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

• Exceptionally Illuminating

  
  By A3AT63GA15W0MW on 2006-02-25
  I bought this book hoping to get a better understanding of what was going on in Europe with their Muslim immigrant population (things like the car-burning riots in Paris, areas of Netherlands ruled by Sharia and not Dutch law, etc., left me quizzical). Well, I got that understanding. And I got a lot more, not the least are vital insights as to just how very different Europe is from the US. The author is both a clear writer, and an excellent journalist who digs down into the entrails to bring forth the real guts of a story. The information he brilliantly provided often left me with my jaw hanging, wondering, "That's really what they think over there?" I learned an awful lot in the short time it took to read this book.
  
  I honestly think that every American should read it. It is a clarion call to not repeat the myopic, multicultural mistakes that have gotten European countries into a fix that I honestly don't see how they can get out of now. You will acquire a clear portrait of the attitudes of Muslims in Europe, as well as those of elitist Europeans in all of their moral smugness and self-assuming superiority. Many themes are presented, but perhaps the over-arching theme is that tolerance for the intolerable (wife beating, genital mutilation, honor killing, rape, etc.) is never ever a good policy for a freedom loving, individual-respecting society.
  
  While Europe Slept makes a highly readable contribution to the discussion on the impact of Mideastern Islam with the democractic West. It also has a lot to say about the role that the United States has played in this drama. It turns out that we are not nearly as bad as those who claim to hate us say we are. Reading this book had the unsuspected effect of leaving me feeling even more blessed and happy that I am one of those lucky ones to be an American. What else can I say except that this is a really, really good book. It brought a lot of light into an area that previously was something of a mystery. Highly recommended.
  
  

• Will Europe Do It Again?

  
  By A1KKIA6JUFGUNZ on 2006-02-28
  I picked up this book because the title echoed John F. Kennedy's "Why England Slept" of 1940. At the time, tired Europe was willing to try anything to avoid another blood bath like the Great War--ANYTHING! Appeasement had earned a bad reputation by 1940.
  
  Today, Europe is habituated to appeasing aggressors. History has been rewritten to conform to establishment prejudices--yup! The PC effect! Europe's "free press" is not--Bruce Bawer documents this vigorously. The Internet is melting down EU "press control," as other viewpoints are becoming public knowledge. Before, if it wasn't "mainstream press," it was unknown--even when most of Europe's residents differed from the party line--they didn't have a voice. Europeans were appeasing the Communist Block until the Berlin Wall fell--then the Western European governments were at a loss.
  
  The threat of radical Islam is real. Bawer also raises the spector of a reactionary backlash--the very same thing that Mussolini rode to power in the 1920's and Hitler used to achieve power in the 1930's. Europe has forgotten the Red Tide and Franco and the rest. Don't forget--according to the Islamic Imperialists, Europe is "occupied Islamic territory." Not only must it be reconquered, but cleansed in fire and blood.
  
  Has Islam been high-jacked by power-hungry totalitarians? Or is it a religion of conquest? Like Europeans, Muslims are conformists who have a single, tainted viewpoint force-fed to them. Step out of line, and you get exiled from "the world." You might even have to move to America! "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destrouying the West From Within" documents the part of the "War On Terror" that wasn't publicized until the wave of bombings last year. I've been aware of the Islamic "unrest" in Europe since the early 1960's even though I couldn't read and write yet--I was in France in 1960 during the little civil war the French government and the French military officer corps had over Algeria. The Munich Olympics massacre (like the Texas Tower incident in the United States) led to European governments fielding SWAT-like police or military units--or both. During my active duty Army time in Europe, the "Turkish guest worker problem" was common knowledge--but the Russian bear got all of the attention. Bawer doesn't cover this--his book covers the man-in-the-street point of view during his long residence in Europe.
  
  I recommend this book because it appears that European history is repeating itself--Europe is allowing the barbaric to seize and exercise power. There is a parallel in the United States--the problem of illegal immigration and its attendant effects on crime, the economy, and political corruption. Illegal aliens in the United States vote? I can't do a whole lot about the French or the European Union's insane policies, but I do have a voice here in the United States. We can learn from others' mistakes, or we can make those same mistakes again ourselves. Read "While Europe Slept" and decide for yourself.
  
  

• European reader: Bawer is right

  
  By AMNV4N9QR3Y5G on 2006-12-05
  As a European I can tell you, Bawer has some strong and convincing arguments about the European crisis. Let the European crisis be a warning for what are the results of a political correct society that promotes cultural relativism. Be warned and read this well written book, it's a quick read.
  
  

• Yes and No

  
  By A3NH7PYU4AD5GA on 2007-04-02
  Ok, I agree with BB's bottom line: there is a widespread and growing Islamic danger in Europe; yes, there has been a lot of appeasement going on, based on political correctness and wishful thinking; yes, a lot of the problem is probably based on intentional exploitation of our social welfare system and intentional undermining of our liberal values and democratic structures. Yes,probably this is a strategic long term attack designed to take over.
  Fully with you there.
  But many people are just about to wake up. At least in the big places like Britain, France, Germany. Just look at last week's (March 26, 2007) edition of Der Spiegel, following the storm over the brain dead judge in Frankfurt who ruled that a Muslim man in Germany may beat his wife as his holy book says he can.
  I think BB's book is just too sloppy, superficial, anecdotal. More research should have been put in to make a stronger case, less based on hearsay and rumours. He ought to have made more efforts to avoid sounding like any old conspiracy theorist.
  His experience base Norway may have provided the inspiration for a lot of the strange statements that he makes about European political culture, classes, parties and about the European press.
  Europeans trusting their politicians to do things right? Maybe in Norway. Not in Germany.
  The mainstream parties all some variations of social democrats? Well, that is stretching it a bit. Doesn't he also quote the Swedish social democrat who calls Merkel a fascist? Is that consistent with his 'all is one' claim?
  All European press apart from the Brits to be streamlined pro-government stuff? Strange claim. Maybe in Norway...
  Also BB has got some problems with facts sometimes. Portugal has few immigrants? Who told him that?
  Or his brown-nosing to the American right: is the prodigal son asking to be allowed back in or what?
  The president 'knows more about the enemy' than his election opponent? Not the president that I keep hearing on TV, he knows nothing. (No need to defend Kerry here.)
  'America's forceful action against terror'? Where and when did that happen? The Iraq invasion was not it, obviously. No single act has helped the bad guys more. (I am not denying that some people may have had good intentions, but it went totally wrong.)
  So, read the book, but don't believe everything that BB says about Europe.
  
  
  

• Laughable "Fundamentalism"

  
  By A2LLTV9E3S8S5D on 2007-02-06
  There are points of view that are worth listening to, even if you don't agree with them. There are other views that are so absurd, they're laughable. One source of absurdity comes from those who think that, because they know a word that can be used to label two groups, then those two groups must be alike, particularly in negative ways. Poorly educated bigots make huge distinctions based on some trivial external trait like skin color. These more educated bigots base their prejudices on words fed to them by sources such as the NY Times. Words lend an aura of science to their prejudices and make them feel intelligent.
  
  For Bawer, "fundamentalism" is that word. No amount of reality, it seems, can break though the wall in his mind created by that word. Conservatives Protestants today have a theology that virtually all Protestants held 150 years ago. (Fundamentalist kept those views in the early twentieth century when Modernists were rejecting them.) And moral similarities continued until very recently. Conservative views about abortion were shared with the liberal theologies of a generation ago. As recently as the late 1960s, even liberals talked of "the evil of abortion." And their views of homosexuality are identical to those held by liberals not so long ago. In the aftermath of WWII, for instance, liberal writers often took great delight in pointing out Nazis who were also homosexuals (such as Roehm) to drive home the point that both were unnatural and disgusting. So if conservative Protestants (and virtually all serious Catholics) are "dangerous" and "evil" for holding those point of view, then so were the liberal Protestants of not so long ago.
  
