Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West

by Christopher Caldwell

Why has Europe's half-century of mass immigration failed to produce anything resembling the American melting pot? Deadly terrorist attacks and rioting in Muslim neighbourhoods have now forced Europeans, caught up in a demographic revolution they never expected, to question its success and to confront the limits of their long-held liberal values. By overestimating its need for immigrant labour and underestimating the culture-shaping potential of religion, has Europe trapped itself in a problem to which it has no obvious solution?

Christopher Caldwell has been reporting on the politics and culture of Islam in Europe for over a decade. In his provocative and unflinching book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, he reveals the anger of natives and newcomers alike. He describes asylum policies that have served illegal immigrants better than refugees. He exposes the strange interaction of welfare states and Third World traditions, the anti-Americanism that brings natives and newcomers together, and the arguments over women and sex that drive them apart. And he examines the dangerous tendency of politicians to defuse tensions surrounding Islam by curtailing the rights of all.

Based on extensive reporting and offering trenchant analysis, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is destined to become the classic work on how Muslim immigration permanently reshaped the West.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Islam, Religion, Cultural, Sociology

371 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Christopher Caldwell (born 1962) is an American journalist and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is a contributing editor at The Claremont Review of Books and a member of the editorial committee of the French quarterly Commentaire. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate. His writing also frequently appears in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, where he is a contributing editor to the paper's magazine, and The Washington Post. He was also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Press and the assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

It’s the hottest of hot topics here in Britain and I thought I’d try to think about it more, but maybe now I wish I hadn’t. Whichever way you think about it, it doesn’t make you feel good.
Thinking about immigration is really hard if you’re a white leftish British person. But if you’re a white normal British person then it’s easy - what you think is :

1) leave the EU;
2) tear up all human rights agreements we may have signed up to;
3) stop all immigration now;
4) deport all the scroungers, jihadis, fake gays and lesbians – oh yes, they crack on they’re gay just to get in, didn’t you know?

Ugh.

However, if you don’t subscribe to that unlovely point of view, you still have to answer the question : given that the first world is immeasurably richer than the developing world, and many millions of people in the latter want to switch to the former, how many immigrants is good and how many is too many? Furthermore, as the phrase goes, are we in Europe sleep-walking into segregation?

RIGHT WING DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN YOU’RE A COMPLETE IDIOT

Caldwell is a rightwing American but that doesn’t mean his arguments should be defenestrated without consideration. A lot of this book can be described as a scathing history of the contradictions of purposes and results. He emphasises something which cannot be denied – let me take Britain as the example here – that mass immigration was decided upon by a political elite for various reasons and that the public were never consulted on the issue.

THE BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST DEMOCRACY IS A FIVE-MINUTE CONVERSATION WITH THE AVERAGE VOTER.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

The public isn’t consulted about a number of things, some of which they are very passionate about. It makes you wonder whose country it is or what democracy is. Democracy now means rule by political elite. In Britain we never have and we never will get a referendum on the death penalty, for instance. The political elite (of both sides) have decided that the death penalty is a matter of conscience. Who’s conscience? Theirs. This means that if the issue is ever voted on in the House of Commons, it’s a free vote, not dictated by the party bosses. This means that the parties never include it in their manifesto. The public want it back (around 70%) but the political elite believes that the death penalty is wrong. So the public will never get what it wants.

That suits me, I don’t want it back either. But still, is it democratic?

THE EUROPEAN POPULATION DEPLOSION

Caldwell points out the steep decline in the “native” birth-rate throughout Europe. “It is now at the lowest levels ever recorded in any major region of the world.” In order to replace the population, the fertility rate for women has to be 2.1 children. All European birth rates are below this. Italy, Spain, Eastern Germany and the Baltic states currently have a birth rate of 1.3.
He says
A society that maintains a 1.8 total fertility rate will be 80% as large at the end of a century

He gives a neat illustration - in Italy the public parks and the restaurants are all labour-intensive. You can’t maintain them with native Italians, there aren’t enough. So:

in many walks of life, Italy has a choice between keeping the population looking the way it did 50 years ago and keeping the landscape and the social structure looking the way they did 50 years ago. Through immigration, it is choosing the latter.


ISLAM

The biggest influx of immigrants into Britain, at least, in the last ten years, have come from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. But Caldwell isn’t really interested in Polish plumbers. They’re not the problem. They'll assimilate or they'll return, and meanwhile thy'll fix your central heating. He wants to talk about the actual problem : Islam.

Caldwell says that mass immigration into Europe is profoundly changing Europe but especially because a great many of the immigrants are Muslims with a fixed set of beliefs which run counter to European liberalism. We can see this in the many clashes between the two belief systems over the years, from the Satanic Verses fiasco through to forced marriages and jihadi imams, homophobia, antisemitism, the burkha, honour killings, and on and on.

He points out that things were managed differently and much better in America. They have very very approximately 5 million Muslims and although they have experienced 9/11 they have not experienced 7/7.

7/7 was the 7 July 2005 London tube and bus bombings by four British Muslims. British-born, that is.

Caldwell points out that anyone can become an American, it’s not an ethnicity. So it’s easy to be proud to be an American. You're being proud of a political and social ideal. But in Europe, the nation-states are ethnically based, and Europeans are well aware of the ethnic wars and unbelievable racism which plagued the continent for centuries, so they are diffident about their own nationalities. And, an immigrant can’t become English, or Danish, or French or German, because that’s an ethnicity.

So then there’s the thorny issue of assimilation and integration. Other immigrants inter-marry – out of a zillion examples, let’s mention Nicholas Sarkozy’s parents (Hungarian/French) or Ed Miliband, British Labour Party leader (Polish/Jewish). Muslims do not intermarry, they import partners from the Indian sub-continent.

Identity is a weird problem for Muslims. They don’t feel much love for the European host countries who routinely invade Muslim countries (Mali being just the latest, there will be more). (Aside : If I regard the British Royal Family as a hopeless embarrassment what must young Muslims think?) Muslims also have little time for the parent countries, since they no longer live there.

