Maybe, If We Just Play Dead, the Muslims Will Leave Us Alone

A European caliphate?

Would Islam really manage to convince us Europeans to give up alcohol and segregate the sexes?

What would happen if Islam manages to convert Europe? An improbable turn of events but not completely inconceivable.

The problem is that religions adapt and mutate as they cross cultural boundaries. For instance, when Catholic missionaries converted the Aztecs to Christianity they were obliged to tolerate a cult of death involving sugared skulls deriving from worship of the goddess Mictecacihuatl; this despite Jesus never saying anything at all about sugared skulls. And the Christianity of Catholic Europe was itself far removed from early Middle-Eastern Christianity. 

The practice of modern American evangelicals is even further removed from the source. Cultures get hold of a new religion and twist it into a shape which suits. If Islam were ever to take hold in the densely populated countries of Europe it would undergo a similar process of adaptation. It may be instructive to consider what this process might entail.

Take alcohol (as one does). I cannot claim to speak for other European countries but I know that my own countrymen have been notorious for drunkenness since the Middle Ages and earlier. Is it possible that they would stay converted in any numbers if forbidden to drink? Judging by my local high street on a Saturday night, I doubt it. Some cultural preferences are deep-seated and this is one of them. 

As early as the 12th century, William of Malmesbury described how the English drank "in parties … a universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days". In his description of the Battle of Hastings, he describes how, typically, before the battle, the English "passed the night without sleep, in drinking and singing … hence engaged William with more rashness and precipitate fury than military skill". 

If the Turks never stopped drinking despite hundreds of years as Muslims under the Ottoman caliphate, what chance the British – or any other European nationality? And some caliphs drank a lot. Selim the Sot (ruled 1566-74) drank wine from a double coconut shell set in bejeweled gold. His invasion of Cyprus in 1570 was motivated mainly by his desire for a secure supply of Cypriot wine.

The fact is that if the Europeans were ever to become Muslims, they would become Muslims who drink, and those eager to convert them should bear this in mind. It would be easy enough for the drunken British Muslims to find scriptural authority. As with all very ancient texts, the Qur'an is open to interpretation. Some translations of surah 16:67 describe an alcoholic drink (sakar) made from grapes or the date palm as "one of God's gifts to mankind". This surah is deemed to have been superseded by later, stricter surahs but since the surahs are not arranged in chronological order, who is to say which surah comes first, the strict or the liberal one? The answer to which question is, of course: whoever has the power. 

Then there are the various references to wine in paradise, for instance (78:31-34) – "As for the righteous, they shall surely triumph. Theirs shall be gardens and vineyards, and high-bosomed virgins for companions: a truly overflowing cup." No need for reinterpretation there.

The segregation of the sexes will be another mutation point. Relationships between the sexes have even deeper cultural roots than attitudes to drink. The ancient Britons and Germans were notorious for the bellicosity of their women. Tacitus describes how German women would shriek their men into battle, counting and comparing their wounds to shame them to fight harder; a series of powerful, female figures punctuate British history from Boudicca to Margaret Thatcher. 

It is unthinkable that the British could ever practice anything remotely similar to the sort of segregation common in the Middle East and Asia. Could England, once described as "the paradise of women, the purgatory of men and the hell of horses", ever get its women to wear headscarves and go around being modest? I don't think so. 

Again, the Qur'an is open to interpretation. Surah 33:59 enjoins "Tell thy wives and thy daughters and all other believing women that they should draw over themselves some of their outer garments (when in public), this will be more conducive to their being recognised as decent women and not annoyed" – but (a small but significant chink) who is to say what the outer garment consists of or what being "recognised as decent" means in a western country? I suspect that the descendants of Boudicca would win any argument between strict and liberal interpretations.

Of more importance than these cultural details, and something which should be of greater concern to political Islamists – if Europe were to convert to Islam there would be a shift in political power within the Islamic world. It is likely that the centre of gravity of Islam would shift away from Asia and the Middle East. True, there are large populations in Pakistan, India and Indonesia but the Middle East on its own has a total population of only around 230 million compared to around 730 million in Europe – 730 million citizens of what are still some of the richest, most energetic and most powerful nations in the world. If there were to be a universal caliphate it would likely end up in Brussels. A European caliph seated in Brussels and released from the chains of democracy, a recent cultural innovation, would be free to bully and exploit the heartlands of Islam to his or her heart's content.

Things never turn out as millenarian movements anticipate. In the long term, I foresee a caliphate of beer-swilling believers and women in hot pants. Islam has a dilemma – either it fails to convert us or, if it does, we subvert it and it ends up European. Either way, the world would change far less than some may imagine.

That's called whistling past the graveyard.