The Muslim Demographic Advantage. Middle Nation Podcast (E:12)

This is Shahid Bolson and the Middle Nation podcast. This is episode number 12. I wanted to talk a little bit about demographics and some of the ramifications of some, very important changes that are taking place demographically in the world. You know how throughout Europe and The United States, there's a growing animosity towards immigrants and a resentment about letting any foreigners into their countries, especially Muslims. Well, you're gonna wanna remember that.

You're gonna wanna remember that because it's not gonna be long before these same countries, particularly across Europe, start combing the earth for Muslims who want to immigrate to replenish their rapidly evaporating labor pools. Europe is getting old, and the workforce that helped build their modern economies is retiring and dying. And they do not have adequate young people to take their place. Countries like Germany, the powerhouse of Europe, right, is already tipping over a demographic cliff that it will never climb up from again. The median age of the EU is around 45 years old.

Median age means half of the population is older than that and half of the population is younger than that. The median age in the EU is 45. So roughly half of the population is either right at the peak of their economic productivity and consumer activity or already well past it. That median age is expected to increase, not decrease over the next thirty years because birth rates across Europe have been sinking since the nineteen seventies. In contrast, the median age in the Muslim world, if you combine all of the countries with Muslim populations, with majority Muslim populations, the median age is about twenty years younger than Europe.

Our ummah is young and stays young because we love children. We see them as a blessing, not as a burden. And we were taught by our prophet to increase the size of our nation through growing our families. We are the youngest population on earth. While white nationalists in Europe are hysterical today about the high birth rates among Muslims within their countries panicking about Muslims eventually outnumbering them.

The time is fast approaching when their governments will be trying to incentivize Muslims around the world to immigrate to fill the gaping holes in their workforce when those white nationalists retire and their parents die. Because for all their patriotic rhetoric, they have failed to provide a new generation of their own people to keep their economies afloat. Of all the Western countries, only The United States really has a significant population of young people to carry the country forward, even though it is still not remotely close to the size and productive power of the baby boomers. The Muslim world from the most populous Arab country, Egypt, with the median age of just around 24 years old to Asia where the median age in Pakistan is only 22 years old, and down here to Indonesia and Malaysia where the median age is in the late twenties, the ummah is poised to rise in economic importance and power throughout the twenty first century. There is simply no other population that enjoys our demographic advantage.

China, for instance, is just as bad off as Europe. Their total population is expected to be cut in half within the lifetime of our children. And with easily 35 to 40,000,000 people exiting their workforce over just the next five years. Muslims are about to become the most headhunted pool of talent in the world and a global consumer group with formidable influence. Whereas Western imperialists used to invade our lands to pillage our natural resources and raw materials, soon they will be coming to steal our human resources and raw skills, and we, as a nation, must be ready to say no.

Europe is going to want young Muslims to provide a lifesaving transfusion of labor, knowledge, and talent to revitalize their economies. Economies that have both exploited and excluded us for centuries and to thereby deny our own countries their natural advantage by draining us of our young people. There are, as I see it, maybe two major factors that could allow Europe to succeed in this effort. The first is the corruption and mismanagement of our own countries, which would cause them to fail to capitalize on our demographic advantage. And the second is if our people continue to harbor awe and admiration for Western countries and delusions about their supposed civilizational superiority.

These are problems we as an ummah have to overcome. If you are already living in the Muslim world, stay there. If you're living in a Western country, explore the potential of hijjah. And not simply because you would like to live in a Muslim country where you can hear the adhan every day and you can eat food any way you want because you know it's gonna be halal. But consider moving to a Muslim country because you want to help transfer knowledge and skills to the Muslims and to pursue entrepreneurial projects that will contribute to the economy where you will live.

Increasing the number of Western educated Muslims with Western citizenship in the Muslim lands will itself be helpful for improving the rules and conditions in those countries. I mean, haven't we all observed how the governments in Muslim countries tend to accommodate Western expats in any number of negative ways? Well, an influx of Western Muslim expats could potentially influence our governments in positive ways as well. Not to mention the fact that Western Muslim professionals would conceivably be well suited to liaise with Western investors and multinationals to also help grow our economies and support greater efficiency and anti corruption measures that would create a better environment for innovation and development. Here, I have to say, it is possible that multinational corporations, as dangerous as they are, could plausibly be utilized for positive change in the Muslim world.

Because, look, corporations are not ideological, and they are not patriotic. The more important we are as a workforce and as consumers, the more they will seek our favor. That's just the politics of the market. Obviously, this is an issue that requires considerably more discussion than can be had in a single podcast. But suffice it to say, I believe there are scenarios in which private sector power can be recruited to advance our interests if it is pursued properly.

The importance of the global Muslim demographic advantage does not, in and of itself, alter the existing power dynamics dominated by corporations and the financial elite. And the relative demographic decline of Western nations will not turn The United States from a world power into a regional power. The US will remain the largest national economy on earth for a long time to come and the most powerful military force in the world. This is not changing anytime soon. But the Muslims are going to become key to both American and corporate economic growth and stability in the mid to long term future, and that will give us leverage that we have not possessed before.

Leverage we can use to improve the quality of lives of Muslims everywhere, Insha'Allah. The only serious competitor we have moving forward is India. Their median age is also quite young, and it is a huge population. I would anticipate that Indians will eagerly flock to Europe to replenish their evaporating workforce, which will give Europe some form of life support and will increase India's global influence. But if we are effective in building up our own countries and the international Muslim economy, this is a manageable rivalry.

Another thing to consider is that the global economic system will necessarily undergo some very fundamental changes over the next several decades. The whole system until now has been dedicated to unlimited growth, more production, more consumption. But that's not going to work in the context of a world in which there are fewer workers and fewer consumers. It's gonna take some time for the economic system and for business to figure out how to adjust to that, and I would expect that this adjustment will be clumsy and volatile. Perhaps there will be even more mergers and acquisitions, hostile takeovers to create large cross industrial monopolies with billionaires cannibalizing millionaires, trillionaires cannibalizing billionaires, and so on.

Perhaps the growth reflex of capitalism will be directed at hyper innovation, or perhaps there will be a greater proliferation of disposable goods to ensure steady consumption, or maybe this is part of the explanation for the new phenomenon of commoditizing nature. It's hard to predict how all this will develop, but this is something worth considering because these changes could very well alter the overall power dynamics that we're used to today. So that is something we should study and prepare for. For the present, Muslims around the world just need to know that we are entering an era when there will be tectonic changes in the global economic order and balance of power. Many of the players who have dominated the world stage for over a century will be receding, and the Muslims are poised to benefit from that and to grow in our own global influence.

As long as we can adapt, we can have confidence, cultivate solidarity within the ummah, and invest in ourselves. Holding on to Islam is how we can ride the roller coaster of history without losing our balance. We've gotten so used to thinking of ourselves as victims, as oppressed, as hard done by, as downtrodden, as powerless. If we proceed into the future with this mindset, we will not be able to reap the benefits of the coming global changes. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, such are the days that we alternate between people.

That's what's going on. History is long. There are phases that last for centuries, but they pass. Allah said, every nation has its appointed term. In the long life of the world, western imperialism and colonialism and the dominance of Europe have just been a moment, and that moment is ending.