Caldwell harshly dismisses the notion of “moderate” Islam, which many liberals fondly embrace. (Does he mean me?) He says “moderate” Islam is a hope, not a fact.

IMMIGRATION IS A FAIT ACCOMPLI FOR WHICH PEOPLE ARE SCRAMBLING TO FIND A RATIONALE

This book is very (VERY) provocative, but unlike many others which are horrible racist tracts and can be dismissed with a shudder, this one is intelligent and therefore disturbing. But also, in many ways, utterly pointless. He is stating what is the case, and he is saying that time cannot be rolled back. So what, Christopher Caldwell, should we be doing about it all? He leads us up to a point where you may think he is just about to unveil a manifesto, a ten point plan to fix this thing called Europe, and … nothing. The tumbleweed blows. What kind of doctor expertly diagnoses your various complaints and then boots you out of the consulting room, prescriptionless, upset, nowhere to go.

Well, not that I think anyone could fix the condition we’re in, because, of course, it’s all part of a larger whole, the giant vortex of turbocapitalism, which pushes and shoves vast swathes of people around the planet willy nilly, and who knows where we’ll all end when it calms down?

Answer : it never will calm down. Get used to the crisis, it’s here to stay!

So glad to be done with this book.

THE CALDWELL THEORY OF IMMIGRATION




"it's melting...."

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a persuasive expose on immigration and the growth of Islam in Europe.

Historically Europe has been a source of out-migration – mostly to America. Only since the end of the Second World War after Western Europe stabilized and commenced re-building did it allow immigration from outside its periphery. These immigrants were foreign in terms of language and culture – particularly religion. Since the 1950’s Europe has become a secularized society removing it’s traditional Christianity, not only out of government, but from day-to-day life. Europeans, the author convincingly argues, were naïve and ill-equipped to deal with immigration from Islamic countries.

As Mr. Caldwell assiduously points out, politicians have been obfuscating the immigration issues for decades by using terms like “diversity”, “integration”, and “multi-cultural” in an all too positive light. At their peril they have ignored the presence of non-compromising fundamentalist Islam in their cities.

These ultra-conservative societies or ghettoes have sprung up where youth are unemployed and are being drawn to Mosques that hardly preach democratic values. They have become seed-beds for anti-European sentiments at best and nurture terrorists at worst. Parallel societies have developed that bear little resemblance to Europe’s values – sexual equality, civil justice, freedom of expression… In these separate enclaves women are hardly being treated as native European women are.

All this is well documented in Mr. Caldwell’s book. Islamists make demands that put European values at risk – demands for different laws that imply sharia.

I do feel that Mr. Caldwell over-emphasizes the nihilistic views of European artists that are espoused by a certain intellectual milieu. European cities, in comparison to most North American cities, have a vibrant life, with bustling outdoor cafes teeming with people. Museums abound amidst their well-preserved streets and buildings.

It is only in the last few years that Europe’s politicians have started to make an about-face – witness Sarkozy and Pim Fortuyn. Pim was unfortunately killed in an incident unrelated to Islam but his ideas are spreading. Europe does value woman’s rights highly and as the author points out, hopefully this will be non-negotiable in the escalating confrontations between Europe and Islam.

This book is an excellent accounting of the frontline meeting place between Europe and its Islamic presence.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read some of the other readers' comments on the book. Its interesting that the people who rated it with 4 or 5 stars didn't exactly get warm fuzzy notions from the information therein. But the people who said it wasn't a good book called the author a racist xenophobic liar. This book poses some real serious questions about how Islam will or won't integrate with The West. All his information is cited in the 30-plus pages of sources. I'd hope people who dismiss this book will take another look at it.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, published in 2009, shows its age. It was written before the mass immigration to Europe of the past few years, and also before the increase in Muslim terror. While nothing the book says is wrong, and its analysis is sound enough (though it nowhere justifies, or even attempts to justify, the echo of Burke in its title), its problem is that nearly everything it contains is outdated. The future has arrived, and it is much worse than Caldwell pessimistically predicted, though at least we can now look forward to a fresh future for Europe that will be even farther downhill.

I’m actually bored with reading about the topic of European decay, so I think this will be my last book on it unless something fresh and new happens in Europe (which it will soon, I am sure). A variety of more recent books, written from perspectives across the political spectrum, have covered much the same ground, including Douglas Murray’s "The Strange Death of Europe," Rita Chin’s "The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe," and James Kirchick’s "The End of Europe." Murray’s book is, in particular, more worth reading than Caldwell’s book. Again, that’s not because Caldwell’s book is bad, as such, it is merely past its use-by date. Moreover, because it is mostly tacked-together anecdotes, loosely grouped into modest, self-contained segments on a given subtopic, it does not pull or compel the reader in any meaningful way. It lacks a center, so the reader often feels adrift. Like too many books by authors who typically write in magazines, it reads like more of an extended periodical piece than a book.

The usual way of looking at Europe’s problem with immigration, by which is universally meant mass immigration from non-European, almost exclusively Muslim, countries, is as point-counterpoint. On the one hand, we have Europe. On the other, we have Islam. These are separate cultures. Discussions revolve around whether and how to integrate them (in Europe, that is—there is no talk of integrating any aspect of European culture in any Muslim country, for both practical reasons (nobody wants to move to Muslim countries) and Muslim theological reasons), as well as around whether the level of immigration is a problem, and whether immigrants pose challenges and cause problems, or are merely, or also, a benefit. Caldwell’s thought falls into this general pattern of positing a direct contrast, and conflict, between Europe and Islam.

But this point-counterpoint is really the wrong way to look at the matter. What exists is actually a triangular relationship, with what Europe is, and what Islam is, forming the bases of the triangle, and the apex being what Europe was, before it went to hell. Why and precisely when it went to hell we can debate, but no clear seeing person can deny that what Europe offers now, a wealthy land barren of children that worships the false god of so-called liberal democracy, is not the Europe that made Europe what it was, and the modern world what it is. Thus, counterpoising modern Europe to Islam, as the two alternatives on offer, is an overly limited vision. That’s not to say it’s wrong—just because there was an apex doesn’t mean it’s something we can climb back to. Maybe it’s just gone, and these two are the nasty alternatives on offer. But you have to clearly strip out “European” characteristics that are not actually part of what Europe today, if you are comparing everything that today has to offer. Christopher Caldwell sees part of this, in that he pretty obviously thinks Europe has little to offer. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Islam flourishes in Europe because Europe is a continent of Lotos-Eaters. But he never takes the final step to fully appreciate the triangular relationship among the cultures being discussed.

