While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West
From Within
By Bruce Bawer
(Doubleday, 247 pages, $23.95)
Eight years ago the gay conservative culture critic Bruce Bawer
mailed off the final chapter of his book Stealing Jesus —
a no-holds-barred attack on intolerant fundamentalist Christians —
and boarded a plane for the Netherlands. There, in the land of
legalized pot, prostitution and pickpockets, Bawer expected to find
an enlightened people more to his liking, i.e., more open-minded,
more tolerant.
Tolerant to a fault. The Dutch, like nearly all northern
Europeans, turned out to be overly tolerant of its Muslim minority.
Every Islamic transgression was ignored: homophobia, forced
marriage, marital rape, polygamy, the refusal to educate girls, the
terrorizing of outspoken critics of Islam, the blatant
anti-Semitism, the abhorrence of democracy, the hate-filled
preaching in the state-funded mosques — a see-no-evil attitude was
adopted toward all of these abuses, so as not to offend the
sensibilities of the ragged multiculturalists and the hollow
diversifiers.
The conduct of the native Dutch and Norwegians wasn’t much
better. Everywhere a goose-stepping political correctness
prevailed. To fit in, one must constantly spout empty
anti-Americanisms; more importantly, one must never criticize Islam
in any of its variations (though criticism of Judeo-Christianity
was tolerated, if not encouraged). To Bawer’s great surprise,
northern Europeans came across as more bigoted than even Bawer’s
fellow Americans. Most were completely unable to accept
dark-skinned Muslims becoming real Danes or Norwegians or Germans.
Despite themselves, the notion of ethnic purity survives, even if
it is unarticulated.
To further conceal the problem, France banned outright
identifying or even acknowledging ethnic or religious differences.
That 70 percent of the inmates in French prisons were Muslim was
ignored. Overlooked was the fact that four of five battered
residents in Oslo’s women’s shelters were Muslim. Muslims made up
five percent of the Dutch population, yet received 40 percent of
Dutch welfare payments. Doubtless native Europeans pitied the poor
Muslim immigrants, but not so much that they would welcome them
into their neighborhoods and workplaces. That’s where Europe’s
famed cradle-to-the-grave welfare and subsidized housing (or
segregated housing) came into play. The author puts it this way:
“millions in aid, but not a penny in salary.” In an attitude of
condescension worthy of Marie Antoinette, smug Europeans continue
to treat their Muslim minorities not as real people with real
problems adapting to Western society, but as exotic and colorful
reminders of European tolerance and diversity.
As Bawer soon discovered, Northern Europe was a place where
radical clerics had completely cowed, not just the Muslim
community, but native Europeans too. Muslim critics either censored
themselves or they’d gone into hiding in order to avoid the fates
of Dutch Prime Minister Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo van Gogh,
both brutally butchered by “offended” jihadists. (Bawer’s book was
written well before the Danish khartoon kerfuffle, but that episode
was to be predicted. Europeans were well aware that no criticism of
Islam or its blood-thirsty prophet would be tolerated. When a few
brave Danish newspaper editors dared put this theory to the test,
they were immediately proven right. Today they too have retreated
to their hidden sanctuaries.)
DAME ROSE MACAULAY once remarked that “it is a common delusion that
you make things better by talking about them.” She may have been
speaking of the relations between men and women, but the same
standard applies to Europeans and Muslims. The former-still
shell-shocked from two world wars — have deluded themselves into
believing that all problems can be solved peaceably through
dialogue. In one of the more chilling passages in his book, Bawer
notes that van Gogh’s last words — as his Muslim assassin prepared
to slit his throat — were, “Mercy! Mercy! Surely we can talk about
this!”
“[A]t the end, it seemed, even he had grasped at the Western
European elite’s most unshakable article of faith-the belief in
peace and reconciliation through dialogue.”
It is Bawer’s contention that many Muslim immigrants have no
desire to integrate into the infidel Western culture. Many believe
they can come to the West and therein establish Islamic mini-states
where the laws and culture of the kaffir do not apply. And
increasingly European governments are giving in to this power play.
Bawer has noted elsewhere how during the recent Paris riots, French
officials refused to enter the Muslim suburban enclaves without
permission, as if they were seeking to enter a sovereign state.
Meanwhile as European Muslim numbers increase, so does their
arrogance and vehemence in denouncing their host’s decadent
culture. “Family honor depends on ‘not being seen as Norwegian —
as integrated,’” one Muslim tells Bawer.
Bawer’s title While Europe Slept gets to the heart of
the matter. Europe seems determined to sleepwalk through its
current crisis and maintain its naive belief that fundamentalist
Muslims want the same things middle class Europeans want: freedom,
democracy, decent jobs, a nice home. Europeans will continue to
believe they can “preserve their nations’ cultural homogeneity
while letting in millions of foreigners and smiling on their
preservations and perpetuations of values drastically different
from their own.” They will persist in stopping their ears to the
hate being preached from the mosque next door. And they (the media
included) will continue to hand over their freedoms whenever it
conflicts with Sharia Law. Muslim bullies now view the khartoon
flap as a great victory for fundamentalist Islam. Perhaps next they
will demand European governments allow polygamy. Should the
government resist the fundamentalists will be on the march,
flambeaux in hand, illuminating Downing Street.
Bawer calls this a Weimar moment, when the West either
capitulates and appeases the Islamofascists, or puts up a bold
resistance. (One way to resist would be for European and U.S.
governments to select new citizens based on their ability to adapt
to a secular, democratic society, and weed out would-be immigrants
opposed to integration.) Bawer’s feeling is that Europe will
continue to deny that there is a problem. That’s fine. Edmund Burke
once noted, “The people never give up their liberty but under some
delusion.” Guilt-ridden Europeans (and some Americans) suffer the
delusion that appeasing radical Muslims will end the current clash
of civilizations. Today’s Europe is flush with Chamberlains. Where
will it find its next Churchill?