  Like the 'color' bigotry of the poorly educated, the 'word' bigotry of the over-educated blinds them to all too obvious differences. A faithful, hard-working black father, is just another "lazy n___r" to a color bigot because they do not have eyes to see the truth. In a similar fashion, Southern Baptists in America and Islamists in Europe are alike in the eyes of a word bigot because he has a word to smear over both. A mere word blinds him to an almost overpowering set of facts.
  
  Conservative Protestants are among the strongest supporters of Jewish Israel, while it is the Islamists who want to see the little country destroyed. Highly secular Europe, virtually devoid of Christian 'fundamentalism,' is also increasingly anti-Semitic and impotent in the face of Jihad, something even Bawer can see. Even more disturbing, in this country, it's the liberal Protestants (including Carter, a liberal Baptist) who're on the verge of becoming openly anti-Semitic.
  
  Words also blind these word bigots to who has become the real allies of Islamists, Those who, two decades ago, were soft on communist tyranny, are now soft on Islamic tyranny. Parts of the media that once wrote 'radical chic' articles praising a Marxist terrorist such as the "Jackel," now writes soft and squishy about Islamic terrorists, one of whom is that same Jackel, now in a French prison as a Islamic terrorist. In fact, it seems that the same groups that were upset over Bush's "axis of evil" remarks were upset earlier when Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."
  
  Finally, keep in mind this fact. When it was Christian, Europe resisted Islamic invasion, the last of which was stopped on September 11, 1683 when a Polish army, after a forced march of hundreds of miles, arrived to defend a Vienna about to fall after a two-month seige. Yes, that's September 11. It is the high water mark of Islam's attempt to forcibly convert Europe to Islam. The Europe of today does not know its own history. It believes in nothing and stands for nothing. All too many Europeans, it seems, are just hoping things will hold together long enough for them to be dead and gone.
  
  So, unless you've got a lot of time on your hands, I wouldn't bother with this book. You'll get a far more sensible perspective on Europe's problems with Islam if you read Mark Steyn's America Alone or Melanie Phillips' Londonistan. Neither has any illusions about the nature of the foe that Europeans are facing. Neither is afflicted with word bigotry.
  
  
• The Enemies of Civilization
  By AG212WE6M4O5D on 2006-08-17
  This is the most insightful, lucid, objective, and frightening book I've read on Islam (see my other reviews of books on related topics). It even tops "Knowing the Enemy" and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam." Bruce Bawer is an American journalist who moved to Europe to escape America's homophobia, and he has evolved into perhaps the most articulate spokesperson for the Muslim problem. And don't tell Bawer that there's no Muslim problem. Don't tell him that a little more dialog, a little more multiculturalism, a little more tolerance, a little more understanding will solve the problem. Bawer knows better and so will you when you've turned the last page. Bawer describes the ghettos of Muslims surrounding Paris and other European capitals, and the waves of crime and seething hate which radiate from them. Seventy percent of the prison population in France is Muslim. Whereas Americans view immigrants as potential assets, Americans in the making, Europeans view them as needy cases, wards of the state. We learn that among the European ruling elite, American liberal democracy is a threat to the system which supports them, and that anti-Americanism among the chic approaches psychopathology. In their eagerness to avoid offending Muslims, the European press encourages continued misunderstandings. Calling Sheikh Ahmed Yassin "the spiritual leader of Hamas," as one writer did, is, according to Bawer, "rather like calling Hitler the spiritual leader of Nazism." Most telling is the outrage over relatively minor (or imagined) slights to Muslims, while vicious crimes and premeditated terrorist slaughter by Muslims are overlooked or even excused. Saddam killed more Muslims by a power of ten than Americans have, and where was European outrage then? Occasionally Bawer sums up his thoughts so succinctly that you know you'll be quoting him. For instance he quotes Al-Arabiya TV as reporting that "While not all Muslims are terrorists, almost all terrorists are Muslims." Bawer shows that it is not poverty, ignorance, or cultural isolation which drives Europe's Muslim radicals; their hate is a logical extension of the demonizing of American conditions by the political elite and by the man on the street. One five year old Muslim child was overheard asking her mother, "Mommy, why are you talking to that Christian pig?" Yet Europe, while still in denial about the extreme danger in its midst may actually be awakening. A poll by a Dutch TV station asked the question, "Are Muslims a threat to Western values?" 97% responded affirmatively. A poll of Muslims themselves by Britain's Telegraph newspaper showed 32% of British Muslims agreeing that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end." You still want to have a nice dialog?
  
  In the end, Bawer writes, Europe's enemy is not Islam, or even radical Islam. Europe's enemy is itself - its self-destructive passivity, its softness toward tyranny, its reflexive inclination to appease, and its uncomprehending distaste for America's pride, courage, and resolve in the face of a deadly foe.
  
  
  
• Terrific reporting on European senescence in the face of the Jihadist threat
  By AUHG8KSHI529U on 2006-10-02
  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.
  
  
• Profoundly scary and enlightening
  By A1MR1VMK999I6O on 2006-04-01
  This is a book that on one hand I couldn't put down and on the other hand I was sad reading. As a lover of Europe, and from a family whose members far back and recently have come from France, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands I was and am sad as the book shows, that so many people in Europe and these select countries specifically, fear their own history, and in doing so they are about to lose what has made them special and wonderful and basically French, Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch. And as the author shows in countless firsthand experiences, they seem to have a love hate relationship with themselves and their country, unlike Americans who can criticize the country, leadership but also be very proud of what makes us special.
  
  Appreciated the fact that the authors experiences are post 9/11 but go back literally decades so we get a glimpse of the evolution he has seen up close and personal. What is scary, if that's the right word, is how confused and even hypocritical residents of these countries are and how they seem to pocess an attitude that any negative acts on the part of Moslems as an example, aren't something to worry about and are in fact a passing problem. Made me wonder if they had this same mindset as Hitler was coming to power.
  
  Also of interest is the facts the author lays out, that show Europeans hated Clinton as they hate Bush. That many see the United States as evil on most counts, while consuming American products as fast as they can be produced. Reading the book one also comes away realizing that as an example Swedes (blonde, blue eyed) are fast becoming the minority in the land of Vikings. That in the Netherlands, and other European countries the government actually pays or rewards those who seek to destroy them. How else can you explain Islamic leaders who are upfront about wanting to destroy a country, while boasting they are taking the government monies as fast as they can and in highly questionable ways?
  
  I find it hard to say, but Europeans in the countries noted, are wimps who don't seem to care if they are killed, their history destroyed, their way of life insulted and laid waste, by people whose main goal is to force people to be Muslim whether they want to or not. And how 'progressive' countries can stand by as their own women are insulted and called whores is beyond me. Including one woman leader who said women who are raped by Muslim men probably are to blame in some way or another.
  
  In the end all I could think is how I wish NATO was no more, how I would like all our military troops removed from countries whose citizens don't have the gutts to defend themselves and have relied on our blood sweat and tears to protect them. And I say this as a progressive Democrat living in California.
  
  Thus in the back of my mind I wonder what will it take to wake these people up? Will it get so bad and the problem Hitleristic, that when its actually to late these same Europeans will cry and beg the United States to save them, and when we remind them they hate us, they will then blame us again for their mess, rather than look in the damn mirror to see who is really to blame?
  
  
• A few concerns about this one . . . .
  By A3IS9FVR9WG5TY on 2006-03-29
  I just finished WHILE EUROPE SLEPT and found it an interesting book. I'm glad I selected the book, and read it. Generally, it was most interesting, and -- I think -- worth my time.
  
  However, it might be helpful for potential readers if I address a few concerns.
  
  First, the book is more a kind of portrayal of Europe's folly and decline in general. The peril represented by radical Islam to Europe is only one subordinate part of this big picture. I read the second major section of the book, dealing with "blaming Americans and Jews." You can read thirty or forty pages of this section without any discussion of Muslims at all. Rather, the subject is an intense hatred by many Europeans of Israel and America. Anti-Americanism, in other words. It becomes a kind of scapegoating that lets Europeans duck responsibility for their own problems.
  
  So maybe the book should be entitled, "Causes of Europe's Decline," and then the subtitle -- "Anti-Americanism, Policy Failures, and the Threat of Radical Islam." This would be a better reflection of what the book is really about.
  
