Originally Posted by roughbeast

I am encouraged that you place a lot of store in history. That should prevent you from making classic historical mistakes.

You appear to know Islam well, so you will know that at its height, during its golden age, there were more Christians living in Muslim territories than Christians living in the Christian world. There were more churches in Muslim lands than in Christian lands. These were, compared with our times, pretty barbaric for the ordinary citizen, but it was the norm for Christians to be left to get on with their lives peacefully. This was a time of fantastic cultural and scientific exchange between Christian and Muslim academics and artists. No doubt you will find exceptions, but from the Prophet down to all Muslims, tolerance of Christians and Jews, as People of the Book, was at the core of managing subjugated peoples. We hear of the holy wars, but these were driven largely by zealots and power mongers of the Christian world wishing to reclaim Jerusalem metaphorically and actually.

You quite rightly point out the excesses of Hamas and its supporters, much as we might point out the excesses of the Taliban, the Ayatollahs, al Qaeda and ISIS. President Biden, to the fury of the Israeli government, said one sensible thing recently. He said that the Hamas attacks of 7th October did not happen in a vacuum. How right he is!

I would suggest that the resurgence of Islamic extremism this last 60 years has been triggered or is the result of three main factors.

1. The carving up of the Ottoman Empire, including Greater Syria, into badly drawn countries, such as Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. These were inherently unstable because they ignore ethnic, religious and cultural differences.
2. The imposition of a virtual European colony, on the indigenous peoples, the Arabs of the Holy Lands, i.e, the Jewish State of Israel.
3. The continued interference, by the west in Muslim lands, largely to secure oil supply but also in support of Israel. Even though, since 1967, it has chosen expansion over security the west has unconditionally supported Israel.

It is easy to see why extremists in Muslim lands might gain traction and to begin to gain the upper hand in so many countries. During 1973, I travelled by land via Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Through Muslim lands I was met with great hospitality, interest in my views of life, and a readiness to talk about religion and politics. Apart from the occasional threat of bandits I felt safe and welcome. In the streets of Baghdad, Tehran, Kabul and Lahore I saw many local women and school girls dressed western-style without even a hijab. You don't need me to tell you that something has changed.

I must be careful here, not to make the historical mistake of comparing contemporary times with those of the ancients, the Middle Ages and early modern times, but we should not ignore the brutality of the Christian world right through to the Enlightenment and on into the period of brutal and evangelical European colonialism. You speak of Islam as being especially unable to integrate, but Islamic history compared with Christian history doesn't suggest that.

Both religions have their roots in the shared scriptures of The Old Testaments. They share the same prophets - Moses, Abraham etc. A deep dive into those scriptures reveals a blood thirsty approach to sinners and enemies. The new scriptures deriving from the Prophet and the life of Jesus, whether we regard them as the word of God or not, were written in the context of the times derived from the moral imperatives of the time. The New Testaments and the Quran contain passages of great beauty proposing love, peace, charity, respect for other races and care for the natural world. Yet, with a nod to the stoics of the time, both sets of scriptures contain homophobic stances and the terrible things that might happen to sinners.

Despite the overwhelming proposals for love and peace in the scriptures, the extremist, profiteers and preachers of hate in the Christian, Muslim and Jewish world find plenty passages and verses to in their shared and discreet scriptures to justify great violence and exploitation. For example, the Christian slave trade, contrasting with the ancient slave trades, was justified by a passage in the Old Testament that suggests that black Africans were an inferior sub-species to whom Christian ethics of fair treatment did not have to apply. This philosophy was preached from the pulpit across English-speaking lands and at home. I believe our culture has not recovered from that wrong.

I give these examples and apply a picture of the past with a rather large brush, only to illustrate that your view of Islam is taken from a very narrow perspective that fails to take into account a wide historical perspective, only focussing on evidence supplied by modern extremists.

EDIT. The statistic your link pointed me at is pretty desperate. At the time of Irish, Catholic immigration, families >10 were not uncommon. Due to Papal edict regarding contraception this continued into my mother's generation. Have we been overwhelmed by Catholics or Catholic culture? Your statistic presumably covering first and second generation Muslim immigrants points out families being one child larger than those of existing populations. I suggest that as we move into wholly second and third generation Muslim immigrants that the difference in fertility pointed out will narrow due to factors I suggested previously. We al;so don't know what will happen regarding indigenous fertility either. Econo0mic outlook can change things, e.g., the Blair years of economic prosperity and improving public services produced a wave of births that has only recently left our school system.