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While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within (精装)
by Bruce Bawer
| Category:
Religious conflict, Civilization, Politics |
| Market price: ¥ 268.00
MSL price:
¥ 238.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A very necessary jolt of reality, this book is an excellent look at a very disturbing issue. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 11 items |
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Victor Davis Hanson (Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Bruce Bawer reveals how self-acclaimed European morality proves abjectly amoral in its appeasement of radical Islamic anti-Semitism, homophobia, gender apartheid, and religious intolerance. A sensitive and sober portrait of an increasingly insensitive and reckless continent.
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Abraham H. Foxman (National Director, Anti-Defamation League) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
An honest and engaging account of a problem which, if left unaddressed, could engulf Europe in conflict. Europeans would do well to heed Mr. Bawer's advice and open their eyes. |
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Daniel Pipes (Director, Middle East Forum) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Bruce Bawer brings an American’s sensibilities and a writer’s insights to bear on the insistence by West Europeans that they really do not have a Muslim problem. Backed by deep research and wide personal experience, he argues that this blind denial is leading the continent to certain disaster. Bawer makes his case moderately but eloquently and powerfully. Will Europeans heed his warning?
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Mona Charen (Syndicated columnist and author of Useful Idiots) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Bawer punctures the moral pretensions of our "betters" in the Old World. Their supine acceptance of the Muslim oppression of women, their flatulent anti-Americanism, their renewed anti-Semitism - all are fully documented. There is something memorable on every page. Bawer writes with intelligence and passion. A fascinating analysis of Europe’s death spiral.
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Bookmarks Magazine (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Bruce Bawer, who has wrestled previously about American fundamentalism (Stealing Jesus) and gay rights (A Place at the Table), finds an equally contentious and compelling subject in the blind eye of European liberalism. Enchanted by the famed tolerance of Amsterdam, Bawer moved to Europe in 1998. But after settling in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, the author noticed a society that offered "millions in aid, but not a penny in salary." Reviewers find Bawer an eloquent writer with his passion balanced between his American sensibilities and his European residence. The sharpest criticism - that a lack of a bibliography turns While Europe Slept into an exercise in pamphleteering - doesn't undermine the ultimate effectiveness, or importance, of Bawer's thesis. |
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Dan Herak (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Anyone keeping an eye on Europe over the past few years cannot help but be perplexed by two related phenomena. On the one hand, the attacks and unrest of radical Muslims is impossible to ignore. The list includes the Madrid train bombings, the Istanbul synagogue, bank and British consulate bombings, the London commuter bombings, the murders of Theo van Gogh, Anna Lindh and Pim Fortuyn and riots in the streets of Paris.
On the other hand is the truly bewildering response of Europeans. One would have thought that given the results of appeasement in the 20th Century - massive worldwide deaths while bringing the world to the brink of the end of free civilization - Europeans would be a bit stiffer in facing an enemy completely open and up front and driven by ideology to wipe Western civilization out. Nope. Not the case. Instead, Europeans seem to be driven by a simple concept - if appeasement does not work at first, appease harder.
Bruce Bawer takes us into the mindset of all too many Western Europeans that accounts for much of this. Addled by multiculturalism, Western European elites now seem philosophically incapable of confronting a tight spot when that confrontation might actually mean criticizing another civilization and explicitly holding Western civilization up as superior. The common man of Europe may have his head on straighter and may eventually take the reins to steer his society towards a more sane path. However, after years and years of looking to the government to solve his problems, even the common man may have a disposition too weak to handle the determined focus of radical Islamists.
Of course, other factors other than the mush-headedness of multiculturalism play their parts and Bawer takes us through the European psyche's hall of mirrors. The history of massively bloody warfare on the European continent seems to have produced a mindset not to stand up to bullies but instead to avoid war at all costs, even if that means the bullies and tyrants take over inch by incremental inch. Further, after being fed a large daily dose of anti-Americanism by their governments and one-sided media, many Europeans reflexively take a stance to be anything other than American. And as Americans stand up to those that try to push them around, the European's response is instead... well, you get the point.
Bawer is especially strong at painting a picture of the anti-Americanism and anti-semitism of large chunks of Europeans which he encountered while living on the continent. As Europeans do not wish to blame themselves for their currently sorry state, and of course do not want to blame radical Muslims as that would be tantamount to actually facing the problems at hand, that leaves blaming America and Israel. Some of the antecdotes Bawer describes are truly incredible and, given Europe's history with Jews, quite frightening.
