'Muslim nation' remark provokes anger in Australia
Thursday, February 16, 2006 Australian politicians and a Muslim leader condemned yesterday comments by a government lawmaker who suggested allowing an abortion drug could lead to a disproportionate growth of the Muslim population. Australia's main opposition Labour described the comments by former veterans affairs minister Danna Vale as "dopey", ignorant, offensive and "seriously weird".
Vale was accused of fuelling racist, anti-Muslim sentiment after she said she was concerned about the ramifications abortion would have for the future make-up of Australia, where Muslims currently make up 1.5 per cent of the population of 20 million. Vale said she had read in a Sydney newspaper a comment by an Muslim imam that Australia would be a Muslim nation in 50 years. "I didn't believe him at the time, but when you actually look at the birth rates and you look at the fact that we (non Muslims) are aborting ourselves almost out of existence by 100,000 abortions every year," Vale told reporters late on Monday. "You multiple that by 50 years, that's 5 million potential Australians we won't have here."
Vale's paranoid, racist take on demographics chimes in with Mark Steyn's own anti-Muslim bigotry. In an article entitled "Salute Danna Vale" Steyn writes: "When the fastest-breeding demographic group on the planet is also the one most resistant to the pieties of the social-democratic state that's a profound challenge.... In the '70s and '80, Muslims had children – those self-detonating Islamists in London and Gaza and Bali are a literal baby boom – while westerners took all those silly books about overpopulation seriously. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere."