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This book is an easy read. Packed full of easy to understand information about radical islam. This used book was in great shape.
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I've sent this book to several friends. If they're not buying the war on terror from the American right, maybe they'll listen to a gay guy.
Bawer moved to Europe, enamored by "a world that had moved beyond bigotry," where "people's sense of identity and self-worth didn't depend on jobs or salaries," and folks "are appreciative of and satisfied with everyday pleasures." He wanted to love Europe, did love Europe, apparently still does.
All the more powerful, then, his eye-opening, highly readable account of events and attitudes in Europe through 9/11 and beyond. Wonder at the bizarre embrace of Islamic extremism by the European intellectual and political communities even as they encourage the flood of North African immigrants to establish their own isolated communities under sharia law.
Reading this book is like watching a horror movie unfold, but you can't look away. Read it with Mark Steyn's "America Alone," and you'll lie awake nights. Follow it up with Spencer's "Stealth Jihad" and face our future.
Here's Bruce Bawer on Bruce Bawer quoting blogger Roger Simon:
"What if you're one of these people who think that Gay Marriage is a natural outgrowth of the human rights movement and that the War on Terror is protecting those same rights? That's not a contradiction in my mind. In fact, it's almost evident."
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Bruce Bawer, who is writing from the capitol of Norway, Oslo, is an american immigrant to Europe. He portrays himself as being at very first infatuated by the continent, then disillusioned in equal measure, while experiencing the excile`s common rediscovery of the virtues of his land of origin.
He describes all of Western Europe in this book, but he has a particular focus on the Netherlands and Norway/Scandinavia. The Netherlands because it was the very first european nation he moved to and mastered the vernacular of, and also because the country has come such a far way down the road of multiculturalism.
Bawers accounts of european flaws are harsh, and somewhat painful for a european reader, but they are also mostly accurate. His description of the european public`s "parroting" of public truisms as presented by the media and the political elite, is painfully on the mark. His remarks that european statesmanhood is not based on a life of character, vision and boldness, but a lifelong service to party and bureacracy while presenting the same politically correct regurgitation year after year, is spot on. Equally interesting is the hypothesis that scandinavian lack of constructive critique of immigration and of immigrants,is based on our previous lack of firsthand contact with the "excotic". The white scandinavians have simply been to afraid of their own feelings of unease on seeing their previously white streets fill with colour, that they have become zealous multiculturalists in order to convince others (and themselves) that they are not racist.
Also painful, but sadly true, is his portrayal of the particular type of antiamericanism that is permeating the european leftist elite, and even members of the right at times. Especially bitter is his account of speaking with two western german girls before the fall of the Wall. They are pouring out anti-american retorics while american troops are based on that very same soil in order to protect their right to speak their minds freely. What Bawer can be criticed for, is that he sometimes portrays european antiamericanism and anti-israelism as being universal among the elite and people alike, and that is still very far from the truth. That said, it stings, and there are several biting observations of european flaws that are worth taking into account. If I remember correct, he had an image of Europe as the cranky, old mother of the strong, and vital american son. The mother constantly nagging at and putting her son down, but is still dependent on his support, protection and patience with her peculiarities. I very much enjoyed that image.
His accounts of the islamization of europe is also uneasy reading, but a lot of this might already be known to many readers. Its also worth noting that things, in Oslo at least, are even worse than in Bawers accounts. Maybe he`s afraid people won`t believe him if he tells the full scope of deterioration?
The book is obviously written for an american audience, but is also interesting for european readers. Partly because Bawer has such a good knowledge of both american and european culture, but also because he has a portfolio of languages that most multilingual europeans will envy him, and wich enables him to monitor the newspapers of a handful of european countries. Its also interesting for european readers because, even though we might agree with Bawer pointing out european flawed selfimagery and unjust criticism of America, he unknowingly adds a few american myths to parallell ours. One of them is the never ending american notion that the USA entered WW2 for idealist reasons, leaving out that they did not join the war until they were attacked by Japan, and then declared war upon by Hitler. This of course means that among the great western powers, only the appeasing goverments of France and Great Britain (with the Commonwealth), actually declared war on the totalitarian threats before war was declared on them. Needless to say, european appeasement is a recurring theme in the book, and perhaps rightly so, but the path of american entry into WW2 is not the example of vigour and vigilance that Bawer wants. Rather its a good image of the negligence, ignorance and selfdecieving illusion that one can do business with those that despise you and would like to see you destroyed. That was the case of the american public and media until 1941 and that is the case of the european establishment and media yesterday (like it was until 1939).
I haven`t found the book in the shops in Norway, but i now have to buy another from amazon. I gave the very first copy I bought here to a german friend of mine, who I had to defend from a racist assault by a north african the last time she visited me in Norway. I hope she`ll also benefit from reading about the odd phenonemon where the victims of assaults somehow are also required to bear the guilt of the assailant, as described by an non-european author with such good knowledge of european affairs.