  Second, where Mr. Bawer does address Islam and its threat to Europe, he is really not talking about Radical Islam, as the book's title suggests. He is talking just about Islam in general. For instance, when we look at the riots and car burning in France, this is not the work of a tiny, fanatical faction of Islamic people in Europe. Rather, the fury is emerging from the broad Islamic community.
  
  So while I do not deny that Islamic immigrants are posing a major threat to Europe, I do not see the "Radical Islam" that is featured on the book's cover.
  
  So, with these qualifications, I do find the book deeply interesting and well worth reading.
  
  
• Civilizational suicide
  By A1RJD10TTI568L on 2006-03-05
  In this absorbing work, Bawer examines the psychological, moral and political aspects of Europe's current predicament and its reaction to the threat posed by large unassimilated minorities in its midst. One of the most fascinating revelations concerns the monolithic multiculturalism of the continent's academic, media and political establishment. Political journalists are part of this ideological club so they consider mainstream politicians as colleagues. One consequence is that the ideological range of the European media is quite narrow. Rigid adherence to multiculturalism renders the integration of immigrants impossible with the result that members of these communities turn to Islamism for inspiration.
  
  Beneath the surface tolerance and welfarism, there lurks something sinister in Europe today, something that the sanctimonious political correctness, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism of the elites cannot cover up. Bawer exposes Europeans' nativism and intense awareness of ethnicity as manifested through subtle discrimination and the bigotry revealed in private discourse. Reared as bureaucrats, European politicians aspire to lucrative positions at the EU and the United Nations. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not result in gratitude towards the USA but increased resentment.
  
  The first manifestations of the clash of civilization have been the murders of Van Gogh and Fortuyn, the Madrid bombing & London bombings, the 2005/6 riots in France and the uproar about the Danish cartoons. These are just the beginning of an ominous cultural conflict. The denial evident amongst the political and intellectual elites shows disturbing similarities to the 1930s. The elites employ the potent stigmatic "populist" indiscriminately against all those who challenge the consensus, maligning the leaders and mocking the members of such parties. Some of these movements are suspect but there are also parties firmly rooted in classical liberalism.
  
  The consensus obsessed Eurocrat elites have a hostile view of classical liberalism which they consider Americanism. The welfare state is soft Leftism based on multiculturalism and moral relativism. What is most disgraceful about the current European mindset is the phony tolerance, for example the European view of unassimilated minorities as "colorful" but Europe's refusal to meaningfully integrate them into society. Europeans are happy to dole out welfare money but not prepared to give these people proper employment. When applied to European politics, the word "sophisticated" indicates ideas removed from observable reality plus a peculiar selectivity that leads to idolization of the EU & UN and disparagement of Israel & the USA.
  
  The pieties of multiculturalism obscure a very tenacious ethnocentrism & the implications of the declining birthrate of native Europeans versus the rapid rise in the numbers of immigrants. European elites remained in deep denial after the murders of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn. Bawer's observations on the passivity of bystanders are particularly disturbing, especially the examples provided from the Netherlands and Sweden. The rhetoric of "solidarity & community" is just welfare state sloganeering. Dependence on the state has undermined individual responsibility and established a deadly pattern of indifference.
  
  It is clear that the continent, especially Old Europe, is in deep trouble. Bawer sees it poised between Islamism and native Neo-fascism. It might also be a type of Christian fascism that is embraced by a panicked population amidst serious economic and social turmoil. Part of the problem is that Europe mostly lacks a decent Right, except perhaps amongst the libertarian parties of Scandinavia. The senescent Christian Democrats have accepted the tenets of welfarism whilst fascist tendencies characterize many European "conservative" parties. The welfare state consensus has never been properly challenged except in the UK where Margaret Thatcher positively transformed the country in the 1980s. That is why British society is in a better state today.
  
  In part three: Europe's Weimar Moment, the author looks at the liberal resistance and considers future prospects. First the consistency of newspaper editorials from across the continent in response to the Madrid bombing is dissected: Expressen (Sweden), The Guardian (UK), De Volkskrant (Netherlands), Dagbladet and Aftenposten (Norway) all sang the same wildly irrational tune. Pim Fortuyn is discussed as an early example of liberal resistance in the Netherlands who was demonized by the consensus media. Other individuals who saw the danger and have acted upon it include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, British comedian Rowan Atkinson, author Melanie Phillips, Sabine Herold & Guy Milliere in France, the now departed Oriana Fallaci and Denmark's Queen Margrethe and prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
  
  In the Afterword to the paperback edition, Bawer shows how dhimmitude is on the march. The elites still explain away delinquency, suppress reports of violence and continue to smear defenders of freedom with labels like "secular fundamentalist, extremist or single-issue fanatic." There were further riots in France in 2006, the cartoon controversy in Denmark and the Pope's speech at Regensburg. In all cases, there was a craven response of appeasement and accelerating tendency towards self-censorship. Free speech is not only being criticized but also outlawed and prosecuted as Bawer shows with reference to cases in Norway, Belgium and Britain and the notorious Ad Dura hoax in France where Israel was falsely accused. Responsible reporting is found in a few papers such as The Times, Telegraph & Daily Mail in Britain, De Volkskrant in Holland and Denmark's Jyllands-Posten.
  
  Crime continues to rise at an alarming rate, illustrated by the situation in Berlin, Oslo and Stockholm and antisemitism is on the march again, Bawer shows with reference to an article in Der Spiegel and the disgusting statements of a prominent Norwegian writer. Thus the process of Europe's betrayal by its ruling class continues through the inversion or suppression of truth. For more information on the recent history and the current state of Europe, I recommend Icarus Fallen by Chantal Delsol, The Changing Face of Antisemitism by Walter Laqueur, Eurabia by Bat Ye-or, The Force of Reason by Oriana Fallaci and Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's Too by Claire Berlinski.
  
  
  
• A missed opportunity due to false statistics
  By A2PEVP36Y5A2EQ on 2006-07-06
  This is a fascinating book. The author states that Muslims are culturally hijacking Europe. And, the latter is offering no resistance due to its political correctness. In Europe it is now dangerous to criticize crimes by Muslims such as female genital mutilation, "honors killings," or other crimes against "infidels." Additionally, Europeans have become accustomed to Muslims beating up gays and Jews. Europeans view as racist anyone who dares to express any reservations towards these acts. The few who have, paid with their lives (Forhuyn the Dutch politician and Theo van Gogh, the Dutch movie director). It is more acceptable to vilify the United States than to criticize Osama bin Laden. Europeans attribute all problems to U.S. foreign policy. If only the U.S. would get out of Afghanistan and Iraq everything would be fine. They take no responsibility for their job discrimination practices that make it impossible for Muslims to work and integrate themselves in society. They ignore the fact that Muslims in the U.S. are employed and successful. The author further states that the objective of Muslims is to take back Europe through rapid immigration and eventually impose sharya laws. The European elite has ignored this issue through a policy of appeasement.
  
  Many reviewers have discredited the author for being simple, and naïve. He is none of that. He has a PhD in social science. He has thoroughly studied European history. He speaks fluently Norwegian, Dutch, German, and Spanish. And, he has a working knowledge of French and Danish. He has traveled extensively throughout Western Europe since the early 1980s. And, has lived years in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. As a gay person, he has suffered assaults by Muslims.
  
  Based on his knowledge and firsthand experience, Bawer's message can't be readily dismissed. So, why am I giving this book just a 2 rating? My rating reflects that the author has misused statistics to advance his arguments. He mentions the Muslims staggering demographic threat by stating they already account for 20% of Switzerland's population! Official figure is only 4.5%. He states that Muslims have caused a rapid increase in crime rate; and that Sweden's crime rate is now twice the U.S. Again that is not the case, official statistics indicate that homicide rate in Sweden at 2 per 100,000 represents only a third of the U.S. (6 per 100,000). Thus, it becomes difficult to believe any numbers. He states the Muslims represent only 5% of the Danish population, but reap 40% of its social benefits. Is that true? I got to question it.
  
