How the hell do you deduce the 'Eurabia' scenario from that!?

It looks like a rhetorical question, but I still answer it: I wasn't trying to build a case for Eurabia, something I've never been concerned enough about to learn the numbers you quoted.

What Europe does have a serious problem with is the utter failure of their integration policy. There is also a real issue with a small but not insignificant minority of this minority radically rejecting the basic values of European society (though considering the relative sizes of populations I am pretty sure that in absolute numbers far more white Europeans reject those values than Muslim ones)

Zing. I think I flared up because, even if Bolkestein would be losing his hold on his rhetoric these days, he should be credited for pointing that out before it had become common knowledge. That's not Islamophobic, that's pragmatic in my book. Call the problem by its name and don't be a wishy-washy.

Agreed, his quote is out there. But he leaves enough wriggle room to say it doesn't need to happen, yet suddenly the implication is that Bolkestein thinks Europe will be overrun by the armies of Allah. Rubbish. There's enough in the rest of his speech that says he has given the membership of Turkey a lot of thought. Also, I think he's dead on on the European agrarian policy when Turkey would join; that's simply unsustainable.

He IS saying, plainly, that while China's economy starts booming faster, Europe is getting more Islamic. Combine that with the failed integration policies, and he sees troubles. Again.

Ugh. I'm very weary of this argument. Next time, I stick to climate change.

In Turkey itself, a 2002 Gallup poll indeed found that 37% say religion is 'very important', 41% say it is essential to life, and for 27% it is the most important thing in life.

However, the long-term trend is of decrease (tough I only found scant and non-countriwide-sampled data). Two local samples: I found one from the sixties in which 50% preferred the "Turk" identity and 37.5% the "Muslim" one, and one from 1993 in which 69% preferred "Turk", 21% chose "Muslim Turk", and 4% chose "Muslim". A 2000 study of factory workers (on page 9 of this pdf) found a strong decrease with age of those who think prayer at work is important.

In contrast, Muslims/Turks in Germany are less religious.

One 2003 study (pdf!) counts 3,112,000 inhabitants with a Muslim cultural identity, of which 2,365,120 (76%) profess a Muslim religious identity, but only 309,000 (9.9%) are organised. Even in the year after 9/11 and up to the Iraq War, the number of Friday prayer attendants is just 464,000 (14.9%), and that of daily prayers in a mosque 185,000 (5.9%) - not dissimilar to similar numbers in the 'Christian' population! Prior to 9/11, weekly attendance was about 9%, but that was down from 22% measured in a study in the middle of the nineties (see towards the end here).

Furthermore, in a printed source (I forgot where since last year...), I found this further data from that study in the nineties: of under-16 children of Muslims in Germany, 58% have broken with their parents' religious traditions, 12% consider to do so; and of the 42% still holding to the traditions, 22% percent do so at parental pressure. Another 1997 poll for the Berlin local government asked youth of Turkish origin about membership in an assotiation - 23.5% were, but of these, 19.2% were members of sports assotiations, and a mere 0,4% of a religious assotiation.

If I have more time, I'll trawl for more and more recent data (and will put it all in another diary).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}