While Europe Slept

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
By: Bruce Bawer
Copyright: 2006
Doubleday

2 Bookmarks out of 5

I am currently on a mission to clear out as many books as possible from my extensive collection. I will never get rid of a book without reading it, so that's how I came to be reading this book. I got this book in college when my professor was cleaning out his cluttered office. I picked it up because the subject matter intrigued me - I am especially interested in religion and how it plays into the culture of a particular society. I expected this book to be written by an isolationist activist who had never been to Europe. I was surprised and intrigued to learn that this book was written by an ex-patriot who has been living in Europe for the past decade. What I was most disappointed in the fact that his experience on the subject seems to stop with first-hand anecdotal accounts.

While I am not against reading books of different political or personal persuasions from myself, when they pass themselves off as being academic works, I expect a certain level of professionalism from them. In this case, While Europe Slept lacked any sort of note or bibliographic reference when talking about supposed facts. If anyone wanted to check into any story or research report quoted in this book, the reader would have to do some major searching - if these facts are even real at all. Any person reading this book should take the facts with a huge grain of salt. That being said, Bawer does provide a good critical commentary of these supposed facts. However, as with any controversial topic, I could think of counter-points to many of his comments.

Furthermore, I found it curious that Bawer talked of immigrants being integrated into the larger society to see themselves as Dutchmen or Frenchmen. He sees this as a necessity to combat fundamentalist Islam from destroying Europe from within. However, Bawer spends extensive time throughout the book comparing Europe to America and being vastly offended when Europeans criticize America. If he wants Muslim immigrants to think of themselves as Europeans, shouldn't Bawer be doing the same thing? Even more so, Bawer seems to have been so far removed from America that he has a very idealistic view of race relations in his home country. While America is the land of the free, Americans have their own racial prejudices that they have yet to overcome.

What I think is particularly interesting is that Bawer seems to be alluding to the fact that fundamentalism and terrorism must be combated in Europe like Churchill took in fascist Germany head-on. What he fails to mention is that during World War II, England was fighting an entire country and war had not yet mutated to include terrorism. What is interesting about terrorism is that is has no country and can be grown anywhere at anytime - Bawer does not provide an adequate response with how to combat an enemy where there is no physical front line. (Of course, that's just my opinion. If Bawer provided an answer for this, I missed it.)

This book falls short on many points. There are three chapters that are extremely long and not at all user-friendly. Bawer takes some long detours from fundamental Islam to speak of European bashing of Americans. I wouldn't recommend this book unless it already falls into your ideological category or you enjoy reading opinion pieces. I wish I could say that I have a lot of good thoughts about this book - but ultimately I would pass on it and pursue this particular subject of fundamental Islam and the clashing of cultures in another academic book.