Title:	Shall The Religious Inherit The Earth
Authors:	ERIC KAUFMANN
Keywords:	Religious fundamentalism
Issue Date:	2010
Publisher:	Profile Books
Description:	A bomb rips apart a commuter train in Madrid. Scores are killed in a suicide attack in a crowded market in Baghdad or Peshawar. Another coalition soldier dies in Afghanistan. As a Canadian resident of London, I’m painfully aware of the steady drip of coalition casualties in both countries. The threat of terrorism is never entirely absent. Behind the scenes, Western societies wring their hands over profound cultural questions which cut to the core of who we are. How much should we bend liberal principles to accommodate religious practices? Is Islam offlimits to comedians and artists? How can we achieve security without trampling on suspects’ freedom from detention without trial? Can we attain a measure of unity in the face of growing diversity? If I am correct, what we have witnessed over the past decade is the thin edge of a rising wedge which transcends Islam. Simply put, this book argues that religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world through demography. We have embarked on a particularly turbulent phase of history in which the frailty of secular liberalism will become ever more apparent. In contrast to the situation today, the upsurge of fundamentalism will be felt more keenly in the secular West than in developing regions. This is because we are witnessing the historic conjunction of religious fundamentalism and demographic revolution. The world is in the midst of an unprecedented shift from population growth to decline. Europe is leading the way, but East Asia is aging more quickly and may overtake it, while other parts of the world – especially India, Southeast Asia and Latin America – are treading the same path. These changes are driven by rising prosperity, women’s education, urbanisation and birth control. Europe’s fertility rate – i.e. the number of children the typical woman is expected to bear over her lifetime – has been below the replacement level for four decades. As a result, its native population has begun to fall in absolute terms – a slide which will accelerate over time. World fertility is predicted to sink below the replacement level by 2035. Global population decline will follow several decades later.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/44501
ISBN:	978 1 84765 194 5
Appears in Collections:	Regional and Local Development Studies

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