Nonetheless, "Reflections" is serviceable enough, if you’re looking for a readable overview of the basic problems afflicting Europe. Caldwell begins with a history of post-war immigration to Europe. This could more accurately be simply called a history of immigration to Europe, since until after World War II, mass migration had never occurred since the early Middle Ages, and England, especially, is the exact opposite of a “country of immigrants.” As most authors do on this topic, Caldwell starts by noting that Enoch Powell was right, at least in his facts and predictions, and he similarly notes the predictive power of Jean Raspail’s "The Camp of the Saints." He discusses the reasons Europe encouraged this immigration, from postwar labor needs to left-wing guilt to “rescuing the welfare state.” He states the commonplace, usually muttered sotto voce, that the vast majority of Europeans oppose, and have always opposed, allowing Muslim immigration to Europe, yet their supposedly democratic rulers have always ignored this and aggressively suppressed dissent. He points out the well-known, yet suppressed, fact that diversity is the opposite of our strength—it is corrosive of social bonds and rapidly erodes social trust, with no corresponding benefits of any type, other than the only concrete thing ever adduced by its proponents, more food choices. He documents the criminalization of opinion if it runs contrary to ruling class dictates. And, to sum it up, Caldwell asks the question that frames his book: “Can you have the same Europe with different people?” The answer is “no,” to nobody’s surprise, and to his credit, Caldwell says “This book will avoid alarmism and pointless provocation, but it will also avoid euphemism and the kind of preemptive groveling that characterizes most writing about matters touching on ethnicity.” (Preemptive groveling is what characterizes far too much conservative writing; it is progressives who should begin every argument with an apology to the world for the enormous crimes they have committed and abetted.)

Caldwell is full of fun statistics and unpalatable truths. “The United Nations Population Division calculates that replicating the age structure and support ratio of [the welfare state] of Europe would require 701 million [new] immigrants” by 2050. He laughs at the UK Home Office’s optimistic belief that these new immigrants won’t themselves need old-age support, because they’ll mostly return to their home nations for their retirement. He points out that “Britain’s Muslims [join] the military at roughly one-twentieth the rate of other Britons,” and that only 17 percent of British Muslims believe Muslims committed the September 11 attacks. He shows that “immigrants take more out of welfare than they pay in” (despite lies you often hear to the contrary). For example, in Germany between 1970 and 2000, the number of foreign residents doubled, to 7.5 million. Of those, two million were employed in 1970. And two million were employed in 2000. The rest were relaxing at the expense of working Germans. (In 2017, it was more than 10 million foreign residents, and climbing rapidly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still just two million working—that I can’t find the statistics suggests this is correct.) On the other hand, many of Caldwell’s numbers are behind the times. For example, he says “The refugee and asylum system has been tightened across Europe in recent years, in the face of popular opposition. A report in 2006 by the UN High Commission on Refugees showed only 9.2 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide—the lowest level in a quarter century, and probably indicative of nothing more than tougher European screening procedures.” Well, Angela Merkel and the rest of her odious ruling class companions have shot that all to hell, haven’t they?

In the second third of the book, Caldwell turns from immigration generally to an examination of Islam in the European context. He cites Hilaire Belloc’s 1938 prediction of the resurrection of Islam’s political power. He notes the ghettoization of Muslims in much of Europe and the existence (undeniable then and now, but nonetheless often denied) of European “no-go” zones, where the authorities have effectively ceded control to Islam. He offers clever phrases: “The first European generations in 1,300 years that did not see Islam as a threat turned out to be the last ones.” And, “How can you say you’re excluded, Europeans wondered, when I’m always saying how delicious your baklava is?” He points out that the first generation of Muslim immigrants was extremely law abiding, causing far fewer problems than, say, the Irish did in the United States. But the second generation, and the third—ah, there’s the rub. They not only offer more crime and terrorism, but more separatism and demands for Muslim supremacy (which, of course, is inherent in the religion of Islam, a major tenet of which is not that Christians and Jews must convert, which is a matter of indifference, but rather that they must submit). Whether or not these violent people, mostly young, are actually devout is beside the point—for them, as Caldwell notes, Islam is an “anchor of identity.” (We need to get back that anchor for ourselves, but that’s another discussion.) All this is measured and not at all frothing, but again, I think it done better in Murray’s book.

Along the way, Caldwell contrasts the vibrancy of Muslim religious belief with the hollowness of European atheism, as well as the effect the disappearance of Christianity is having and will have on Europe. Caldwell also notes that sexual matters are the only matters about which Europeans (sometimes) try to make Islam conform, something Rita Chin discusses at length, and he notes all the other cultural differences of Muslim immigrants aside from religious belief, from polygamy to cousin marriage. This is the point in which it would make sense to analyze the triangular cultural relationship among cultures I outline above, but Caldwell either does not see it clearly, or he does not want to spend too much time counterpoising modern Europe to what it used to be, afraid of losing too much street cred.

Still, he points out the lack of civilization and culture in Islam, noting “Spain translates more foreign books in a year [into Spanish] than all of the Arabic-speaking countries have translated [into Arabic] since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun in the ninth century.” Caldwell seems to have thought that Pope Benedict, reigning when this book was published, might lead a pushback, as shown by his entirely accurate and correct remarks at Regensburg in 2006, where Benedict pointed out that, unlike Christianity, Islam rejects that God is necessarily rational or cannot contradict himself, and channeled Manuel II Palaeologos in A.D. 1391, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Caldwell doesn’t actually quote Manuel II’s words, nor does he note that Pope Benedict wasn’t specifically aligning himself with the thought (though I do–but perhaps paradoxically, I see a possible alliance between Muslims and orthodox Christians, at least in America), but his point is that Benedict was vigorously mounting a long-overdue defense of Christianity. Unfortunately, Caldwell was wrong, for Benedict was immediately forced to retreat (which he should not have done), resigned for opaque reasons, and now we have the incoherent Pope Francis, who cannot mount a vigorous defense of anything at all, including, probably, whether and why he likes his eggs fried or scrambled.

