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While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within by Bruce Bawer
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Bruce Bawer Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published) Published: 2007-09-11 ISBN: 0767920058 Number of pages: 272 Publisher: Anchor Product features:
Book Reviews of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from WithinBook Review: While Europe slept, I lived in the States Summary: 2 Stars
I picked up this book with big interest. I left Europe about thirty years ago and live since then in the U.S.
During my time in Europe there were not yet so many Muslims and many of the problems Bawer describes did not exist.
But what amused me about the book was the obvious desire of Bawer to get back to all the anti-Americanism he had to endure in the last decade? Decades? He practically turns around all the arguments Europeans have against Americans.
It is in a way understandable. I myself am quite often frustrated by the hypocrisies with which Europeans embrace a lot of the American way of life while they condemn it at the same time. If you hate America so much stop watching American TVand movies, do not eat at fast food places and drink sodas, do not wear jeans and t-shirts and sneakers and do not give big corporations so much power, etc. etc. Do not imitate every aspect of American life and then complain about it. I suppose that is what Bawer means with American culture surrounding him in Europe.
What struck me too, was the fact that Bawer thinks he should not be treated like an immigrant and that all immigrants in the U.S. are treated much better than the immigrants in Europe.
He must have been out of the country for a long time and must have never really had contact with immigrants when he lived in the States.
Also obvious is his huge disappointment that living as a gay man in Europe did not turn out so problem free as he had hoped.
When I still lived in Europe homosexuals and straight people seemed to live happily together. I am straight and in my circle of friends were homosexuals, who attended the same parties and participated in the same activities as I did. Nobody made a big deal about it.
When I moved to the States I found that homosexuals were living a segregated life and took themselves much too serious. Like I was used to, I invited them to gatherings at my house , but I was never invited back. Obviously their parties were for homosexuals only.
I also hoped that I would meet people from all over the world in the States- much more so than I had in Europe.
I did meet them and I invited them to my house. I was also invited back, but when I was invited back I was always the only person who was not Indian, Cuban, Mexican, Iranian, Russian, Bulgarian, Somali, Israeli,
Japanese, etc. There were all these segregated pockets of all these different nations. There was really no melting pot, as I had expected. And it got worse as the years passed. But I got invited much more by immigrants than by native Americans and I do not mean native American Indians. Unfortunately as I did not speak the languages of all these different nations(only west-European languages), I did not feel very comfortable as there were often a lot of people, who did not speak English despite the fact that they had lived in the U.S. for a very long time. And you can only do so much sign language and smiling....
I see Bawers book as an outburst of homesickness and I hope he will realize that everybody who is a first-generation immigrant will never feel quite at home and welcome. That is a fact of life and it does not matter if you have PH.D. or if you are laborer.
Summary of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from WithinThe struggle for the soul of Europe today is every bit as dire and consequential as it was in the 1930s. Then, in Weimar, Germany, the center did not hold, and the light of civilization nearly went out. Today, the continent has entered yet another "Weimar moment." Will Europeans rise to the challenge posed by radical Islam, or will they cave in once again to the extremists?
As an American living in Europe since 1998, Bruce Bawer has seen this problem up close. Across the continent-in Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Stockholm-he encountered large, rapidly expanding Muslim enclaves in which women were oppressed and abused, homosexuals persecuted and killed, "infidels" threatened and vilified, Jews demonized and attacked, barbaric traditions (such as honor killing and forced marriage) widely practiced, and freedom of speech and religion firmly repudiated.
The European political and media establishment turned a blind eye to all this, selling out women, Jews, gays, and democratic principles generally-even criminalizing free speech-in order to pacify the radical Islamists and preserve the illusion of multicultural harmony. The few heroic figures who dared to criticize Muslim extremists and speak up for true liberal values were systematically slandered as fascist bigots. Witnessing the disgraceful reaction of Europe's elites to 9/11, to the terrorist attacks on Madrid, Beslan, and London, and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bawer concluded that Europe was heading inexorably down a path to cultural suicide.
Europe's Muslim communities are powder kegs, brimming with an alienation born of the immigrants' deep antagonism toward an infidel society that rejects them and compounded by misguided immigration policies that enforce their segregation and empower the extremists in their midst. The mounting crisis produced by these deeply perverse and irresponsible policies finally burst onto our television screens in October 2005, as Paris and other European cities erupted in flames.
WHILE EUROPE SLEPT is the story of one American's experience in Europe before and after 9/11, and of his many arguments with Europeans about the dangers of militant Islam and America's role in combating it. This brave and invaluable book-with its riveting combination of eye-opening reportage and blunt, incisive analysis-is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of Europe and what it portends for the United States.
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