FInancial crisis boosts European suicide rates, especially in Greece, Ireland
Suicides rates rose sharply in Europe in 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes, with the worst hit countries like Greece and Ireland seeing the most dramatic increases, researchers said on Friday. Rates of road deaths in the region fell during the same period, possibly because higher numbers of jobless people led to lower car use, according to an initial analysis of data from 10 European Union (EU) countries.
“Even though we’re starting to see signs of a financial recovery, what we’re now also seeing is a human crisis. There’s likely to be a long tail of human suffering following the downturn,” said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Britain’s Cambridge University, who worked on the analysis.
Stuckler said he feared the social and health costs of the recent global economic downturn would turn out to be high. “We can already see that the countries facing the most severe financial reversals of fortune, such as Greece and Ireland, had greater rises in suicides,” he said. “And suicides are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of mental health problems. Suicide itself is a relatively rare event, but wherever you see a rise in suicides there is also a rise in failed suicide attempts and in new cases of depression.”
Analyzing data available so far, Stuckler and colleagues found that suicide rates were up 17 percent in Greece and 13 percent in Ireland. Unemployment increased by 2.6 percentage points — a 35 percent relative increase — between 2007 and 2009 across the EU as a whole, they said.
“The steady downward trend in suicide rates, seen…before 2007, reversed at once,” the researchers wrote.
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Pope urges help for traditional families crumbling in secularised Europe
Pope Benedict warned on Sunday that the traditional family in Europe was disintegrating under the weight of secularization and called for laws to help couples cope with the costs of having and educating children. On the second day of his trip to Croatia, a bastion of Roman Catholicism in the Balkans, the pope said an open-air mass for hundreds of thousands of people and hammered home one of the major themes of his papacy.
“Unfortunately, we are forced to acknowledge the spread of a secularization which leads to the exclusion of God from life and the increasing disintegration of the family, especially in Europe,” he said in his sermon on the edge of the capital.
The 84-year-old Benedict’s sermon was the latest in a series of salvos against what the Church sees as growing anti-Catholicism and “Christianophobia” in Europe. Speaking on the day Croatia, whose population of 4.4 million people is 90 percent Catholic, celebrates its “Family Day,” he denounced practices such abortion, cohabitation as a “substitute for marriage,” and artificial birth control.
The pope urged Catholic families throughout Europe not to give in to a creeping “secularized mentality” and called for “legislation which supports families in the task of giving birth to children and educating them.”
The sermon reflected the Vatican’s belief that the Catholic Church in Europe is under assault by some national governments and European institutions over issues such as gay marriage, abortion, religious education and the use of Christian religious symbols in public places.
Read the full story here. For more on the pope’s visit, see Pope tells Croatians EU too bureaucratic, sometimes ignores local cultures
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Referendum in Catholic Malta backs introduction of divorce
Staunchly Catholic Malta approved the introduction of divorce, backing the move by a small majority in a referendum. “The referendum outcome is not the one I wished for, but the will of the majority will be respected and parliament will enact legislation for the introduction of divorce,” Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said in a video statement on Sunday. The vote was seen as a test of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in a country where 72 percent of people say they go to Mass on Sundays and nearly all marriages are held at the altar. The Mediterranean island of 400,000 people is the only country in Europe not to allow divorce. Early results from Saturday’s referendum showed a majority backing divorce of between 52 percent and 54 percent. The Divorce Movement declared victory and the anti-divorce movement conceded. Opposition leader Joseph Muscat had said changing the law was a vote for modernity and a chance for those with broken marriages to start afresh. Gonzi had said divorce offered “no solutions” and called for better preparation before weddings so that the “value of an indissoluble marriage is bequeathed to the young.” Divorce legislation was proposed in July last year by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, a member of Gonzi’s own parliamentary group. It provides for people to become eligible for divorce after four years of separation.
– by Christopher Scicluna in Valletta
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Will Pew Muslim birth rate study finally silence the “Eurabia” claim?
One of the most wrong-headed arguments in the debate about Muslims in Europe is the shrill “Eurabia” claim that high birth rates and immigration will make Muslims the majority on the continent within a few decades. Based on sleight-of-hand statistics, this scaremongering (as The Economist called it back in 2006) paints a picture of a triumphant Islam dominating a Europe that has lost its Christian roots and is blind to its looming cultural demise.
The Egyptian-born British writer Bat Ye’or popularised the term with her 2005 book “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” and this argument has become the background music to much exaggerated talk about Muslims in Europe. Some examples from recent weeks can be found here, here and here.
A good example is the video “Muslim Demographics,” an anonymous diatribe on YouTube that has racked up 12,680,220 views since being posted in March 2009. Among its many dramatic but unsupported claims are that France would become an “Islamic republic” by 2048 since the average French woman had 1.8 children while French Muslim women had 8.1 children — a wildly exaggerated number that it made no serious effort to document. It also predicted that Germany would turn into a “Muslim state” by 2050 and that “in only 15 years” the Dutch population would be half Muslim. “Some studies show that, at Islam’s current rate of growth, in five to seven years, it will be the dominant religion of the world,” the video declares as it urges viewers to “share the Gospel message in a changing world.”
The BBC produced its own video entitled “Welcome to Eurabia?” that gave a point-by-point rebuttal of the video’s claims. Watching “Muslim Demographics” and “Welcome to Eurabia?” back-to-back provides a useful lesson in the dark art of twisting statistics. The image at left, shows a fictional flag of “Eurabia” created by Oren Neu Dag.
Articles defending the “Eurabia” claim have often been so shrill that they essentially discredited themselves as serious arguments. But it could be difficult to find a solid statistics that gave an overall view of what was actually happening. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has stepped up with an impressive study entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population” (here’s the press release, report and graphics here). As we summarised it in our report Muslim birth rate falls, slower population growth:
Falling birth rates will slow the world’s Muslim population growth over the next two decades, reducing it on average from 2.2 percent a year in 1990-2010 to 1.5 percent a year from now until 2030, a new study says.
Muslims will number 2.2 billion by 2030 compared to 1.6 billion in 2010, making up 26.4 percent of the world population compared to 23.4 percent now, according to estimates by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life…
“The declining growth rate is due primarily to falling fertility rates in many Muslim-majority countries,” it said, noting the birth rate is falling as more Muslim women are educated, living standards rise and rural people move to cities.
The proven demographic fact that birth rates have been falling among Muslim women, both in Muslim majority countries and western countries where Muslims have migrated, is not new. Nor are articles debunking the idea that Muslims will become the majority in Europe (see here and here and here). But my own experience in discussing this with non-Muslims in Europe and the United States says this message does not seem to be getting through. The fact that Muslim birth rates, while still higher than those for non-Muslims, are actually falling seems to surprise people who do not follow these issues closely.
revel224: “to show the dastardly Europeans who colonized, plundered, looted, and murdered countless souls and treasures of 3rd world many of them Muslims, what happens when a shoe is on the other foot.”
Revel- you discredit your own statement here when you lump all of “Europe” together, when in fact it was a mere handful of European nations that were largely responsible for what you’re talking about. The British in particular, and the Dutch, French and Belgians to a far lesser extent, did indeed colonise large swathes of the Muslim world. But the vast majority of Europe did not. The Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Greeks, Germans, Finns, Hungarians among others had absolutely nothing to do with colonisation of Muslim countries. Quite the opposite, as many of them were victims of corrupt Muslim colonisation thru e.g. the Ottoman Turks, who thrice failed to conquer Vienna and other vast regions.
In fact, the bulk of Europe largely avoided colonisation alltogether and weren’t involved in the dishonour of the slave trade. This is one reason that the Scandinavians and Germans have the most successful economies today- they have a culture that’s never relied on slave labour and thus has become adapted to doing its own manual labour and doing it well, hence their manufacturing prowess.
Ironically, this historical fact also seems to have a correspondence in the levels of Muslim settlement in the European countries that were colonisers. It’s very low in Scandinavia and Germany, which has only about 2 million Muslims (the vast majority of immigrants to Germany are east Europeans, Russians and ethnic Germans from North America, *not* Turks as often believed), somewhat higher in France and the Netherlands (not nearly as high as often claimed), but growing significantly only in Britain, which was indeed the major coloniser in the Muslim world. About 2.5-3 million Muslims reside in the UK, but that number is indeed growing quite quickly due to heavy immigration under both Labour and Tories to provide cheap Labour for businesses, and unlike Continent European countries, Britain has sharia law and courts in many districts as well as Islamic customs predominating there. See Tower Hamlets or Manchester for examples.
So the United Kingdom and England in particular are indeed taking on an increasingly Islamic character, along with a corrupt government whichever major party is leading it with a slavish devotion to the wishes of rich campaign donors (one reason why I and so many other Britons have left). But that’s not true of the rest of Europe. Don’t lump them together so.
Pope Benedict decries growing Christianophobia in Europe
Pope Benedict voiced the Catholic Church’s deep concern over “hostility and prejudice” against Christianity in Europe on Thursday, saying creeping secularism was just as bad as religious fanaticism. In the message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked on Jan. 1, he also reiterated recent condemnations of lack of religious freedom in countries in the Middle East where Christians are a minority, such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
He said Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the world and that it was “unacceptable” that in some places they had to risk their lives to practise their faith. But he reserved his strongest words for Europe, where the Church says it is under assault by some national governments and European institutions over issues such as gay marriage, abortion and the use of Christian religious symbols in public places.
“I also express my hope that in the West, and especially in Europe, there will be an end to hostility and prejudice against Christians because they are resolved to orient their lives in a way consistent with the values and principles expressed in the Gospel,” he said in the message. “May Europe rather be reconciled to its own Christian roots, which are fundamental for understanding its past, present and future role in history.”
The Pope put what the Vatican has termed “aggressive secularism”, such as gay marriage and restrictions on religious symbols such as crucifixes, nativity scenes and other traditions, on the same level as religious fanaticism: “It should be clear that religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike in that both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the principle of secularity.”
Church officials have expressed concerns over what they see as growing “Christianophobia” in the developed world. A top Vatican official addressed it at a recent summit of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kazakhstan and Christian groups have set up the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians to record cases of perceived disadvantages.
Read the full story here. The full text of the pope’s message is here in English.
@SyteR – Perhaps you missed this part of the article: “He said Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the world”
As to ridicule being equivalent to prejudice… Satire is a form of ridicule. Satire is perfectly acceptable in a free society. Plenty of people make an honest living as satirists…
Are you saying all satirists are prejudiced, or just the ones who poke fun at your faith?
Pope puts his stamp on Catholic Church future with new cardinals
Pope Benedict installed 24 new Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world on Saturday in his latest batch of appointments that could include his successor as leader of the 1.2 billion member church.
Twenty of the new cardinals are under 80 and thus eligible under church rules to take part in the conclave that chooses a successor after the death or resignation of the current pope.
The new cardinals include Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington D.C., who, as a senior figure in the American capital, will likely play a leading role in the U.S. church’s response to the sexual abuse scandal.
At a pre-consistory meeting on Friday, the Vatican told bishops they would have to take more responsibility to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests and said it was preparing new guidelines for bishops on how to deal with the sexual abuse, including cooperation with local authorities.
The German pope has now named 50 of the 121 electors who can pick his successor from among their own ranks, raising the possibility that the next pontiff will be a conservative in Benedict’s own image. Popes usually reign for life but Benedict, 83, has not ruled out the possibility of resigning for health reasons. The last time a pope resigned willingly was in the 13th century.
The slow death of multiculturalism in Europe
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Ibrahim Kalin is senior advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. This article first appeared in Today’s Zaman in Istanbul and is reprinted with its permission.
By Ibrahim Kalin
Has multiculturalism run its course in Europe? If one takes a picture of certain European countries today and freezes it, that would be the logical conclusion.
The European right is thriving on anti-immigrant attitudes and is likely to continue to reap the benefits in the short term. But there are forces that are sure to keep multiculturalism alive whether we like it or not.
Take Germany as an example. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said bluntly that Germany has failed to integrate large immigrant communities. The complaint is that most Turks and Muslims who came to Germany in the 1960s to jumpstart the German economy after World War II have not integrated into German society. They kept their language, religion and most of their cultural habits. Instead of blending in, they created their own parallel societies.
But is it logical to conclude that multiculturalism is dead because certain European countries have failed to integrate their minority communities? First of all, what some European countries present as multicultural policies have very little to do with multiculturalism. Again Germany is a case in point. German governments welcomed Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish workers in the 1950s and 1960s and treated them as “guest workers.” But it never occurred to them that these so-called guest workers were also human beings with social and familial needs just like any other people. As a result, the German governments made very little or no effort in creating a social and political environment for them to integrate.
Austrian far-right surges in Vienna vote
Austria’s resurgent far-right party won over a quarter of the vote in Vienna’s provincial election as voters took their discontent to the ballot box, reflecting a wider European trend as voters concerned about the economic crisis and integration of Muslims turn to rightist parties.
Vienna’s Social Democrats under Michael Häupl, mayor since 1994, won 44.1 percent, losing their absolute majority while Heinz-Christian Strache’s far-right Freedom Party scooped up 27.1 percent, up from 15 percent in 2005. All the other main parties lost ground. The results suggest Freedom, which has called for a ban on mosques with minarets and on Islamic face veils, is returning to its strength of the late 1990s.
Analysts say that if the centrist parties keep losing support, they might start catering more to far-right concerns on social policy, mulling for example a ban on Islamic face veils in public and stricter limits on immigration.
from The Great Debate:
Islamophobia and a German central banker
How do you reconcile the traditions of many Muslim immigrants with the freedoms and values of 21st century Western Europe?
It's a question that has led to periodic outbursts of vigorous debate from France to Holland and Switzerland. In Germany, the discussion has been relatively subdued. Until now.
Why? A passage in a book considered so unsettling that its author, Thilo Sarrazin, was forced to resign from the board of Germany's central bank this month, provides part of the answer.
Criticism of Islam and Muslim immigrants, he writes, is wrongly seen to "equal Islamophobia which equals racism which equals anti-Semitism which equals right-wing radicalism which equals national socialism (Nazism)." In a country deeply ashamed of its 1933-1945 Nazi past, that's enough to mute debate.
Sarrazin's book, "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany abolishes itself), came under withering assault from Germany's political and intellectual elite even before its publication and (judging from some of the comments) even before many of the critics waded through its 461 dense, statistics-laden pages.
It is not an anti-immigration, anti-Islam tirade, it is an argument against a combination of flawed immigration and social welfare policies that, according to Sarrazin, have tended to attract a sizeable number of immigrants more interested in living off generous government handouts than in finding a place in the labour market, climbing up the economic ladder and integrating into German society.
Immigrants from Muslim parts of former Yugoslavia, from Arab and North African countries and from Turkey (the largest group) "are the core of the integration problem," Sarrazin writes, citing dismal statistics on scholastic achievement, unemployment, dependence on welfare payments, crime and reluctance to learn German, an essential step towards integration. In contrast, immigrants from Asia or India were doing particularly well in integrating and in making economic progress.
Komment:
… “ethnic” means native, as opposed to immigrants who are not citizens. As to the shrinkage, there are projections that each successive generation will be around 39% smaller …
So, ethnic means native. Then how many ethnic Americans are left? It seems like America has done pretty well without them.
And again: Why can’t the Germans solve the problem by offering the immigrants (or Gastarbeiter) a realistic possibility of citizenship with the rights and responsibilities that come with it?
Low support for radicalism among European Muslims — Pew report
Support for radical Islamist groups is low among European Muslims and some leading groups with overseas roots are now cooperating with local governments and encouraging Muslims to vote, according to a new report.
European groups linked to wider Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i-Islami now focus more on conditions for Muslims in Europe than their original ideologies from Egypt and Pakistan, according to the report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report also cited tensions between “jihadists” and peaceful Islamists in Europe, saying some groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood were working with police to counter militants.
“By most accounts, support for radical extremist groups is relatively low among Muslims in Europe,” it said. “Nevertheless, such groups have been central to the public discussion of Islam in Europe, especially in recent years.”
The report said supporters of European groups with links to foreign Islamist movements often showed little interest in their founding ideologies, which critics say are radical and anti-Western. Although some groups promoted militant views, others dealt only with religious issues or education, making it difficult to generalise about Muslim organisations in Western Europe.
Read the full story here. For the text of the report “Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe”, click here.
This is assuming that the violent jihadis and the peaceful Islamists have different aims. Why carry out a destructive Islamic attack ~ when you can simply influence politicians to make laws Shari’a compliant. Both groups envision an end to western freedom and rights and the establishment of a world wide Islamic state.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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