly invaded “and consider that ” there are too many immigrants. “ They are more contrast only 13% see the Muslim community as ” a cultural enrichment factor “ for their country.
This polling data is consonant with others throughout Europe.
In Britain, for example, the BBC reports that just 28 percent of British people believe that “Islam is compatible with British values”—the other 72 percent believe that Islam is incompatible, or are unsure. The same poll also found that 43 percent of Britons believe Islam is a negative force in the UK, 31 percent think Islam promotes acts of violence in the UK, and 28 percent agree that Islam is an inherently violent religion.
Data from Chatham House, a think tank, found that attitudes were similar throughout Europe. In fact, they found that Most Europeans favored a total ban on Islamic immigration:
According to the report:
Majorities in all but two of the ten states agreed [with a moratorium on Islamic immigration], ranging from 71% in Poland, 65% in Austria, 53% in Germany and 51% in Italy to 47% in the United Kingdom and 41% in Spain. In no country did the percentage that disagreed surpass 32%.
Public opposition to further migration from Muslim states is especially intense in Austria, Poland, Hungary, France and Belgium, despite these countries having very different sized resident Muslim populations. In each of these countries, at least 38% of the sample ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement. With the exception of Poland, these countries have either been at the centre of the refugee crisis or experienced terrorist attacks in recent years. It is also worth noting that in most of these states the radical right is, to varying degrees, entrenched as a political force and is looking to mobilize this angst over Islam into the ballot box, either at elections in 2017 or longer term.
This data is echoed by Pew Research, which found that the majority of Europeans (59 percent) believe that Islamic migration increases the likelihood of terrorist attacks in Europe. Furthermore, strong majorities in Hungary (72 percent), Italy (69 percent), and Poland (66 percent) have negative views towards Islam as a religion itself.
Of course, none of this data is unsurprising when placed in its broader context. Europeans are right to link Islamic immigration and terrorism. Even the European Union’s terror chief admits that some 35,000 Islamic “fanatics”currently reside in Great Britain.
Likewise, many Europeans are worried about the impact of immigration on their welfare states. Again, they are right to be concerned. In the UK just 20 percent of Muslims work full time, while in Denmark non-Western immigrants consume 59 percent of Denmark’s tax surplus. Europe’s welfare states cannot survive under a regime of high migration—this is not conjecture, it is an objective fact.
Europe will have to choose between immigration and social welfare—they cannot have both.