A fascinating tangential topic, which Caldwell only touches on very briefly, is that Muslims almost never convert to Christianity. Belloc also pointed this out. Why this is so should get more discussion. It is not enough to say, correctly, Muslims are afraid because apostasy is punishable by death in Islam, or, put more broadly, in all Muslim societies extreme social pressure exists not to convert. Even aside from such pressure, theologically, Islam is a closed system, containing all the answers and aggressively discouraging any free inquiry, which may itself make conversion rare. Or perhaps lack of conversions is mostly the happenstance of how Christianity and Islam have historically found themselves aligned with respect to each other. True, few Christians today convert to Islam, but historical examples of mass conversion to Islam are common. But all such occurred in areas conquered by Islam, in which over centuries conversion is inevitable, if for no other reason to avoid the taxes Islam requires to non-Muslims to pay. Since no Muslim countries have (yet) been conquered by Christians, in the sense of imposing permanent cultural control (colonialism doesn’t count), maybe mass conversion of Muslims to Christianity hasn’t been given a real opportunity, because there never been significant numbers of Muslims contained in areas dominated by vibrant Christian rulers. In such a case, maybe there would be mass conversions—who knows? Of course, perhaps, or probably, the days when countries are “conquered” in the old sense are gone. Certainly, we can be sure Europe as it exists now will never conquer anything again, and would not resist conquest—which is why it is in the position Caldwell describes. But mass conversion of both Muslims, along with today’s Europeans, to Christianity (real Christianity, not the insipid, sometimes poisonous, brew that passes for it in most of the West) might be a path backward and upward from the slough of despond in which Europe finds itself.

Finally, Caldwell turns to the West’s ongoing reaction to these problems. He talks of Pim Fortuyn and Nicolas Sarkozy, of Tariq Ramadan and Hassan al-Banna. He talks of rising anti-Semitism, in words and violence. He calls the UK Independence Party, instrumental in Brexit, “eccentric hobbyists,” failing to foresee its future success (though that is hardly exceptional). None of this is all that exciting, and at the end of the day, Caldwell has little to offer. I suppose that’s in the nature of a book that is a series of strung-together vignettes. His last paragraph, while not wrong in any way, is remarkably weak:

It is certain that Europe will emerge changed from its confrontation with Islam. It is far less certain that Islam will prove assimilable. Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers. For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest, in an obvious demographic way and in a less obvious philosophical way. In such circumstances, words like “majority” and “minority” mean little. When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.

True enough. Islam flourishes because Europe has nothing to offer. We get it. But this is defeatism, and defeatism is boring. If one thinks there is nothing to be done, why write a book? The world is not changed by lassitude. Rather, it is changed by a man riding a sealed train, nursing a spark readied to burn down the world; by a man wounded in battle who looked inward, found God, and then turned outward, wielding a spiritual sword across the globe; by a man who retreated to the mountains around Rome, fifteen hundred years ago, and founded monastic communities that transformed the world to be such even as we see it today. It is not changed by books like this one.

[Steve Kettmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more time you spend with Christopher Caldwell and his all-over-the-map musings on his conviction that we should all be afraid, very afraid, of the danger presented by each and every Muslim in the world, the more you start to wonder if he is not in fact playing some kind of Stephen Colbert angle here.

Like the great Colbert himself, Caldwell can drone through an extended passage of what sounds like serious analysis as he explores his thesis that godless Europeans basically have no shot against the invading hordes of Islam who are going to take over their continent sooner or later, because, well, they're foreign. Then he can turn on a dime and let loose with a real howler.

My own favorite came on Page 342, when Caldwell, an American - in fact, an American born in New Jersey, of all places - lamented in a tone of high dudgeon the "generalized fading of the sense that what goes on in someone else's country is none of your business." This from a guy who has for hundreds of pages been engaging in all sorts of raw speculation about the essence of contemporary European life, such as when, five pages later, he describes Europe as "a civilization in decline," based on his sense, well, he's not even quite sure. "It is missing some hard-to-define factor," he writes.

Caldwell is generally seen as a serious fellow, a regular presence in publications like the New York Times Magazine and the Financial Times, along with the right-wing Weekly Standard, and he in fact has done a huge amount of valuable work in this book. He raises a lot of good questions about the ability of a European culture heavily invested in tolerance and multiculturalism to handle increasing numbers of people whose religion orients them against many of what might be called European values.

However, somewhere along the way, he decided to hop up a book that might otherwise be a dull read with all manner of too-confident, too-reckless, too-smug pronouncements. Shoot-from-the-hip types should be especially well informed, but Caldwell's knowledge has gaps in it, often at the very times when he's sounding the most opinionated.

He writes that German and French opposition to the Bush war in Iraq "was an expression of Europe's pre-existing wish for emancipation from American tutelage," which could be fine, if he were presenting it as only an opinion, but he goes on to claim it is "not true" that European publics were in "full solidarity with the United States after the attacks in 2001."

What he doesn't tell you is that the largest gathering in the world in support of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, three days later, took place in Berlin, and that a German politician named Johannes Rau thundered "Amerika steht nicht allein!" That is, America does not stand alone. Caldwell would have done better to include fewer studies, and to describe a passionate, late-night conversation with, say, a Turkish German resident of the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg.

Caldwell explicitly argues that it is a mistake to see any difference between different Muslims in different countries, and yet he doesn't even bother to discuss, for example, the remarkable scene when Turkey's soccer team was a surprise of the 2008 European Championships. All over Kreuzberg, people of Turkish parentage drove around with both flags, German and Turkish, and were giddy about cheering on both teams.