  This is a missed opportunity because this book could have been really good if the author had used the correct statistics. By doing so, he would have moderated his arguments and earned credibility. It's too bad, because based on his experience he has something to say. But, he shot himself in the foot. And, he can't blame a European Muslim for that.
  
  
  
• Europe - Same As It Ever Was
  By ABUV8YV3CT669 on 2007-01-31
  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.
  
  
• This book should be required reading at college
  By A2POYXTGSPSW7O on 2006-03-13
  It takes a good person to know when they are wrong. The writer of this book admits it when he left America for Europe.
  
  When an Bruce Bawer says that Pat Robertson and the rest of the Christian Right are poor bunch of amateurs compared to the Muslims that should send up red warning flags to most Americans.
  
  I really liked this book. This Amazon.com reviewer works as a programmer with people of all faiths and sexual orientation. Generally, I like most of the people I program with and about the only thing that bugs me is when people miss deadlines or don't bring in food on treat day. Yes, I'm that easy to get along with.
  
  I have no illusions that there are much smarter women than myself. Many of the best workers I've met in this field are of different sexual orientation. What does it matter?
  
  That is why I've been very concerned over the rise of radical Islam. Everything in their teachings shows that it's a male dominated society controlled by violence against women, gays, and unbelievers. A truthful fact about America is Christians may be, at worst, an annoyance and, at best, some honest people. The deadly fact is this book makes it clear that once Muslims reach 5% of the populace then conflicts start with the indigenous populations. Muslims fight with Hindus. Muslims fight with Jews. Muslims fight with Buddists. Muslims fight with agonotics. This is a pattern here.
  
  The book is divided chronologically into three sections: prior to 9/11/01 ("Before 9/1: Europe in Denial"), in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01 through March 10, 2004 ("9/11 and After: Blaming Americans and Jews"); and from the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings through August 2005 ("Europe's Weimar Moment: The Liberal Resistance and Its Prospects").
  
  This books is a report of the problems (threats?) with Islam in Europe. Feminists and Gay individuals better take notice. The truth of the matter in American there are a lot of people who dislike Christians and ignore the threat from Islam. That is like worrying about a poodle on a leash and ignoring a rampaging Grizzly Bear. The difference between Islam and Christianity is that profound.
  
  I really wish all Christians, feminists, and gays would read this book. Radical Islam is a threat to us all. Bruce Bawer admits he left a mildly Christian America for radical Islamic Europe. It was like going from a frying pan into a blazing fire.
  
  This is an important book. I wish all Americans and traditional Europeans would read it.
  
  5 Stars
  
  
• an excellent look at a very disturbing issue
  By A1CYTBE7LLUQ8F on 2006-09-25
  As an American living in Europe for almost 8 years, I can see most of the troubles that Bawer describes in While Europe slept. Bawer's description and explanation of European attitudes about Islam seem pretty accurate.
  
  I am fortunate that I live in one of the new EU countries that so far has not developed the lax immigration policies of its ultra-politically correct western European fellow members. I have visited some of the cities that Bawer describes and can attest to the fact that there are noticeable differences from 10 years ago.
  
  As an additional note, I've never been to Norway and for that matter don't know any Norwegians. I wasn't aware that the anti-American sentiment was so ingrained in Norway's culture. I can only hope that Bawer is exaggerating to some extent.
  
  I would give While Europe Slept 5 stars for the general coverage of its topic. I would give the book only 3 stars for the presentation. I feel that Bawer makes too many generalizations about Europe which is an extremely culturally diverse continent. It's not fair to take Europe as whole for this topic.
  
  Finally, reading While Europe Slept, I felt that Bawer was often to personal and perhaps too biased. Reader will see that Bawer certainly discovered that 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side...especially in Norway! In any case, regardless of how you feel about Bawer's writing style, you'll probably agree that Bawer makes many strong points and you'll come away very worried for Europe.
  
  
• Depressing, but essential reading
  By A3U4FCEAT75XLS on 2006-09-17
  This book is even more depressing than Londonistan, which I just finished (I ordered both together). Slowly working my way through the whole genre (Robert Spencer books, Eurabia, etc), which I'll call "WTF Is Happening In The World And Why Is No One Doing Anything Serious About It". These books, including While Europe Slept, are not PC, not "Religion Of Peace" oriented, not multiculturalist, not in sync with any of the psychobabble that seemingly has taken over the planet. What this book is is honest. And well-written.
  
  "While Europe Slept" can best be compared to Eurabia and Londonistan, as all three deal, in slightly different ways, with the gradual takeover of Europe by the Religion of Peace - and with Europe's submissive cowardice and unwillingness to protect and preserve its culture and history. Eurabia and Londonistan are a bit more academic and scholarly, with more rigorous footnotes and references. Due to their more scholarly approach, they are bit more bulletproof for dealing with the tedious PC-multiculti critics. "While Europe Slept" is more conversational, easier to read, easy on the eyes, and anecdotal. I actually enjoyed (if one can use that word to describe reading for two nights about the demise of civilization) this one the most of any in the genre, because it is "lighter reading" - more "storytelling" than "master's thesis".
  
  While Europe Slept tells a story that maybe 5 or 10 % of the Western World understands intuitively, instinctively, and instantly as the real truth: Islam is on the march, energized, aggressive, confident, and as this book explains extremely well, soon to take over Europe. The Europeans are just not ready for this struggle. This book focuses a lot on the situation in the Scandinavian countries, but does touch on Germany, France, Spain, etc., too. Across Europe, a bland political correctness has so pervaded the mindset that they simply cannot acknowledge the huge threat. A quarter of the population under age 18 in some of those countries are Moslem, living in totally segregated communities, barely (if at all) speaking the native language, seething, brooding, and lusting for conflict. You would think that the Madrid and London bombings would have woken people up over there, but in reality it has led to greater calls for appeasement. As this book explains, our "allies" over there are just scared out of their minds over the threat within their own countries and do not have the stomach for dealing with the problem, if they even acknowledge it as existing. "While Europe Slept" covers a broad range of issues in Europe, from the nearly 1930's Germany style anti-Jewish sentiment (and acts, such as cemetary desecrations, attacks on Jewish people (12 per day on average in Paris now), and firebombings of temples, etc., sweeping across Europe to the equally virulent and nearly demented anti-Americanism. Not to mention the growing, intractcable situation of violent middle easterners living in their own little enclaves and popping out once in a while to commit atrocities. The other books (Londonistan in particular) deal more with the Arabs living within Europe; this books is more focused on the European non-reaction and desperate attempts to appease the enemy within. It is also about the unforutnate circumstance, very alien to the American reader, of a political elite (media, government, universities, etc.) that are marching together lock-step to control and influence public opinion toward a pro-appeasement position.
  
  By the time you finish this book, you will be depressed, confused as to how the world got so messed up, and despairing for our friends and cousins over in Europe who have lost the will for this fight, not to mention a bit resentful about the mind-numbing anti-Americanism going on over there. Yet, it is a very important book, and well written. This kind of book needs to be read, not for fun but to get a handle on the nature, scope, and seriousness of the world situation today.
  
  This book is a solid 5 stars, and as I mentioned earlier, the best written and most easily accessible of the genre. The takeover of Europe is not complete but is well underway and, while depressing, is important to understand and follow, and this book will help do that. It is also important to understand that while we think of the Europeans (collectively as well as individually, e.g. "Germany", "England") as our allies and friends, they largely do not think of us that way anymore. TO many of them, we are the enemy. Those opinion polls where they consistently say the US is a bigger threat than Bin Laden - we've been ignoring those polls, but those polls reflect the situation on the ground over there. It is very eye opening. It's got me thinking that we need to find some new friends; not the Marshall Islands and whatever (they're fine, but come on), I mean some major power type new friends. I don't think Europe is going to be with us over the coming decades, especially in some of the countries that will be Muslim majority within 20-30 years, like France.
  
