The Economist says this “Eurabia” bother, although slightly vexing, is really nothing to worry about and can easily be fixed by deregulating Europe’s labor markets: Tales from Eurabia. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Is Eurabia really something to worry about? The concept includes a string of myths and a couple of hard truths. Most of the myths have to do with the potency of Islam in Europe. The European Union is home to no more than 20m Muslims, or 4% of the union’s inhabitants. That figure would soar closer to 17% if Turkey were to join the EU—but that, alas, is something that Europeans are far less keen on than Americans are. Even taking into account Christian and agnostic Europe’s lousy breeding record, Muslims will account for no more than a tenth of west Europe’s population by 2025. Besides, Europe’s Muslims are not homogenous. Britain’s mainly South Asian Muslims have far less in common with France’s North African migrants or Germany’s Turks than they do with other Britons.

Arguments about alienation are also more complicated than they first appear. Many European terrorists were either relatively well-off or apparently well-integrated. The Muslims who torched France’s suburbs last year were the ones who seldom attend mosques [And they know this … how? —ed.]. First-generation immigrants (with the strongest ties to the Muslim world) seem to be less radical than their European-educated sons and daughters. And the treatment of them is far from uniform either: for all the American charges of “appeasement”, the FBI is a downright softie compared with France’s internal security services.

Given these subtleties, perhaps the most dangerous myth is the idea that there is one sure-fire answer when it comes to assimilating Europe’s Muslims. In some cases, integrationism goes too far (France’s head-scarf ban was surely harsh); but multiculturalism can too (Britain is now reining in its Muslim schools). America’s church-state divide and its tolerance of religious fervour are attractive, but its fabled melting pot is not a definitive guide either: many American Muslims are black, and many Arab-Americans are Christian. In some ways, a better comparison (in terms of numbers and closeness of homeland) is with Latinos—and nobody in Europe is (yet) talking about building a wall to keep Muslims out.

Yet amid all this hyperbole, two hard realities stand out. The first is the importance of jobs. In America, it is easy for a newcomer to get work and hard to claim welfare; in Europe the opposite is true. Deregulating labour markets is a less emotive subject than head-scarves or cartoons, but it matters far more.

UPDATE at 6/23/06 6:32:27 pm:

The illustration that accompanies this op-ed: