The world has certainly seen a great deal of "his hand shall be against every man," which has been institutionalized in Ishmael's belief system, Islam. Winston Churchill once said of it, "That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword—the tenets and principles of which are . . . incentives to slaughter and which in three continents had produced fighting breeds of men—simulates a wild and merciless fanaticism."
And now we see that he indeed is dwelling in the presence of the descendants of his brother Isaac and his nephew Jacob, fomenting problems while reaping the benefits of living among the blessings of God given for Abraham's obedience. It also sets up the fulfillment of the prophecy of Israel's downfall in Deuteronomy 28:43: "The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower."
Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other European nations have experienced a massive influx of Arab or Turk immigrants over the past few decades, for much the same reasons as the U.S. has seen so many Hispanic immigrants from Central America. Economic conditions in their home countries are so depressed and hopeless that Western democracies look like the Promised Land. Add in a heavy dose of multiculturalism and socialist welfare policies, and the result is a burgeoning foreign population that refuses to integrate and abide by common standards.
Denmark [in 2002] is a good example. It has about 200,000 Muslim immigrants in a population of roughly 5½ million, or about 3.5% of the population. More than half of these are crammed into urban areas because of the possibility of employment, but many are unemployed. In Denmark, these immigrants account for more than 40% of welfare spending.
It gets worse. Muslims make up a majority of the nation's convicted rapists; non-Danes commit three-quarters of the rapes in Denmark. In other categories of crime, lesser but similarly disproportionate figures prevail. They have also brought in several unacceptable and illegal practices, for instance, forced marriages—promising a baby girl to a male in the home nation, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death—and threatening to kill Muslims who convert out of Islam.
On another area of Danish concern, commentator Daniel Pipes writes:
Muslim violence threatens Denmark's approximately 6,000 Jews, who increasingly depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one school principal that she could not guarantee their children's safety and were advised to attend another institution. Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill all Jews . . . wherever you find them." ("Something Rotten in Denmark?" New York Post, August 27, 2002).
Muslim clerics have also called upon adherents to take over Denmark and impose Islamic law once their population has grown large enough. By one estimate, in about forty years, Muslims will comprise one-third of Denmark's population. Keep these trends in mind as time hastens toward the return of Jesus Christ.