Two events happened last week — one profusely covered in the European and world media, the other hardly at all — that would have long-lasting and, in the second case, profound implications for generations to come.  The first case had to do with the elections of Ursula von der Layen as the new president of the European Commission, the second with the publication of a study showing that the Germans increasingly are losing their majorities to those with a migrant background.

The second study was vastly more important historically for the future of Europe, but that, predictably, was not the coverage it received.  Instead, it was barely noticed, driven as it was to obscurity by the hubbub of von der Layen's election.  That election, in fact, was little more than a Brussels farce of the first order and yet another reminder that democracy in the E.U. capital has become a quaint idea often mentioned but seldom really practiced.  Not only was von der Layen not an official candidate, let alone a Spitzen candidate, but she was not even rumored to be a candidate until elected.

Moreover, as a politician, she was undoubtedly a failure.  Having run the defense ministry since 2013, not only did she fail to increase the defense budget to the widely promised 2% of GDP, but she left office with the pathetic 1.25% by 2023.  The only other thing she would be remembered for is the Gorch Fock disaster, a navy training ship whose repair bill grew on her watch from 10M euros to 135M.  So she is a failed politician, and the Bundeswehr is a joke, but hey, she is a "friend of Merkel" and, as the latter herself pointed out, also a woman, and that, it seems, is all that counted for the top job in Brussels today.

The fact that Germans are being rapidly replaced by migrants in large German cities, as the study in Neue Zuricher Zeitung, one of the few still reputable papers in Europe, showed, is perhaps a surprise because of the speed with which it occurred, but unexpected it was not.  As early as 2006, the best known American expert on Islam, Bernard Lewis, predicted that Europe will be dominated by Muslims by the end of the 21st century.  Neither Lewis nor anybody else could have foreseen Chancellor Merkel's opening up the doors to millions of illegal migrants in 2015, and thus dramatically speeding up the process of the Islamization of Europe.  Where we stand now four years later is clear enough.  As ever more German cities lose their German character, according to NZZ, few migrants are willing to work (and why should they when the welfare system makes it possible for them to live well without working), serious crime and anti-Semitism have exploded (up 74% to 541 serious incidents in 2018 from 311 in 2017), and few show any desire to integrate. 

Where is it all going? To find out, it is perhaps best to go over next door to France, which embarked on the same road a few years earlier than Germany. Both France and Germany imported large numbers of "guest workers," the former from its former colonies in the Maghreb, the latter from Turkey.  Both mistakenly believed that these "gastarbeiter" will eventually go home after a few years, which, needless to say, did not happen.  Finally, in 1996, the French government realized that these large numbers were in France to stay and moved promptly to isolate the numerous ghettoes that had already formed by declaring them euphemistically "sensitive urban zones (ZUS)."  What exactly happened in these ZUSes?  As early as 2004, a French ministry of education study, known as the "Rapport Obin," described schoolgirls being beaten by "grands frères" if they stepped out of Muslim orthodoxy by going to the theater the pool or, God forbid, reading "Madame Bovary."

There were over 750 of these, and new ones appear all the time.  These are Muslim enclaves, where much if not most crime, drug-dealing, prostitution, and stolen goods rackets are concentrated, apart from the Islamic radicalization that has resulted in a number of brutal terrorist acts by people born and raised in France.  In the meantime, every Jewish establishment in France is guarded by armed soldiers, something reportedly coming soon to Germany as well.

So is there a point of no return beyond which the Islamization of Europe is fait accompli?  To this writer, it is when the under 18 cohort becomes majority Muslim.  There are a number of German cities that are close.

Alex Alexiev is chairman of the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org).  He can be reached at alexievalex4@gmail.com.