Declining European confidence contrasts with assertive Islamic movement vitality

Evidence

Whereas European societies often seem unsure of themselves, diffident about their culture, and confused as to their proper role in the world, Islamic movements, violent and non-violent alike, have won millions of supporters throughout the world with an assertive and self-confident expression of their political vision and cultural vitality. — Michael A. Reynolds and Thomas D. Grant, The Future of Europe and Its Muslims, 47

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is this confidence diagnosis empirically checkable, or a projection of Western observers? Worth tracing how this trope moves through demographic-panic literature.
• XREF: Resonates with the annihilated/declining-society framings in The New Crusades and Strangers in the Land, where demographic anxiety drives nativist politics.
• STORYSTEM: A near-future Europe where an aging, apologetic majority encounters a demographically young, self-assured minority could power speculative fiction about soft cultural succession.