  
• Carlin Romano's review of this book- The threat to Western Civilization as a whole
  By AHD101501WCN1 on 2006-02-23
  Carlin Romano's review of this book in the 'Philadelphia Inquirer' is the basis for my remarks here. Romano says that Bawer believes that Europe especially but also the West as a whole including the United States are in danger of being undermined by the Muslim communities which have immigrated to them in the past two decades. The Muslims enter the welfare - state in order to exploit its social benefits. As Bawer sees it the elites of Europe have believed that they were doing right by offering such benefits. They did not realize that the incoming populations would not wish to integrate, would not wish to work, would in fact establish a 'community within a community'.And they would believe that eventually they would take over the societies they have migrated to.
  The immigrants by virtue of their much higher birth- rate are in the future going to be larger and larger percent of the population. Many of them subscribe to the idea that their fundamental loyalty is to the Islamic nation which will eventually dominate global civilization.
  The threat outlined in this book has been written about extensively by among others Bat- Yeor and Robert Spencer. There is a major new work by Mark Steyn on the way later in 2006 which will consider many of these issues.
  And here it seems to me the major question which must be asked is not whether the threat is real, but rather whether the threat is as large as it is made out to be. And whether too the West will respond to it.
  My own sense that the threat is real, and very large indeed. Al- Quaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabi Saudi ideology which they are spreading in mosques even in the United States, Hamas, the radical revolutionary regime in Iran all envision a coming cataclysm which will lead to a new era of the Caliphate and a new Islamic realm on earth.
  Some of these groups are open about the genocidal intentions they have especially towards Jews.
  This volume it seems to me does not present any major new discovery but rather provides yet more evidence as to the threat Western Civilization as a whole is now facing.
  
  
  
• Important and Alarming
  By A22RY8N8CNDF3A on 2006-03-03
  Bawer, while living in a number of major European cities, reports that he encountered large, rapidly expanding Muslim enclaves in which homosexuals were persecuted and killed, honor killings and forced marriages widely practiced, women and young girls seriously abused, and freedom of speech and religion firmly repudiated. He concluded that the political and media establishment has turned a blind eye to this in order to pacify radical Islamists and preserve the illusion of multicultural harmony. His conclusion - Europe is headed towards cultural suicide.
  
  "While Europe Slept" opens with the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamic radical living on welfare. The rationale was to avenge his criticizing European passivity in the face of fundamentalist Islam outrages amongst their midst. Most European Muslims responded passively, claims Bawer, like their counterparts in the U.S. vs. 9/11.
  
  One major Bawer point is that Islamic immigrants in Europe have become very successful at exploiting Western welfare. In Denmark, for example, Muslims are 5% of the population, while receiving 40% of the welfare payments. Bawer believes that similar numbers exist across the Continent. Another example provided is that about 15% of Moroccan immigrants in Norway are on disability, and 25% of those live in Morocco. Bawer also states that the four London bombing suspects had taken in over half a million pounds (about $900,000) from the British government.
  
  Another alarming point is that the reproduction rates for Islamic immigrants considerably exceeds those of native Europeans. Bawer reports that in most Western European areas the Muslim population is 2-10%, but it is 16-20% among children. Meanwhile, most Muslims live together in enclaves and impede assimilation by setting up their own schools or sending their children back "home" for their education. Lessons that boys learn are that God gives them authority over women and made them superior to infidels - thus, non-Muslims have no rights over them. In September, 2001, it was reported that 65% of rapes in Norway were perpetrated by "non-Western immigrants (a common euphemism for Muslims). Further, in 2004, 80% of the residents at Oslo's main women's' crisis center were non-Norwegians; some estimate 90% of European Muslim wives are abused.
  
  9/11 brought an initial rush of sympathy for the U.S., claims Bawer, but this quickly faded into claims that the U.S. deserved it for bringing killing millions through poverty, destroying over 5% of the Iraqi population, and U.S. imperialism.
  
  "While Europe Slept" is predominantly anecdotal experiences and evidence offered by a single individual - Bruce Bawer. Usually it is dangerous to draw general conclusions from such a limited source. However, in this case there is credible corroboration - the Madrid and London bombings, the death threat against Salman Rushdie, Paris burning, van Gogh's murder, and riots against cartoons critical of Islam provide the documentation that militant Islam has become a serious threat to Europe.
  
  
• Striking, Frightening
  By A1B2ULYUU4YEZ1 on 2006-05-12
  For anyone who generally keeps abreast of current events, Bawer's book is still an eye-opening, shocking read. I read Tony Blankley's "The West's Last Chance," and where that book was broadly political and viewed from a policy-maker's standpoint, Bawer's book was more personal and viewed mostly from his own experience, the headlines he read, the things that had happened to him personally.
  
  Given Bawer's reasons for going to live in Europe in the first place, I would think, in a country as deeply divided as the USA, that he would be an acceptable and believable spokesman regardless of party affiliation. This is a situation that threatens us all equally, and Bawer makes it clear how far the radical elements of Muslim society in Europe have already gotten. Issues like forced marriage, female genital mutilation, violent and swelling anti-Semitism--these are absolutely unheard-of in the United States, and yet they occur in Western Europe, our supposedly first-world allies.
  
  Bawer reveals that the banner of "multiculturalism" in Europe is, to my understanding, a discriminatory tool that not only keeps immigrants jobless and hopeless in the midst of less-than-stellar economies, but is bankrupting Europe as a whole and exposing them not only to violent strangers, but threatening their civilization and their way of life. And yet many of these supposedly "enlightened" and "peaceful people" in their liberal paradises go along as meekly as lambs to the slaughter, unaware, due to the government-owned media, that these problems exist, much less that they are so widespread and potentially deadly.
  
  So far gone is Europe, Bawer explains, that America is viewed as the greater threat; greater than Saddam Hussein, greater than that lunatic in Iran, greater than any terrorist organization. Anti-Americanism is rampant and encouraged. America is the European scapegoat, regardless of who it is that's actually killing innocent non-combatants.
  
  As well-educated as I thought myself in regards to world events, this book was shocking. I had no idea that Europe was so...rigid and structured in its society; I just thought it was populated by Democrats. I had no idea HOW anti-American they are; I had no idea how far to the left they'd gone. (CNN, apparently, is considered right-wing in Europe.) Forget the long protection by America during the Cold War, or that it is the threat of American force that subdues some of the most violent of the extremist Imams. Americans, according to European common wisdom, are to blame for Madrid, Beslan, and 7/7. Oh, and according to many, 9/11 was a hoax.
  
  Every single facet of post WW II European life has been channeled toward extreme pacificism, socialism, anti-Americanism, ignorance of history, and ever-greater government control. It has predictably reached its height at the worst possible time; in the midst of an unprecedented threat from within their own borders, Europeans are uninformed about their history, blinded by their media, lied to by their politicians, and far too complacent to deal constructively with the culture that's challenging them.
  
  Some of this book did, as Bawer said, make me want to leave Europe to its fate. But being an American, it will be my task and my children's to pull Europe's collective head out of the noose. Again. It just remains to be seen, at this point, exactly how tightly that noose will be tied.
  
  
• IN REALITY, AN OLD PROBLEM IN A NEW FORM
  By A1660EJ86U5L6 on 2007-09-21
  I'll break my review into several parts:
  
  1). In the Fall of 1989, I served as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at the Vrije Unviersity of AMsterdam. Everything Bawer describes about European values, attitudes,society, their elites, etc., is absolutely correct. I saw it first hand. Because of the demise of patriotism and a value system, Dutch (and much of European) society has become one where social standards have evaporated. Thus, lacking a moral and ethical compass, an understanding of what is right and wrong, and a devotion to a coddling welfare state, they have created a vacuum that the Jihadists are only too willing and eager to fill. They created their own mess.
  
  However, what he describes is ingrained in the Euroopean system throughout their history. I know. I immigrated from there as a child. Just the players have changed.
  
  2). What Bawer did not disclose. WHile In the Netherlands, I discovered that Dutch corporations preferentially recruit workers from the military to staff the assembly line to the Board room. Many of these former military types "yearn to be of public service" and run for their parliament. Close to 55% of elected Dutch officials have a military background.
  
