Of European cities which have been irrevocably transformed by mass migration from the Muslim world, Paris does not rank at the top of the list. A quarter of its population isn’t Muslim, like the gang-infested, crime-ridden former port city of Marseille, nor a fifth, like the jihadist hotbed of Roubaix. However, the outraged reaction of Francois Hollande, the lame duck prime minister of France, to President Trump’s remarks at CPAC is laughable when you consider the fact that officials in Paris have had to erect an 8 ft. wall of reinforced glass in order to protect that city’s most recognizable symbol. Leaving aside the fact that Parisiens have to endure a police state that has no parallels in post-war France, a situation prompted by the threat posed by the 6 million Muslims who reside in that country-as well as the millions more who live in neighboring nations like Belgium and Germany-there is the inescapable difference between the Paris of today and the Paris of only a few decades ago.

Why would an ordinary American want to visit a city, however beautiful certain parts may be, where hundreds of Muslims are able to shut down entire blocks of pedestrian traffic-as well as local businesses-while they publicly pray? As gauche as this may be to say in the current year, people visit European capitals to discover the roots of Western civilization, not witness inter-tribal warfare or the Islamic conquest of a once great civilization. The fact that over three-quarters of the victims of terrorist attacks in France have fallen in the 21st century should give astute observers a clue as to the trajectory of that country’s future. Whatever you may think of President Trump, or the reliability of unsourced anecdotes, the notion that the Paris of today is the jewel of Europe, that the decades of unstinting Muslim migration from the third world haven’t permanently transformed France from the nation it once was, beggars belief. Perhaps undiluted multiculturalism, open borders in perpetuity, and the gradual erosion of natural rights in the name of accommodating the world’s “fastest-growing religion” is something that you favor, but don’t try to pretend that this is not what we’re witnessing.

One of the biggest challenges to the future of Europe is the continued balkanization occurring as a result of massive immigration from predominantly Arab and Islamic nations, coupled with the inability and/or unwillingness of host countries to assimilate these men and women to Western culture. Even though the systemic problems associated with this phenomenon are most often associated with large, EU member states like France and Germany, it is a continental problem, as a recent post on Pajamas media illustrates. 

While the  parents ofAlgerians who burn down Parisian banlieues and the Moroccan and Turkish Al Qaeda cells  that hatch terror plots within Germany were invited into Europe for unique historical reasons-in the former case because of war, in the latter due to a failed guest worker program-the self-segregating Islamists living in Norway were taken in for humanitarian purposes. In this respect, Oslo serves as a stark warning for the United States, which also allows in thousands of Arab-Muslim refugees every single year. In fact, the FBI is now checking the backgrounds of over 50 thousand Iraqi refugees who have been allowed to settle in this country since the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War, at least one of whom has already been positively identified as a bomb maker who targeted American troops. If only the federal government had access to that wonderful resource known as the Internet. 

And the problem of assimilation-or lack thereof-isn’t one limited to European nations. The lack of integration among American Muslims-especially second and third generation families-is so pronounced that it’s been noted by no less an authority than the Washington Post. The huge numbers of immigrants from nations wholly different from the United States, combined with the cultural amnesia that’s become an ingrained aspect of American society, has created an explosive mixture that will almost certainly come back to haunt the policymakers who instituted these short-sighted immigration policies, if it hasn’t already.

Oslo today, Ohio tomorrow.