Financial Times FT.com

Headcount dispels lurid vision of 'Eurabia'

By Simon Kuper in Paris

Published: August 20 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2007 03:00

Muhammad is the second most popular name for newborn boys in Britain if you add together the various spellings. In the Seine-St-Denis suburb of Paris, Mohamed is number one. In the four biggest Dutch cities in 2005, either Mohamed or Mohammed came top.

Facts such as these have led some pundits to forecast the Islamicisation of Europe - a future "Eurabia". Bernard Lewis, a scholar of Islam, cited the immigration from Muslim countries and relatively high birth rates of immigrants as trends that mean "Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century at the latest".

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