  In 1989, I asked someone in the US Embassy what would happen if an economic turn down occurred. Would these ex-miltiary elected officials say "Ya, right, let's take over and run ze country like za military to fix ze problems" and would this lead to the re-emergence of militaristic fascism? I was made to understand this was a major concern. Bawer is correct in raising the issue of re-emerging fascism in response to the rising tide of Islamistc fascism in Europe, but he understated it. Likely, that will be the outcome to counter the Jihadists when crunch-time comes.
  
  As my father once told me "beware of the man on a white horse." European hsitory is a continuiong saga of leaders on white horses, and becsue history repeats, it is likely to happen again.
  
  Bawer also did not mention the following. European countries with former empires have only themselves to blame. When they gave up their empire, they still considered former residents (including native/ethnic people) of their "colonies" to be be citizens of the "Empire" and gave them British and French and Dtuch passports for openers. Many used these passports to immigrate to the UK, the Netherlands, and France. In 1960 when visiting London, I was astounded at the number of Pakistanis working as bus ticket collectors, street sweepers, and garbage men because British workers didn't want to do those job and instead collect welfare. Those Pakistanis saved their money, opened businesses, imported their wives and proceeded to multiply at a high rate, while establishing mosques and then importing immans.
  
  3). What are the solutions?: Bawer really didn't have many. So here are some. First, if it is true that immigrants are tearing up their ID's and flushing them down the toilet on airplanes on the way to Europe and then claiming asylum, European governments COULD require that all ID's be turned over at check in, taken on board in a sealed container, and returned to the incoming passengers on landing at the immigration counter in the presence of a European immigration officer. That might slow things down with regard to fake asylum.
  
  Second, European government should start shipping out ALL radical Muslim immans and radical Islmaic sympathizers (including those born in Europe) back to the country of their heritage.
  
  Third, European governments should require that all children born in their country of foreign parents must attend school in Europe, and not be shipped at age 3 back to the Islamic world for an education, only to reappear later as adults. All subsidies for such children should be stopped if they leave the country. The only exception would be if the parents leave the country permanently too.
  
  Fourth, Eruopean governments MUST stop subsidizing all religious schools, denominations, and institutions if they truly want to separate Church and State. Clearly, the failure to do so has been misunderstood, abused and corrupted.
  
  Fifth, require all incoming "fetch brides" to be screened by embassies around the world before giving them visas. Use a system like the US uses in such circumstances.
  
  Sixth, place a limit on the number of children the government will subsidize to three children. If a family has more than three children, no subsidies for the new ones. (Works in China to a point?)
  
  If Bawer has sized up European attitudes correctly, and I believe he has, don't expect this to happen. But these proposals would help contain the problem in part.
  
  Last, I have a question for Bawer? Why does he still chose to live in Europe? When I left the Netherlands in 1989 after living there six months, I vowed never to return and I haven't. It was bad then, and has become worse now.
  
  RECOMMENDATION: Buy this book. It could happen in the USA and there are signs that in some parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states some of this is developing.
  
  
• Stereotypes and straw men
  By AWV4JIIKRU9IP on 2007-05-05
  What has happened to Bruce Bawer? A few years ago, I read an exceptionally well-written book, Stealing Jesus, in which Bawer presented a deeply researched history of American protestant fundamentalism, and called for a more loving church. While Europe Slept is a painfully inept screed filled with straw men and anecdotes, which will put off any reader hoping for a reasoned treatment of the subject matter.
  
  Which is a pity, because Bawer's central theme, Europeans' indifference to the growing influence of Islam in Europe, is one deserving serious attention.
  
  A major flaw of the book is that it is hard to determine just how seriously one should take its claims, because they are not backed up by concrete evidence. For example, when Bawer describes the sending of Muslim children back to their parents' countries to attend 'Koran schools' - while the parents continue to draw child welfare checks from the state - he gives no verifiable indication of how widespread this practice is. Is everyone doing it, or a very small minority? Without knowing this, how can we gauge the seriousness of the problem?
  
  Similarly, are the actions of fundamentalists who preach hate and commit atrocities such as the murder of Theo van Gogh representative of the Muslim community as a whole? If so, then yes, wake up Europe, it's time to do something. But if not, then Bawer's criticism is over the top.
  
  What does Bawer have against Europe, his adoptive continent? He can hardly complain that the Norwegian media claim that he hates everything about the country if his writing is a litany of complaints with nary a good thing to say about it. The impression he gives is of a person deeply ill at ease with his new homeland, and he spends a lot of this book criticizing Europeans. In doing so, he comes over as arrogant, self-righteous, and ultimately ridiculous. Take the conversation with "Niek" and "Tom" on pages 90 - 94. Bawer seems only to want to put down these silly Europeans and elevate himself and America. So Niek and Tom "show neither surprise nor contrition" at Bawer's arguments. They "react visibly," and Bawer's argument is "incomprehensible and traumatizing - it was too much for them to take." Bawer finally storms out, claiming to have read a book he hasn't actually read, and screaming, "I have a Ph.D!"
  
  Do Niek and Tom represent Europeans' views of Europe and America? Who can tell? A survey might have been nice. Next time, Bawer might try speaking to my dad; he'd get quite a different set of views from Niek and Tom's.
  
  But Bawer seems to be more interested in stereotyping Europeans than giving thoughtful attention to his thesis. Central Paris is "still inhabited largely by beret-wearing, baguette-toting, wine-sipping Frenchmen." The woman behind the desk of a "modest, rather run-down" hotel in Paris responds to Bawer's partner's request as follows:
  
  "Non!" she snarled. "No rooms! No reservation! Full up! Bye-bye!" Or words to that effect. With a dramatic Gallic sweep of the hands, she gestured for him to leave."
  
  Meanwhile, Bawer is waiting on the curb outside the hotel, so it's unlikely he heard the snarl or witnessed the dramatic Gallic sweep himself. Do these details, even if not made up, add to the strength of Bawer's thesis? What's his real agenda here?
  
  My take on this is that it's Bawer's catharsis - he seems to be undergoing intense culture shock and needs an outlet. That outlet is a book, ostensibly about European's lack of response to a cultural threat, but which largely serves as a big putdown of most things European. Come back to America, Mr. Bawer. You'll be much happier here.
  
  
• Riveting, Important, Impassioned
  By ASQ8KNNP3A7FP on 2006-09-25
  Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept" reads like an all-night, outrage-fueled, feverish conversation with a fascinating, impassioned friend about shattering events that shift tectonic plates even as the conversation progresses; you both know that when dawn breaks, the world you re-enter may be changed utterly from the world you began talking about the night before.
  
  Though the book focuses on the destructive impact of unchecked and unassimilated Muslim immigration to Europe combined with self-destructive policies and attitudes generated by Politically Correct academic and journalistic elites, for me its most poignant passages describe a change much more personal, and subtle.
  
  Bruce Bawer is a literary critic. He has written works criticizing the homophobia of American Christians, including "Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity." One would think that such a liberal intellectual would feel akin to Europe's PC elites. And, indeed, Bawer once did.
  
  As much as it is a clarion call against the dangers of PC approaches to Muslim immigration to Europe, "While Europe Slept" is an intimately observed memoir of political and personal coming of age.
  
  Once upon a time, gay American Bruce Bawer thought that Amsterdam was paradise. Amsterdam was the mirror image of everything wrong with America. What was wrong with America was right with Amsterdam.
  
  As time went on, though, Bawer received his wake-up call, often in the form of a gay bashing by Muslim men. Bawer soon discovered, to his shock and horror, that the sophisticated, "liberal" Europeans he had so admired were most likely to ignore Muslim beatings of gay men on Europe's streets. If gay men complained, they were chastised for being "imperialistic" and "racist."
  
  Bawer recounts, in an unflaggingly dumbstruck tone, one incident after another in which he woke up, again and again, to the very dark side of the leftist politics he had admired so long.
  
  The "coming of age" portion of this book resonated for me, as it will for many. If you have any passion at all, and if you are of any maturity, whether you are on the left or the right, you will have undergone a similar, equally painful, transformation. You'll see people you used to admire with their pants down, and the world will never seem the same.
  