So maybe an American living in Berlin is not Caldwell's ideal fan. He's in essence calling anyone like me, who lives in Europe as a foreigner, some kind of dangerous parasite - so naturally I am inclined to take umbrage. But the deeper point is: Yes, he raises great questions, but he acts as if he has all the answers. No one, at this point, has all the answers.

Here's a suggestion that Caldwell do more work on another book, but get to know some Europeans along the way. I'll be happy to take him on a tour of some Turkish dive bars in Kreuzberg once he's ready to start his research on that one.

[Matty-Swytla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good overview of the history of mass immigration to Europe and an analysis of the effects and pitfalls of this phenomenon, especially regarding the mass immigration of Muslim people from third world countries. Book was published in 2009, so it doesn’t anticipate the severity of the current situation, but the analysis is sound. Especially the varying reactions to the problems of multiculturalism and the rising role of Islam are covered in a very thoughtful and measured way. The author is critical but he doesn’t judge either side, which is an important difference in this dialogue.

His take on integration of Muslims was of particular interest to me, and I wish he would have covered more on this topic, but the book is a great starting point for further research – especially since it leaves the facts to your own interpretation and ask a number of poignant questions. Questions that are very often in the forefront of our lives as we deal with the question of the ‘refugee crisis’ on a daily basis. I for one am for drawing a line between genuine refugees and economic migrants. We can’t take in the poor from the entire developing world, we just can’t. And we aren’t a refugee centre for the Middle East either. It seems people are forgetting Europe went through a severe economic crisis and some countries aren’t doing as well as Germany, so expecting them to take on the burden of housing, educating, and transporting refugees and migrants is just selfish. I’m also for a critical overview of the integration levels of former migrants and their children – more and more are following radical Islam and rejecting Western secular society. The author has some theories and answers regarding that but again, I wish for an even deeper analysis.

It is certainly a very good book, so I recommend it.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember living in Europe in the 1990s and realizing for the first time that it had become home to waves of immigrants who had recently arrived from the former Eastern Bloc and around the world, and perhaps most noticeably from the Middle East. In my American education the focus had always been on Europe as a source of immigration, not a destination for it. While America had long been known as a melting pot, it was also a new world consisting of a vast and mostly empty continent that awaited those who were seeking new opportunity. But America's story is very different than Europe's, which begs the question why Europe has attempted to follow the American model of mass immigration in recent decades, and why has it had such bad results.

This book lays out the massive transformation Europe undertook in the post-World War II era starting with the Gastarbeiter program in the 1950s and other similar experiments that were initially designed to assist with rebuilding efforts. Instead, the mostly economic considerations morphed into politically correct notions favored by rarefied elites who continue to preach multiculturalism as a desirable moral obligation long after the guest worker programs were discontinued. Today it is absolutely taboo to state the obvious -- that immigration is just not working, although a majority of Europeans still believes it. What began as a naive reaction borne of guilt from racist atrocities committed by the Nazi regime has now resulted in a fundamental shift just a few decades later wherein European society is poised to become a cultural and political relic in the not-too-distant future.

The author neatly sums up his entire premise in the final pages by concluding that the older post-World War II generation reaped an economic windfall from the temporary benefits of mass immigration which is now being paid for by a current generation that is not so sanguine about it. But it is too late to reverse course. Muslims are not interested, or perhaps even disposed towards, assimilating to what they view as a depraved Western culture. They belong to Islam first and Europe second (at best). Islam is steadily overtaking cities and towns street by street, and Muslims are patiently awaiting the day when their political clout will supersede the native people's and sharia can be imposed as the law of the land.

None of this is to say that Islam is inherently bad, only that it is fundamentally incompatible with European values, and that the future portends increased tension, violence, and eventually a transition in which the Europe of the past is no more. Even today Europe is grappling with scores of Muslim youth born and reared in Europe who identify with Islam and join the Islamic State to actively participate in battling the West. One such youth from London is notoriously posting to this day internet videos of himself and other Muslim radicals graphically beheading numerous journalists and other innocent aid workers from the West in or around Syria.

Nearly every other review of this book I've read on Goodreads seems to express the reader's disappointment in the premise (that a growing Islam in Europe is fundamentally changing it, and not for the better), without much rationale, which only seems to betray the unwitting biases exposed by the book itself. The low reviews symbolize a feeling of being let down as though air had escaped from the politically correct balloon. To that I would say don't shoot the messenger.

This book is smartly written and hardly polemical as it methodically demonstrates how Islam is supplanting "European values" rooted in a Christian past that Europeans no longer value. Europe has largely abandoned its religious heritage and worships instead at the altar of political correctness. The result is that religious freedom laws favor Islam at the expense of other beliefs, and immigration policies do little to stem the tide of the drastic demographic changes that are swiftly transforming the cultural and sociological landscape.

Numerous civilizations throughout history were overtaken and absorbed into subsequent ones: the Akkadians, the Sumerians, the Etruscans, to name a few. So it should come as no surprise that it is happening again, only that it is coming at the pointed and deliberate invitation of the society that will be displaced. The frog in the pot of cold water orders that its temperature be increased steadily until the water finally boils. Then that is that, the frog is cooked.

Others have suggested that the author somehow bears responsibility for proposing a solution to the problems he has identified through painstaking detail and documentation. I guess I don't see how "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" is a misleading title that demands answers to a question that is never posed. This book is very much the author's own reflections on his own views of what is. I happen to think that he has touched on a number of uncomfortable but important dilemmas and drawn out insightful points that should be considered by anyone who is interested in public policy, or who at the very least is fascinated by observing history in the making.

[Kurtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could almost have cut and pasted the official book description into this review and left it at that, since the book description says it very clearly. The Europe we have known is disappearing and what replaces it is, as yet, an unknown quantity. The future is up for grabs and there are numerous cultures who will be competing for dominance. The (multi) culture wars are not going to be pretty.

This is a disturbing book that should be compulsory reading for anyone who is interested in real politics (the politics of people's actual lives, not the irrelevant hot air of politicians and party politics). Caldwell addresses the evidence calmly but the results are unsettling. The book was published in 2009 and things have gotten significantly worse since then, so maybe its time for Caldwell to write a follow-up (Further Reflections on . . .?). In the meantime, this is a book that's well worth reading.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caldwell’s book has been one of the most interesting, well researched, thought provoking, and frightening books I have read in quite awhile. Besides commentating on the economic problems, the rise in crime because of Muslim immigration, and the threat of terrorism related to Muslim immigrants. Caldwell presents a moral and philosophical argument against immigration.
“When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines,” Caldwell end the book, “ it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.” Caldwell presents the idea that `European culture and liberalism ought to be celebrated. But ht most immediate threat to the existence of this culture is the rise of Islam in Europe. Caldwell is following similar argument that Nietzsche agreed with when he wrote, “God is Dead.” Nietzsche contended that a Christian could not truly be a Christian if he or she submitted to western values of tolerance and liberalism. Thus for Western values to truly be upheld one must value liberalism first and foremost. Yet Muslims see Western hedonism and liberalism as shallow, and an ideology that leads to a meaningless life. Capitalism and modern life is seen as empty, in slightly the same way that Sartre, Camus, and Kafka saw it. And being that there is an antagonism towards western life, many Muslims, especially second generation Muslims see their faith as the thing, which they upheld, and life for first and foremost. This ideology compromises the basis what makes Western Europe the example for the world.
Caldwell advises Europeans to look at this issue through the viewpoint of the social contract theory. And when this is done they will see that it is the best action to stop future immigration. And push for the integration of European Muslims through programs like Affirmative Action.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journalist Christopher Caldwell has written an interesting account of the post war attempt by Europe to restructure itself and simultaneously deal with the "temporary worker" populations they convinced themselves were necessary to rebuild a devastated Europe and who turned out to be not quite so temporary after all. Caldwell's contention is that the ordinary citizens of Europe's countries never really got a vote as to whether importing these workers and then allowing them and, eventually, their families to not only come but to stay and take up citizenship was something they actually wanted. Decided at higher levels and presented as a fait accompli, these predominately Islamic populations have never truly assimilated in the countries that have changed laws and customs to accommodate them. Now some 20 million strong, polls indicate that upwards of 40% think of themselves first as Muslims and only secondly as citizens of their respective countries.

Caldwell's book was published in 2009 amid controversy as terrorist acts rose across Europe and well before the latest record breaking flood of refugees from the Mideast arrived. The problems he highlighted have only worsened. Whether or not you agree with his worry that lack of assimilation makes for a large "foreign" population in the midst of Europe that does not share its modern viewpoint, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West is timely and riveting reading.

[Jake · Rating 1 out of 5]

There should really be an option on Goodreads for "Couldn't finish because it was so bad". This poorly researched piece of garbage is not worth the paper it is printed on. I couldn't finish it. 100 pages in and I'd had my fill of unsubstantiated, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, and homophobic, rubbish. As a suggestion to the author: You CAN claim that 50 percent of inmates in a France's jails are Muslim. That might even be true. Furthermore, you CAN claim, as on page 63 that immigrants from Hungary and Bulgaria think like Western Europeans more than immigrants from Pakistan. However if you don't supply a citation for "facts" such as these(which the author does not), it is just the unsubstantiated ramblings of a racist. Caldwell adds nothing to the discussion and only provides fuel to the fires of ignorance and bigotry.

[Craig Moerer · Rating 4 out of 5]

as scholarly tomes go, this is almost a page-turner. Measured but fearlessly frank reportage on the collision between The West and the Islamic world

[Nick Imrie]

Christopher Caldwell is a poor man's Douglas Murray.

This is a much larger, more speculative work than Murray's The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. Murray travelled Europe, spoke to migrants, and studied the stats.

Caldwell, meanwhile, is mostly listing newspaper articles as his sources in the footnotes. Well, we've all got opinions on immigration based on what we read in the papers, doesn't make us experts, probably the opposite.

I gave up halfway through when we arrived the chapter on migrant's and minority culture's approaches to sex and marriage. Caldwell clearly admires the strong families and low divorce rates, despite the fact that he has earlier mentioned their higher rates of domestic violence and forced marriage. He doesn't seem to put two and two together here. When he praises Muslim sexual values, without ever touching on Rotherham or other sexual abuse crisis, he lost me entirely.

[The American Conservative]

'The British [had] a long-standing paradigm—that, give it time, we will win over these angry young boys from the deserts of Arabia with the wonderful stuff the West has: freedom, consumer durables, pornography, and Class A drugs. All this jihadi nonsense will stop when you see what we have to offer...
Not a moment’s thought was given to integration. We assumed that, coming here, they would find us and the way we lived our lives perfectly irresistible. We were wrong about that.
This is the starting point for Christopher Caldwell’s scabrous and excellent Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, with its rhetorical subheading (just in case people don’t get the message): “Can Europe Be The Same With Different People In It?”''

Read the full review, "Continental Drift," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This is an incredibly nuanced book regarding Islamic immigration in Europe and, to a lesser extent, America. I imagine that some may attempt to cast Caldwell as "xenophobic," "racist," or "Islamaphobic," but I found his prose fair and insightful. Caldwell argues that Europe is viewed by many of its Arab immigrants as a civilization in decline, and one that may not even have value for saving. He also blames Europeans for failing to justify Western values and protect them.

A more thorough review would take more characters than this text box allows. However, I really recommend not wasting your time weighing a bunch of recommendations – just go and read the book yourself! You won't regret it!

[E.T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sane book that goes beyond the surface arguments, looks into every nuance of the "assimilation" problem in Europe. Unfortunately, the answer even by this book is there is no solution.
I wonder why this book is rated low at 3.5 on goodreads. Maybe bcoz it stays away from being polemic and examines all sides of the questions ?
PS:- Like many other authors, "East" is said to mean only Islam. Dont know why ? We have Hinduism, Buddhism, Cofucianism/Taoism in Asia too in large numbers. And those r very different from Islam.

[Peter Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally got around to finishing this book at the 3rd time of trying. This is a good book that from my 2025 opinion seems to make very good arguments and get to the nub of some of the debates that have been on going about Europe, its leaders and their citizens and how to handle immigration. As a Brit I was not unaware that the continent had issues as well but I was not as aware of how much and how long ago now some of the issues occurred.

I would love to say this book gets a lot wrong but I found myself nodding my head in agreement more than not and the world written about seems to have arrived - unfortunately. For instance recently we have had 1 Independent MP arguing for cousin marriage and even possible blasphemy laws on the way and you won't have to guess for which religion. This in itself seems to prove the books final line about what happens when a confident culture grounded in doctrine meets an open unsure one. The former will begin to dominate.

Depressing but worth a read if you are interested in the immigration debate and want to read something from someone you probably don't know rather than an opinion piece in a newspaper or magazine.

[Frank R · Rating 4 out of 5]

The definitive treatment of the subject. Sweeping and fair-minded.

[Andrew Tollemache · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for book club.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trauma from past fascist regimes or colonial culpability, Europeans have serious issues dealing with immigration without being prey to the most vicious passions, when the topic is not plain and simply taboo. Christopher Caldwell demonstrates here that they are wrong. Facing migratory movements more and more important, and concerning populations those cultural heritage is often alien to ours, it's the essence of Europe itself, its identity and values, that are in question. Far from fleeing debates, Europeans should therefore embrace it and face facts which, from demography to multiculturalism, are certain to change the continent in decades to come. Well...

For sure, such a book is remarkable for dealing rigorously and without heated prejudices with various tendencies when it comes to Islam in Europe. For here's the core topic of it all: the powerful rise of a religion which, rightly or wrongly, never fails to stir controversies. Considered as the second religion after Christianity, it's a remarkable fact indeed that Islam has made its impact, because of the 'intensity of its disciples' convictions, its importance in pubic debates, the privileges it benefits under various legislations of many European countries, or its ability to intimidate its detractors'. Islam, it's true, had to be accommodated; either through just minor adjusting (e.g. swimming pools open for women only at certain times, prayers rooms made available in shops and working businesses...) or, at times, through whole new laws made necessary to deal with some sensitive issues (e.g. the question of the scarf in French schools, forced marriages and imported spouses in Germany and else...).

And... So what?

Follow a well rounded and vast overview of various topics that deserve to be addressed. Demographics and natality rates compared to native populations and other migrants, problems of assimilation and integration, debunking multiculturalism and immigrationism's many flaws (e.g. how the UK and Scandinavia went from welcoming workers for economical reasons to welcoming refugees and asylum seekers for humanitarian ones, and the impact this all had upon the relevance and future of welfare-states as we know them)… The author is everything but scared, and he delves right into topics that will make more than one uncomfortable. His stance is actually pretty strong: it's not only the fact that Europe welcomed so many Muslims that will impact on its future, but also the way such populations are treated and dealt with. Multiculturalism, by encouraging communautarism, is a case in point. Another one is how, in country where immigrants have been concentrated and excluded in ghettos for decades (e.g. the issue of French suburbs, already plagued by unemployment and criminality) a certain view of Islam became a counter-culture. The picture is therefore alarming: populations who have been excluded by, let's be honest, racist if not xenophobic politics, are now voluntarily excluding themselves.

Is all that a concern? You bet! Like parallel societies within our societies, the author sees Islam as a real challenge to Western values -from antisemitism ad women's rights to the identification with all sorts of extremists from abroad... Fair enough. But is that so?

Now, I cannot but agree completely with one of his strongest point that is, Europe became such a sick continent, crippled by guilt and burdened by political correctness and liberal censorship to such an extent that, it is now doubting its own values. Worst, such a weak state of affair and fear in political debates cannot but serve only extremists of all sides, from racists politicians using immigration as a scarecrow to a string of growing and virulent extremists, belonging them to very self-assured religious ideals and knowing perfectly well how to play the victim card (how on earth did criticising Islam became being islamophobic?). Here's a very dangerous cocktail.

However, the problem I had with this book is that it draws a vast panorama of a broad set of issues, based only on specific problems - specific not only to certain countries only, but also pertaining to a very specific part of a demographic within a demographic (it's cliches to say so, but not all Muslims are like he seem to depict them that is, bigots sympathisers of hate and violence). From then on, Christopher Caldwell just seems indeed to fall right into that well-known silly trap of calling out a supposed 'green peril'. That's too bad: relying on serious data is good; interpreting them correctly to give a true picture of the state of Islam in Europe would be even better. Sadly, then, I felt the author failed on this last point.

Multiculturalism might be a serious problem in the UK, but it's not in France (still a strong Republic). Forced marriages and spouses imported from abroad surely are issues in Denmark and Germany (and serious ones - legislations had to be passed to counter them!) but not elsewhere. As for the question of the scarf in schools, it's a very peculiar French problem that has to do with 'laicity', a cultural peculiarity barely relevant elsewhere. Plus, all these problems (and there is no denying that they exist and seriously need to be addressed) concern only a minority of individuals within strong populations. For instance, how many Muslims are there in the UK? Yet how many are known to be involved with terrorist organisations and/or the most radical forms of Islam? Here's another failure from the author: if there is one tendency common to all these countries, it's falling birth rates that doesn't seem to affect Muslims; and so, Muslim population seem to take over ('seem'!). Does that imply, though, an 'islamisation' of Europe? The author conflagrates demography with values, and to me it's a massive blunder. In fact, to me the question of the future of Europe given an increase of its Muslim population cannot be answered without comparing Islamic values and Western ones. Are they compatible? The author, focusing on extremists and extremists cases, fails to address this properly, simply because he assumes the majority of Muslims on our soils adhere more or less to anti-Western sentiments. Such reasoning is flawed, because his perspective is distorted.

