the 2nd most popular baby boy's name in england

two years ago, it broke into the top 20.

today.

"Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year, a study by The Times has found."

winston churchill must be rolling over in his grave...

in comparison, in the united states, "mohammed" is the 622nd most popular baby name. i'm too lazy to search for a breakdown of boy vs. girl names, but i figure the 622-2 ratio illustrates the point. plus when you factor in the results in a new pew research survey taken in may 2007, where they find that...

Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.

...you get the sense that the muslims in the US are much less extreme (unless you really dig into the results of the survey and find that around a quarter of American muslims approve of suicide bombing...that's a pretty big chunk of potential problematic muslims...)

on a related note, in the netherlands, dutch authorities, in COMPLIANCE with moroccan law, FORCE moroccan parents who give birth in the netherlands to choose a name from a list of acceptable names provided by the government of morocco.


what does all of this mean? it seems to me that europe is in a heap of trouble, and america is much less so. i thihk all the people in great britain and europe as a whole would do well to watch the 1997 movie "my son, the fanatic", which shows, in succinct fashion pre-9/11/pre-iraq war/years before george bush became president, that muslim youth growing up in western cultures tend to drift more towards being heavily religious than their moderate parents who immigrated to the west...due to what they see as western depravity. to combat this, they turn to the mosque, which more often than not tend to be set up by saudi arabia (from their massive OIL profits), and are mostly wahhabist in philosophy (in other words--VERY traditional and VERY radical).

recommended reading: "America Alone", by Mark Steyn..."While Europe Slept", by Bruce Bawer, AND "Londonistan", by Melanie Phillips.