LET'S DO THE NUMBERS:

Europe's Muslim Street: Muslims confront the United States, in the place their votes count most. (Omer Taspinar, Foreign Policy)

Islam may still be a faraway religion for millions of Americans. But for Europeans it is local politics. The 15 million Muslims of the European Union (EU)-up to three times as many as live in the United States-are becoming a more powerful political force than the fabled Arab street. Europe's Muslims hail from different countries and display diverse religious tendencies, but the common denominator that links them to the Muslim world is their sympathy for Palestine and Palestinians. And unlike most of their Arab brethren, growing numbers of Europe's Muslims can vote in elections that count.

This political ascendance threatens to exacerbate existing strains within the trans-Atlantic relationship. The presence of nearly 10 million Muslims versus only 700,000 Jews in France and Germany alone helps explain why continental Europe might look at the Middle East from a different angle than does the United States. Indeed, French and German concerns about a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq or Washington's blind support for Israel are at least partly related to nervousness about the Muslim street at home.

Whether Brussels, Berlin, Paris, or Washington like it or not, Europe's Muslim constituencies are likely to become an even more vocal foreign policy lobby. Two trends are empowering Europe's Muslim street: demographics and opportunities for full citizenship.

The Europeans can't talk about this openly for obvious reasons: acknowledge that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are not acting purely as nationalists but at least partly out of fear of their Muslim minorities and it will exacerbate already simmering tensions between "Europeans" and Muslims. But there's no excuse for the American press and politicians remaining silent. Still when conservatives start talking about the coming demographic crisis in the West they're dismissed as merely anti-abortion/anti-immigrant cranks. Cranky they may be, but not merely cranky--the issues are real and they're already beginning to matter, as witness the Franco-German/American divide. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2003 7:39 PM