I used to say that the future of this continent would be decided over whether Islam Europeanised or Europe Islamised. There were Muslim leaders back then — like Britain's Zaki Badawi — who preached just such a new form of Islam. Ten years on, the scorecard is far more mixed. Today, it seems to me that this will be a process of constantly winning and losing rather than outright victory or loss. But one thing is for sure: on current trends it will not just be the past but the future which will be a foreign country. They will, most certainly, do things differently there.

In the entire discussion on the meeting, absorption or integration of Islam in Britain several fundamental facts have to be accepted. The first is the undeniable importance of migration. Britain had no significant Muslim presence until the latter part of the last century. There was a negligible Muslim presence in Britain until postwar immigration brought waves of migration predominantly from the Indian subcontinent, and Islam played no important role in our history. By the 2001 census, there were around 1.5 million Muslims in England and Wales. By the 2011 census, that number was 2.7 million. Over a single decade the Muslim population had doubled — and that is not including the hundreds of thousands of people who are here illegally. If anyone in power had wanted to alter the vast increase in Muslim immigration during the post-9/11 period, to work on absorbing the people who were already here before welcoming in any more, they could have done so. But they did not and no politician looks set to do so in the near future. Even now it is deemed politically impossible to discuss such matters. And so — incapable of making a value judgment to limit Muslim immigration at the very moment that Muslim integration was becoming such an issue — we will be stuck with the reality of the growth of our Muslim population.

Today Britain's Muslim community is growing ten times faster than the rest of the population. Half of British Muslims are under the age of 25. And among young people under 25, one in ten are now Muslim. Conversions of Britons to Islam are also at an unprecedented high. In the decade since 9/11 more than 100,000 British people converted to Islam. Three-quarters of these were women. These facts — along with the fact that for the first time a minority of young Britons now identify themselves as Christian — means that if current trends continue, in the next 20 years or so there will be more Muslims in Britain than Christians. Some demographic studies suggest that on current trends Britain could have a Muslim majority by the middle of this century.

Of course trends do not always continue. It is possible that there will be a resurgence of Christianity, or a swift increase in atheism and/or secularism among Muslims. Or it is possible that something wholly unforeseen will occur. But while conceding the variables it is important not to ignore current likelihoods. An increased number of Muslims will inevitably lead to increased influence of Islam in the country, with all the things that come in its wake.

Second, we must accept that there is no reason why the process of integrating these people will be any more straightforward in the future than it has been up until now. Across Western Europe official government responses even to public concern over immigration as a whole — let alone some immigrations in particular — have been to condemn such concern as "racist". In the last couple of years the leaders of all three main political parties have conceded that it is not racist to have concerns about immigration. But they neither know what to do about the next step, nor can get beyond generalities about the need for "debate" or the sending around — as during this past summer — of occasional dog-whistles to pretend something is being done while the issue truly remains unaddressed.