  Bawer's thesis, in a nutshell: unchecked and badly bungled Muslim immigration to Western Europe, combined with low European birthrates, will, within a matter of decades, turn Europe into another Lebanon, where embattled non-Muslims are overwhelmed by a violent Muslim majority who will establish a caliphate on the continent.
  
  Bawer argues, using meticulous research, that Western Europe's journalistic and academic elites have encouraged unchecked and unassimilated Muslim immigration as a twisted reflection of their own envy of, and obsession with, America. Europeans hate their own obsession with all things American. They attempt to overcome their obsession and envy by mouthing fashionable condemnations of America, which they depict as a wasteland where evil whites dominate defenseless blacks. To prove that they are better than Americans, Europeans not only don't require Muslim immigrants to assimilate, they don't want them to. A secret chauvinism, kept secret because it would look too much like the hated "American racism," prevents Swedes from ever accepting a Muslim as a fellow Swede.
  
  Bawer's endless barrage of anecdotes is overwhelming. I suspect that many will not be able to finish this book. It is certainly the closest to a science fiction "end of the world" scenario that I've ever come to reading. Bawer recounts incident after incident of daughters whose genitals are mutilated by their Muslim parents, daughters murdered by their parents, daughters handed over to rapists by their parents, European children who dare to wear crosses round their necks beaten at school, homosexuals bashed in the streets while European onlookers do nothing to intervene, and Jews terrorized in a manner that can call to mind nothing so much as the ominous eve of World War Two. Women raped by Muslim gangs are told, by government officials, that they brought the rapes upon themselves because they haven't yet adopted Muslim full covering; Muslims declare "no go" areas in Western European cities that non-Muslims may not enter; Muslim imams demand the death of all non-Muslims.
  
  As important and vividly written as this book is, it has its flaws, primary among them, a lack of organization. Especially when reading such difficult material, it is important for the reader to get a sense of the light at the end of the tunnel, or, at least, that the tunnel has SOME end, even if it's just Europe being blown to smithereens by Al Qaeda in Cannes. At times, though, I felt that I was soldiering through an endless gauntlet of horror stories. I got Bawer's point pretty early on; after that it did begin to feel like overkill.
  
  Too, I wish Bawer had done a better job of communicating that he was not just talking about Muslims behaving badly. After all, various populations, including my own, and Bawer's, fellow Poles, have sometimes been accused of committing heinous crimes. The problem Bawer brings to light is not just ill behaved Muslims; it is, rather, the fundamental differences between Islam and other faiths. There are features in Islam, including jihad, gender apartheid, and the lack of separation of church and state, that make dealing with Islam different than dealing with *any* other religion. That case has been made by other authors, and if Bawer didn't want to make it himself I wish he had cited an author who had done so before him.
  
  
  
• Europe: More Coma Than Sleep
  By AAW58LG72PG7I on 2006-12-10
  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.
  
  
• dhimmis in Europe
  By A3POADPR0O2Q7K on 2006-05-12
  I recommend this book without reservation. Mr. Bawer writes on the pending subornation of Europe by fundamentalist Islam. His evidence is, quite simply, overwhelming and conclusive. That evidence is all the more convincing because, living as he does in Europe (Netherlands first, now Norway) he melds personal experiences and general reactions within Europe.
  
  He argues there are three primary reasons for this pending subornation. First, the political, intellectual and media elites of Europe have, with rare exceptions, a similar set of attitudes. Those attitudes, which are too much fun reading for me to give away, directly lead to their dismissing all evidence of what fundamentalist Muslims are doing in their countries. On the contrary, citizens in most European countries are given a steady diet of the same single point of view from all sources of information, save, now, the Internet. This point of view is almost without exception anti-American on virtually every issue; more on this point below.
  
  Next, people in most western European countries are taught from childhood that their governments are 'good', 'on their side' and 'looking out for their interests'. The examples Mr. Bawer gives, such as (p. 115) the arrogant government civil servant, are alone worth the price of the book. Such a drum-beat of the same attitude breeds a passivity on the part of citizens toward their government that any U.S. politician can only dream about. Combined with the first point, this makes a change of policy much less likely, regardless of the evidence.
  
  For me, the third point can be summed up as an attitude of 'there is nothing worth dying for'. It boggles the mind that the descendents of Dante, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Locke, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven view their own civilization as 'tainted', but from Mr. Bawer's report it appears that is the case.
  
  Mr. Bawer, for emotional reasons I have myself, says and obviously feels that we in the U.S. should 'do something'. Given the anti-American views, the blocking of voices that might speak out against the fundamentalist Muslims, and the picture in his book that seems almost an inexorable march to dhimmis status, I frankly don't see what exactly we can do. I'd personally sure like to do something, but I'm just unsure what.
  
  As to the quality of his writing, folks, this is great. There were times I had to put the book down because his portrayal of the Muslim behavior of the European elite dismissal made me want to rush to my gun safe and shoot someone--and I don't even own a gun! This book is worth every cent of the price.
  
  
• tells it like it is
  By A22B62KTPAWIM8 on 2006-09-21
  I am an American who has lived for over 20 years in the Netherlands who found this book absolutely right on to how I feel as a foreigner in this supposedly "tolerant" country. Interestingly enough, at the end of April, 2006, while driving across the country to visit family, my Dutch husband and I had almost the same conversation. Not only have we seen the society here become more like the Middle East, but we have experienced the effects of the illegal Moroccan immigrants' propensity for crime, the Dutch government's lack of courage to do anything about it, and my inability to get a job commensurate with a university degree even though I have passed the national language test with flying colors. It is equally confounding that, on the eve of a national election to replace a fallen parliament, there is virtually nothing but bland tales of prosperity and voter numbness. In yesterday's newspaper there was a headline "Immigration Not an Election Issue." I just shake my head in awe at the blindness of it! As I read Bawer's book, there is applause for his "chutzpah" for saying it like it is.
  
  
• Getting Medieval on their Eurailpasses!
  By A2HII4U9WQ0XUV on 2006-11-27
  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.
  
  JSG
  
  
• Bawer's Jeremiad against Europe
  By A3B1GC57IU1UYQ on 2007-09-15
  I saw Bruce Bawer on Bill Moyers and thought the idea of his book was fascinating. I had been watching news stories about the Muslim underclass in Europe and figured that there was a powder keg in the making, and I thought this book would enlighten me. In the first part of this book he states his central thesis, which is that the liberalism of European states will be the very thing that does them in, vis-a-vis their Muslim populations. He makes good points about Europeans not really understanding the meaning of true integration, about their romantic notions of other "exotic" cultures, and political correctness continuing to allow - if not condone - the worst practices of Muslim religious fanaticism.
  
  Up until the middle of the book I was with him. Then, with the second part of the three-part book, he lets loose about every niggling little thing that any random European might have done or said to him that got under his skin. He clearly has lived in Europe too long. He proceeds to whine about how anti-American all Europeans are, how wonderful American-style capitalism is and just about deifies Ronald Reagan, who, he implies, singlehandedly brought down the Berlin Wall. He accuses liberals such as Michael Moore of lying about how bad the health system is in the US, questions how really "poor" Hurricane Katrina victims were and spends an inordinate amount of time dissecting the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Huh? This is NOT why I bought the book.
  
  I realized that this book was less about how European nations were dealing with their immigration problems and more about how homesick he was for the US - and, how Europe's social economy was just way, way too "liberal" for him.
  
  He's a facile writer, and when he wasn't blowing his stack about Europe and praising the US I rather enjoyed the read. But I just felt that the book used the European immigration situation as a thin ruse for the real topic of the book...bashing Europe. Had I known that, I wouldn't have bought it.
  
  
• This deserves 10 stars
  By A23US54A0OILE4 on 2006-03-07
  Bruce Bawer in While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, writes a terribly scary indictment of how European governments have largely ignored the building threat from an immigration policy that thinks separate but equal will work. In fact, the lack of effort on the part of governments to encourage assimilation by Islamic immigrants has ignited a fuse on a time bomb.
  