Hopefully, in half a century's time, While Europe Slept will seem a bit alarmist. However, in order for it to seem alarmist, the alarm must first wake people up to the situation that they face. There are a few happy signs on the horizon, such as several countries rejecting the European Union's constitution and the election of more American-friendly politicians. Although we shall see, one cannot help but think that things will get a lot worse before they ever get better.
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G. Yates (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
I guess Eurabia style books are a mini-genre of sorts, and this is the best of the lot that I have read so far. There are a couple that I haven't read, and if they are any better they must be top notch.
The book accomplishes many things, and far better than the better researched but less lively Londonistan. Firstly it explains the history and current state of the Muslim minority in Europe. Next he does a better job than anyone I've read of explaining (albeit he is quite frustrated about it) how the left in the U.S. and Europe finds itself in bed with a group whose ideology would have most of them executed or at least imprisoned. As a gay man he makes the observation that Jerry Falwell may not have wanted him to get married, but that Islamists want him dead, and there is quite a difference.
He also explains the political and media situation in Europe, with the possible exception of England. His point in a nutshell is that Europe is basically a one party socialist system with no dissenting media voice. This is a bit of an over simplification, but it gives you the idea.
Finally he gives some anecdotal as well as statistical reasons for believing that not all, or maybe not even most, Europeans in the street are as anti-American as we might think. They have been a bit brainwashed, and the state so runs their lives that they are puzzled when situations arise that call for action, but they probably don't hate us. They certainly don't hate our culture if euros spent on music, movies, etc. are any indication.
Very well written, lots of interesting examples, funny and frustrating and enlightening at the same time. It can get a bit repetitive, and if it were a little less strident you might even get away to giving it to your PC friends, because it sure make some excellent points.
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Martin Asiner (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Most of the recent spate of books which purport to warn the west about the Islamic demographic tidal wave of immigration usually focus on the Moslem side of the equation. In While Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer however presents a timely expose of the European side. Bawer notes that despite how craftily the Imams of Islam are planning the Islamification of the world, their hopes would be dashed soon enough without the willing complicity of the west. How is it, Bawer asks rhetorically, that nearly all of Europe is blindly placing their collective necks on the demographic chopping block? The answer lies in the different way that the west sees itself and the way that Islam does. Islam is, if nothing else, pragmatically obsessed with nothing less than world conquest. It knows that it cannot do so by force, so it plots by stealth. Islam has correctly sized up the European mentality and has found it wanting. Bawer notes that Europe has had the great bad luck to suffer a serious sense of a decline of moral clarity at the same time that the convergence of the Iranian revolution has placed the power of oil in the hands of ruthless turbaned thugs who see no problem with taking their huge disadvantages of illiteracy, oppression of females, anti-Semitism, and an explosion of births and turning them into the colossal advantage of this decline in the will of the west.
After the end of the Second World War, Europe - and to a lesser extent England and the United States - saw the results of ethnic cleansing and excessive nationalism. It became trendy for the left to decry any and all attempts at maintaining military hegemony. Further exacerbating the collapse of a military mindset was a corresponding collapse of religion. Secularism became entrenched as the new Political Correctness. As powerful as the armies of the west were, the minds of the buttom pushers lacked the will to push them. The political left grew to downgrade free trade capitalism only to espouse socialism. And socialism needs an ever expanding population base to continue to pay for the benefits of the European aging baby boomers who seek to invite Moslem refugees but are unwilling to grant them citizinship, thus ensuring an ongoing witches' brew of discontent that allows the heads of Europe to deny there is even a problem of a fast disappearing base of ethnic European stock. Bawer is correct as he sees Europe as sleeping. He further warns the west that the viciousness and bile of Islam is most certainly not asleep at the switch. Bawer does not prophesy the virtual end of the west, but it is difficult for the reader not to draw that conclusion. This book is an absolute must for anyone who does not want his daughter in New York to someday be required to wear the hajib on her head as she has to learn to adjust to Sharia. |
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Jim Garrett (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
It's the kind of cruel, laughingly bleak reversal of fortune so beloved in European myth and legend, the sort of Black Forest cautionary fable the Brothers Grimm were so fond of honing and polishing all razor sharp, with flashing teeth and gripping jaws and serrated bony edges.
