While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
by Bruce Bawer

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
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Book Summary Information

Author: Bruce Bawer
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2007-09-11
ISBN: 0767920058
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Broadway

Book Reviews of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

Book Review: Instead of insightful analysis mere xenophobia
Summary: 1 Stars

It is true that most European coutries have ignored the issue of immigration and integration for far too long, causing a certain ghettoization and the emergence of parallel societies. Particularly immigrants of Islamic countries frequently hardly speak their host country's language, perform poorly in school and often end up unemployed. There are also problems with violence, fanaticism and the oppression of women in this particular class of population (left-behind muslim immigrants).

However, it is populist, inconsiderate and hasty to blame Islam for all of this and to predict Europe's downfall (or even the entire West's!). There are several other explanations for intolerance and violence among Muslims in Europe: a large share of them is poorly educated (high correlation with violence and fanaticism for low education in all population segments), socioeconomically disadvantaged and often unemployed (again high correlation with violence and fanaticism for those attributes regardless of religion or ethnicity). There is no evidence that poor, uneducated, unemployed Muslims have a higher crime rate or affinity to extremist ideologies than e.g. poor, uneducated, unemployed Catholic French or Atheist Germans. This is an interesting and important question / field of study, but the author does nothing to bring to light some empric evidence from comprehensible trustworthy sources.

Also, many European countries have failed to design processes for integration (education about rights and duties, language classes, coaching), relocating immigrants to gloomy suburbs with already high crime rate. This is another factor that is hardly mentioned in the book.

Rather than providing new insights based on a thorough analysis, this book is merely exploiting xenophobia and airing itself as the skryer of a dark future...every bit as intolerant and undifferentiated as the fanaticism it attacks.

Summary of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

The 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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