My initial reactions:
- The uncited "research" doesn't even relate to the wild leaps of "logic" in the voiceover. ("There's no economic model to support...") I guess just saying "research" once at the beginning lends a air of legitimacy to the rest of the video.
- Fewer babies = better market for labor! Doesn't sound ALL bad. (Also, we are currently over-populated, so declining population is environmentally-friendly.)
- Some European nations are addressing declining birth rates in an interesting way: paid maternity and paternity leave for an entire year, if I recall correctly. So Mom can take off year 1, Dad takes off year 2, then you can start all over with another baby. That policy would convince me to have another baby if I were on the fence! (I think Canada also has a year of paid maternity leave.)
- What this video really is is racist. A pure call for white American Christians to have lots and lots and lots of kids. Who's behind the video? Probably some class project at Oral Roberts or similar.
- I admit that I'm not that much of an activist. If I did suddenly find myself in a Taliban-run society I'd cram on my burka faster than the gal next to me. But, even IF America became a Muslim majority country it would still be America. Land of the free, home of the brave, etc. It's awfully hard to ditch an entire Constitution and remake a country. It is possible, however, that in the future some of the free and brave might not be white Christians.
- That said, even knowing what I was getting into, I found the video well-made and powerful.
- I don't find militant fundamentalist Muslims much scarier than militant fundamentalist Christians, frankly.
- Wanna know a great way to make Islam more exciting and enticing to young Americans? Make it into the counter-culture. Make it something forbidden, scaaaaary, bad like the Beatles, man.
- It's an interesting idea that we must spread Christianity through breeding. I don't recall that message from the Bible. Whatever happened to evangelism?
2 comments:
It's funny, if members of the Islamic community were to put this video out (and they could, because it really is just an evangelism video) it would be "fighting" words from the religious conservatives.
The reality is that there are a lot of conservative families/communities that are very aware of these statistics, and so they are doing everything they can to produce more baby-Christians. (i.e. the Duggars)
Rob, the idea that this video could be considered pro-Islamic didn't occur to me. But I got this video in an email, and when I went looking for it on YouTube the first version I found was posted by "FriendofMuslim."
So I hopped over to Snopes to see if they had anything on the origin of the video: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/demographics.asp
Status: Mostly False
- The immigration and birth rate "statisitics" in the video are uncited and unlikely or impossible.
- Some of the quotes are ... incorrect. An actual quote might be used but modified or amended.
- Many of the video's underlying assumptions are also false or unlikely. (For example, it turns out that birth rates among Muslim women - especially those in the West - have been falling, too. But the video doesn't mention this!)
http://tinyfrog.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/muslim-demographics/
But the source if the video is still unknown. Well, it's known to someone, obviously, just not to me!
Note: the video is posted - without analysis! - at Catholic.com. Horrifying.
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