Or if you prefer, the Ultimate Rip Van Winkle, where poor old Rip nods off in the 18th century, only to awake with a start at the groaning threshold of the 21st, to find the world turned literally upside down: men wearing dresses, and those liberated Parisian & Dutch women liberated right into burkhas and hijabs!
Bruce Bawer's grim little While Europe Slept is nothing less than a firsthand account, buttressed by anecdotes and stastics on the Darkening Continent, of a truly Extinction Level Event. Be warned: it's not bedtime reading, unless you're doing your reading from a fortified cave somewhere East of Kandahar and ruminating on the 72 houris you've got coming to you.
Bottom line: Europe, the cradle of much of what we consider Western Civilzation, proving ground of the Enlightenment, is being overrun and Islamized, its ancient ideals and culture sold down the river even as Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East happily jump in to fill the demographic breach.
1) The West - or rather, white Christian Europe - isn't breeding. The Cult of the Pill & the Abortifacient, or the Liberated Woman, or the two-earner household, or a lot of late-night headaches - whatever it is - has reduced the white European fertility rate below replacement levels.
By contrast, Muslim immigrants have their mojo on, baby - they're very fecund. If Demographics is Destiny, by the middle of the century many European countries will have a majority Muslim population.
2) Bad Self-Esteem: For years we Westerners have been lectured by our elites, our professors, and our politicans that Westen Civilization is corrupt, nasty, brutal, and greedy, and was built on the blood and sweat and slavery of other cultures. What a surprise! - ideas have consequences! Sooner or later someone was bound to believe it. If we hate ourselves so fervently, how can we expect Muslim newcomers to want to become us?
And more to the point, how can we muster the confidence to demand them to do so?
So that's it: if current trends stay the same, European Civ will have a lot fewer Gay Pride marches in the public square, and more mass executions in sports stadiums; less Sartre, more Mohammed; fewer topless beaches, more topless (truly) adulteresses.
Will it be so bad? Europe has pretty much behaved, in the years after 9/11, as if the US is the Great Satan; might as well have official rallies making the whole thing de jure. If anything, the Islamic jihadist movement is an adversary straight out of the Leftist European handbook: Jihadis have merely taken up the Leftist clarion call of "Smash the Power" and added a few jetliners and boxcutters to fine-tune the propostion. Islamists are playing by the grass-roots rebel manual, with a twist: they're acting globally, and thinking locally!
The irony is that all this crisis comes not even a decade after Francis Fukuyama and his fellow Brussels-born internationalists heralded the "End of History", in which everybody would play nice with their new multilaterlist toys. Just goes to show that when everyboy's ready for the Last Man in Hitory to turn off the Lights, the barbarians thumping on the gates might have other ideas.
Which brings us to Islam - and also suggests why Bawer's Apocalypse might be a little premature, much like eighties Yankee yuppies taking Japanese lessons and chowing down on sushi. Islam, for me, is pretty much like monkfish: annoying, well-nigh-universal these days, something I really hadn't heard of before 1997, and something I plan to avoid. That said, one thing is clear: in just the last 20 years, Islam has made itself a) astoundingly annoying to fellow Muslims, Atheists, Christians, Russians, Druze, Jews, Australians, Balinese, sub-Saharan Africans, and possibly even Hari Krishnas. Something's gotta give.
And in the end, it's really about Evolution, anyway - isn't it? Survival of not only the fittest, but the most confident. Which is why this book - much like other raging jeremiads of its kind, such as Buchanan's State of Emergency and Oriana Fallaci's rousing Rage & the Pride - really doesn't do much for me. Not to say it isn't well written, or alarming - it's a sort of howling barbaric yawp from a terrified liberal, finally coming to grips with the fact that Freedom does indeed have a price-tag.
I don't mean to be glib, or to belittle Bawer's agony over what he considers to be the demise of the West. After all, extinction is a loney, tragic event: imagine the angst of the last Stegosaur, galumphing alone down Dino trail even as the Earth cooled and the dust thrown up by that impertinent asteroid turned his balmy jungle lair into nuclear winter. Or imagine how uneasy a citizen of Carthage might have been in the 2nd century BC, as a hungry Rome sliced off first Sardinia, then Sicily, then turned all of North Africa red with blood beneath its gore-grimed short swords.