The book could do with footnotes and references, but is an interesting, well written and quick reading about the strange process that is quickly changing Europe, and the West forever. If Bawer gets his will, the US immigration laws will be relaxed in order to open up for europeans emigrating (the dutch at least, now leave for Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I might be among the europeans that takes such an offer if things are going the way Bawer, and ever more people like him, thinks.
Hans Olav Arnesen
Oslo, Norway
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The material Bruce Bawer covers in this volume is similar to the content of Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Claire Berlinski's Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too, and Melanie Phillips' Londonistan. Maybe you don't want to hear the bad news about the Muslim takeover of Europe from Mark Steyn, who is known to be conservative, and a Bush sympathizer. Well, Bruce Bawer is an advocate of homosexual rights, whose last book was a critique of conservative Christians called "Stealing Jesus." After he wrote that book, Bawer move to Europe with his Norwegian lover, whom he also married. Then he noticed that, despite an almost total absence of fundamentalist Christians, Europe is becoming a difficult place for homosexuals--and other infidels--to live. So those of you coming from a more liberal perspective can read this book knowing that it was written by a mainstream liberal who does not write for National Review.
It doesn't matter; the story is the same: Europe is having a demographic and moral crisis. They are importing large numbers of Muslims who do not integrate (both because they don't want to and the host nations don't want them to) and hold values utterly hostile to Western values such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Or, judging from the reaction of the European elites to the Muslim assault on these values, maybe these are really just American values. Europe is in thrall to a weird form of political correctness that labels any criticism of even the most vile Muslim practices--like honor killing, female genital mutilation, force marriages and rapes, and wife beating--as racism. Even though Islam is obviously not a race, the European elites view any criticism of it as racism.
Some of the problems with this book have been noted by previous reviewers: it is poorly organized; there are only three large chapters covering 237 pages, two of the chapters are labeled "before 9/11" and "after 9/11" but contain many stories from both periods; for the most part there are no references, etc. But this is a work of journalism, not scholarship. Bawer recounts many stories of personal interactions with Europeans, so this is a very personal book, not a scholarly tome. The power of so many personal, first-hand anecdotes cannot be discounted. One of the criticisms is that there is a large section in the middle of the book (about 100 pages) that focuses not on Islam but on the rabid anti-Americanism of the European political and media elites, as well as of many in the country. But the European rejection of the U.S. and its embrace of Islamic culture are related phenomena: both involve an amazing denial of observable reality in favor of a fantasy world of the Europeans' own creation. Most Europeans have a false concept of America as a place of crime and violence, where none but the rich can get health care, and there are no unemployment or social security benefits. They embrace incredibly puerile economic fallacies, such as that wealth creation is a zero sum game, and America's great wealth was somehow stolen from poor Third World countries. Bawer notes that the range of media opinion available to a European is a small fraction of the range of opinion availabe to Americans.
If I have a criticism, it is that Bawer is actually too optimistic. He believes Muslims could be integrated into Western societies if only the Western elites had the cultural confidence to enforce our own norms, and force them to integrate. I doubt it, but it is a moot point. Europe's elites do not have the resolve to enforce Western norms, in part because they have long been taught to believe that these norms have no value, and are really just a form of oppression of the minority culture.
Another problem is that Bawer always refers to the problem as being "fundamentalist Muslims" or "Islamists." There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate, non-fundamentalist Islam. It is not surprising that Bawer would make this mistake, having written a book criticising fundamentalist Christianity in the USA. There is a large segment of Christianity in America that is non-fundamentalist, supported by an extensive theological tradition. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Seminaries in the U.S. are non-fundamentalist. This is nowhere the case in the Muslim world. There simply is not a liberal, non-fundamentalist theological tradition in Islam. Period. The few Muslim scholars who could be characterized as liberals work in Western universities, and have little influence in the Muslim world and no influence on Europe's radicalized Muslims.
Despite its problems, this little volume is well worth reading, and should be read by anyone interested in the dilema facing Europe today.
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I can't believe a continent that spawned the Vikings; and the Roman Empire can't handle a few lazy Muslims . Europe just needs to grow a spine and start rounding them up and deporting them, and if they were born in Europe, tough banish them, just take care of them the same way they got there, stick them on jetliners and send them off to the countries they love. Muslim countries. Simple. Right now the europeons are selling their grandchildren into dhimitued (slavery to Muslims) in exchange for not being called a racist. Well I think that's going to work for a while but in about 30 years the younger generation is going to get sick of supporting good for nothing (and dangerous)trouble makers and theirs going to be a continental wide civil war. And I still think theirs some Viking roman German English Irish blood left in the europeons to handle things.