  So much of the Islamic population in Europe found their way there when France, Spain, and other countries had colonies in the Islamic world. These colonial citizens traveled freely between the colonial master and their homelands. Many set up permanent residency in the European country and subsequent generations of native born "foreigners" have remained. Often, these groups are largely ignored and have been left to develop deep resentments at the hypocracy and injustice they experience. However, as Bawer points out, much of the current situation these peoples find themselves is self imposed. Refusing to give up the culture they left behind (multiple wives, genital mutilation) they infact refuse to assimilate. Couple that with the current anti-western attitudes by many Muslims in and out of Europe and you have a powder keg ready to destroy the Europe we all thought we knew.
  
  Bawer does a masterful job at laying out the issues in a clear manner. This book should be required reading by all who doubt the current situation in much of the world between the peoples of the West and Middle East. The recent protests over a cartoon in a European newspaper clearly defines the divide.
  
  Read this book and then take a look around and ask yourself whether the United States is making the same mistakes.
  
  
• A compelling timely read
  By A6PGY3XAJSYH2 on 2006-02-26
  With the recent torture death in France of Ilan Halimi and
  the senseless cartoon violence, reading this book was hardly
  a labor of love but fulfilled a need to know about European attitudes and responses to past violence. Bawer, an American living in Oslo, writes well and reading him is easy; he does not mince words. He castigates the European press and appropriately asks where is the moderate Muslim outrage we hear is coming. Most importantly, he delves into the European sensibiity towards accomodation and moderation and finds it hypocritical, wanting and destructive. This is an important and timely book which barely conceals the author's justified outrage.
  
  
• A blind man's rage
  By A2SV5W257AERUD on 2006-03-24
  The writer, an American gay and republican patriot, has some remarks about Islam in Europe that are worth noticing and rightly highlights a certain naivety living in Europe in regard to Muslim immigrants, though, through his generalisations about Muslims, his Euro-bashing, his naïve patriotism and his twisted view on historical facts, he makes a fatal error of making his work obsolete.
  A more academic and distant approach should have been attained in order to bring an interesting study. Indeed, the title of the book is not in relation to the content, which is more like an amateur political tourist diary of a hard core Republican in Socialist Europe. Ok, there are some exceptions where he hits the right spot, like the case of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, but these remain rare throughout the whole book. The lack of nuance (a word he hates), historical perception and actual knowledge created a missed opportunity to describe and analyse a real and threatening problem within a paralysed European political establishment. I've to admit I liked to read the book as a novel and I'd suggest him to travel more.
  
  Some of his remarks are so simplistic that it hurts to read, often in regard to his Europe vs. America comparison or his stance on communism where it becomes crystal-clear that he is quite uninformed or worse, misinformed. This is still a guy that becomes upset and shocked when he sees a Guevara T-shirt in Berlin, not understanding how evil survives after the fall of the Soviet Union. He's one of those rare species that believes that Iraqi's are truly liberated, not understanding that the once absent religious fundamentalism under a brutal dictatorship, surfaces again in all its glory. He's rightly accusing some European politicians having done business with Saddam, not being aware the US playing on both fronts (Iran-Iraq) in the end. He's bashing against communism and Islam in Afghanistan, not aware that the Muslim religious fury has been used, funded, promoted and, yes, even intensified by the West, via Pakistan, to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan. I can go on and on.
  His patriotism becomes remarkable when he believes America invented the helicopters, motion pictures, etc. while it isn't the case here, not understanding that inventions are often a sum of previous idea's and inventions in a progressive chain through time and space. His patriotism uncritically swallows pre-mashed and designed propaganda where America liberates the world of dictators, bringing prosperity and democracy on every soil it sets foot, , ignoring the fact that military interventions occur for various non-ideological reasons related to an international power game. While he's angrily focused on the differences between Europe and America, he ignores the cultural similarities (even both ways) and the mutual political strategies (Gladio).
  
  The writer stayed and lived in Europe for years though I rarely noticed any familiarity with the situation of his host country, indicating a kind of alienation in common with some of the third world immigrants. His emotive approach in combination with his naive patriotism, leads to a distorted perception and reinforces the fictitious European cliché of `a naive American'.
  Nevertheless this list of unnerving shortcomings, some of his remarks have some bar conversation truthfulness.
  Most of the time, he is focused on Europe and surpasses completely the fact that today this issue is occurring on a global scale representing the battle of the minds.
  
  Je gaat te vaak uit de bocht met de verkeerde feiten en dit had je beter vermeden:
  A blind man's rage.
  
  
  
• how it works
  By A358XP3X4U0X45 on 2006-06-10
  Thirty years ago, the Muslims entering Europe came as "guest workers." Now, most come as "asylum seekers." They "routinely destroy their identity papers on the plane to Europe--a simple ruse that enables them to avoid deportation and secure residency on humanitarian grounds." (p. 29) Once in, they bring over their spouse using a law of "family reunification." Through the practice called "dumping," they send their children back to the native land to attend Koran school to avoid their being integrated into European society and acquiring the hated democratic values of freedom of speech, women's rights, etc. While the parents collect child benefits in Europe, the child stays at the Koran school in their native land. Graduated at sixteen, she is married off at once. Just before having her first child, she returns to Europe--not knowing a word of any European language--and brings her husband over through family reunification. (p. 27) Her child is born in Europe and automatically a European citizen and is immediately registered for Koran school, and the cycle repeats. Muslim women have an average of 6-7 children, European women 1-2.
  
  The benefits Islamic immigrants receive include "public assistance, unemployment benefits, relief payments, child benefits, disability, cash support, rent allowance, etc." (pp. 29-30)
  
  Even those attending European schools will be forced to marry imported spouses. Many attend private Islamic academies in Europe which receive subsidies from the state and are taught to hate secularism, freedom and democracy. "Muslims can hear this kind of rhetoric not only at mosques [and schools] but also courtesy of Arabic-language satellite TV channels such as al-Jazeera, which celebrates suicide bombers." (p. 16) Some European state schools require education in Muslim religion and this instruction is given by outsiders such as the Islamic Foundation and uses textbooks which teach the children it is their duty to prepare to fight against their Christian enemies. "A T-shirt popular among young Muslims in Stockholm reads: `2030--then we take over.' " (p. 33)
  
  The sections of cities in which Muslims live are not temporary ghettos but permanent regions whose people regard the religious leaders as their governors, not the officials of the country in which they live. Many in France, Britain, Denmark and Belgium have already petitioned to have these areas recognized officially as being governed by sharia law and as off-limits to "foreigners" (i.e. non-Muslims) including government officials. (p. 33) In short, they are not immigrants, but colonists.
  
  Anti-semitism is on the rise, and Jewish children are harassed and assaulted in the street. These crimes go unpunished because the government officials blame the victim--the victim must be racist to have brought such a thing on them. What is behind this bizarre thinking is so-called multiculturalism--a doctrine which holds that all cultures all good except Western and Oriental. This doctrine is an unquestioned axiom among the people who run the media, the schools and the government. (But it is less fashionable among the people of Europe. A few individuals are trying to re-instate liberalism. However, membership in right-wing parties is also small but increasing.)
  
  Anyone who questions the behavior of Islamists or exposes it through books or films (like Theo van Gogh) is simply murdered. Any politician who tries to run against it (like van der Graaf or Pim Fortuyn ) is murdered. Media and government sympathy is inevitably with the perpetrator. When Islamic suicide bombers blew up London subways on 7/7, the British House passed a law making it a crime to criticize acts by religious groups. (p. 226) The Lords rejected the bill.
  
  The author, like everyone else, distinguishes between "moderate Muslims" and "militant Islamists", although he admits that these "moderate Muslims" are never seen and never heard from. Their existence must be taken on faith.
  
  A companion book to this one has now appeared. Its title is a deliberate echo of the title of this book: While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination Are Destroying America From Within. Americans too need to wake up. What is happening in Europe has already begun to happen here. The present of Europe is the future of America--provided Americans continue to sleep. Did someone say, "Political correctness is the opiate of the people"?
  
  
  

• America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It
• Infidel
• The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion
• Londonistan
• Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America