But I take issue with Bawer's contention that Islam is "destroying Europe from within": Islam can't do that, and doesn't even need to - European 'intellectuals' have been more than up to the job themselves.
Think of it: what is Europe, what is the West? Codified, I would say it is absolute personal freedom, the individual as an end in himself, worthy of dignity; property rights; separation of Church & State; consensual government; Rule of Law. The Adversary Culture springing up all over Europe, that of Islam, embodies the very opposite of all of these things. And yet even now, with their intellectuals slaughered in public streets in their great cities, the European populace is too timid to fight.
History offers no examples of great Eunuch warriors; how then can a castrated Culture survive?
And should it? Read While Europe Slept and awake, if need be - but don't weep. Weeping for the death of a culture that has welcomed its own destruction? That is futility: if Europe as we know it dies in the clash that is coming, it does not merit an elegy spelled out in ashes. |
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Craig Matteson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
If you have read Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, you can see this as a companion volume for the Continent. If you haven't read that book, then you should read this book AND that book. Really. And then add in "American Jihad" or any other book by the indispensable Steve Emerson. But you certainly should read this book. It is written well and is clearly reported.
Bruce Bawer is a very talented writer who has written books and articles for gay rights, same-sex marriage, and against conservative evangelicals. Even in this book (pg. 33) he calls Jerry Falwell "an unsavory creep", says that James Dobson's parenting advice is "appalling". However, he notes that Falwell wasn't issuing fatwas, that Dobson wasn't telling people to murder their daughters, and that while Pat Robertson wanted to deny him marriage [to his same sex partner], the imams wanted to drop a wall on him. Honest and clear insights that one can parse and agree with in the large sweep, while disagreeing with its parts (or agree, if you are so inclined).
He notes "I traveled to the Netherlands in 1997 and thought I'd found the closest thing to heaven on earth. What sentient being, I wondered wouldn't want to liver there?" Yet things had changed so much that a survey from April 2005 showed that every third Dutchman wanted to leave the country. This book report the excruciating events and changes that are occurring in most of Europe that has led to this deterioration. Bawer does not pull any punches in stating his view that is the rise of the Muslim influence with a certain intransigent, bullying, and non-Western traditions that is destroying Europe.
The author is more alarmist about Europe than Pat Buchanan is about America and notes why. He assures us that what is happening now in Europe is coming to America and judges that it is only a matter of time until Sharia law is given place in the legal system of Europe and the sad day that will be.
There are so many shocking events that he documents in this book that I cannot share even all the most disturbing ones. However, he notes on page 66 that a report stated that 65 percent of rapes in Norway were committed by "non-Western immigrants (a term that in Norway is essentially synonymous with "Muslims")". He notes that when Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology, was asked for comment she said that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes". And if that weren't appalling enough, she added, " Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt to it." Can you imagine if that were said in America?
He also documents the kind of social rot that is part and parcel of the European senescence. They so love their social democracies that they are willing to compromise their heritage, principles, and even a strong sense of reality in order to prop them up with this poisonous brand of immigration. Again, it is too much to document here.
I also found his documentation of the "Peace Studies" movement in Europe and its anti-American roots, stem, and flower to be very illuminating. Now, I can understand where the anti-Americanism of the far left doctrines in our own country come from. They are simply transplanted notions from socialist Europe that they want to grow here. It is sad in so many ways, but particularly in the way they hallucinate their way into seeing the old USSR as the good guy and providing a needed balance to American imperialism and terrorism. These folks are so far gone that left wing crank Noam Chomsky would be a moderate conservative in one of their panel discussion.
Bower concludes this much needed book so beautifully. In speaking of the Dutch (whom he admires more than I do) he says, "They seem to have brought Western civilization to its utmost pinnacle in terms of freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and the road ahead, very much like the actual roads in the Netherlands, seemed to stretch to the horizon, straight, flat, smooth, and with nary a bump."
"And yet they'd turned a blind eye to the very peril that would destroy them."
Let's hope the Europeans wake up, but certainly let's make sure that we Americans are awake and honest with ourselves about the threats the Jihadists represent to us at all levels.
Strongly recommended. |
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