In a word, Christopher Caldwell may be misguided in his conclusions, but I still very much enjoyed his book. At long last, someone offering serious data and statistics concerning issues that truly matters and, let's be honest, truly put Europe heads on against some of it most challenging ennemies (regardless of numbers, radical Islam or whatever you want to call it remains a serious problem). His dealing with immigrationism and bashing against the utter failure of multiculturalism is also more than welcome. I loved that he was not burying his head in the sand nor being politically correct, but, on the contrary, tried and put figures on topics that are alarming. You might not agree with his conclusions, but give him credit for not being xenophobic nor crassly ignorant of how immigration has worked and morphed during the past decades. Hence, here's a necessary read.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for research purposes, really a 2.5 but overall I was frustrated enough by the end to give it a 2. The question that frames this book (Can Europe be the same country with different people in it?) is an intriguing one, but the answer Caldwell provides is frustratingly vague. Any answer to this question that isn't racist must, of course, be "it depends." If mass immigration is followed by assimilation to national cultures of places like FR or GR, it shouldn't matter what color or heritage the new citizenry has. My version of American nationalism is entirely civic: it is about your commitment to a shared set of liberal and democratic ideals as well as primary loyalty to the nation, not about your race, culture, religion, etc. But what happens when a large percentage of the population features a rather tenacious culture or faith, doesn't want to assimilate, and isn't even asked to do so by the "native' population, and is to an extent hostile to the existing values of the country? To some extent that has happened in Europe in the last half-century, which makes the topic of this book important.

One point that Caldwell puts his finger on that I had to agree with was the dilemma of multiculturalism. This doesn't mean MC as a general tolerance of many cultures but as an official state policy in places like GR and GB where Muslims and other immigrant groups were given certain levels of autonomy and protected by official and unofficial speech rules and taboos. Caldwell notes that tolerance can only go so far, and that to preserve an open, liberal society (especially the rights of women and LGBT people), you cannot tolerate every cultural or religious creed; or, at least, you have to be willing to criticize them. Of course, Caldwell doesn't see much to defend in the current social democratic orientation of European politics, but I do, especially its ability to restrain dangerous forces of nationalism. Still, Caldwell is right that when the majority of a population dislikes immigration and cultural change but the major parties overlook them, they will seek out new parties to support. If there's any lesson from this book, it's that democracy can often be the enemy of liberalism, especially when that liberalism goes too far in terms of tolerance.

While Caldwell suggests a number of problems that could arise from immigration and demographic change, this book never puts its finger on what the big crisis really is. Is it a cultural one, meaning the displacement of the open, liberal European society or of national traditions? Is it a political or economic one, with demography shifting power away from "native" populations? Is it a sort of civilizational malaise, a loss of faith in what Caldwell sees as an essentially CHristian European civilization? There's just a vague insinuation in this book that disaster will befall EU from more Muslim immigration.

There were also just a bunch of little things that bothered me in this book: casually sexist metaphors and side comments, that conservative habit of posing as the defier of PC nostrums, and, of course, the unjustified length. I would say that Douglas Massey's Strange Death of Europe is a much more straightforwardly argued and challenging book than this. Although I don't really agree with Massey, it's clear what he's saying; I can't quite figure out what Caldwell is saying, and what I can figure out I don't agree with.

One problem with this book is that Caldwell argues far more by insinuation and suggestion than clear lines of logic and evidence. People's stated motives aren't really their motives, as Caldwell imputes motives to them that fit his argument. The EU project isn't really about healing the wounds of World War II and encouraging economic and cultural exchange in Europe; it is about trying to kill nationalism once and for all and trying to negate national sovereignty (it may be for a few people, but that's not the purpose for the vast majority). Another example is the argument that FR, GR, and other European countries opposed the Iraq War because of resentment of US hegemony. There's no doubt that many European countries fear and resent US power, but the main reason (well documented in external and internal primary sources) was that they thought it was unnecessary, illegal, and a downright terrible idea (and they were right on at least 2 of these counts). This is an unfortunate habit of argumentation that can also be seen in his Age of Entitlement book.

The organization of the chapters is also haphazard. This book should have been edited down to 250 pages (with most of the intellectual meanderings removed).

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cladwell’s ideas and detailed research on the effects that late twentieth-century Muslim immigration has had on Europe is a well-conceived and, for any Westerner who reads it with an open mind, uncomfortable read about the inherent cultural schism which festers in this twenty-first century. He points out quite early that what has attracted and fostered belligerent Muslim identities in Europe are exactly those Western values which postwar Europe established – which the founders of modern Europe certainly did not, and perhaps could not, foresee.

"The 'European project' was not dreamt up with immigrants in mind, but it wound up setting the rules under which they were welcomed. Postwar Europe was built on an intolerance of intolerance – a mind-set that has been praised as anti-racism and anti-fascism, and ridiculed as political correctness."

Caldwell also doesn’t shy away from attacking head-on the inherent difficulty – or is that incompatibility – of Islam with a secular Western mindset. More specifically, he argues that while modern Christianity was historically tempered in modern political life, Islam has not gone through this. And even shows minimal, if any, desire to do so.

"A main weapon in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment’s attacks on Christianity was ridicule. But while hoping that Muslims will learn the lessons of Voltaire, Europeans have gone to great lengths to insulate Islam from Voltaire’s methods. Ridiculing Islam has been confused with xenophobia and racism. Those questions about Islam are expected to content themselves with kicking the dead horse of Christianity in hopes that Muslims will, by inductive reasoning, come to see that the general laws so established apply to their religion, too."

Sad to say, but Islam has been protected from confronting its own inherent sexism and homophobia – at the very least.

As Caldwell looks to the United States as a possible alternative model of a multiethnic society that Europe should emulate – whether or not is realistic of possible for it to do so.

"Europe is thus in a funny predicament. It is an increasingly anti-American continent facing dire problems to which the only proven solution is to become more like America. Because the United States shows, at least, that one can receive great masses of immigrants from all over the world and retain a culture that is still open, free, and Western…American may be open in theory, but in practice is exerts Procrustean pressures on its immigrants to conform, and it is its pressures, not its openness, that have bound America’s diverse citizens together as one people. Yes, you can have a “hyphenated identity” if you insist on it – but you had better know which side of the hyphen your bread is buttered on."

The decline of the American Empire, if not America’s influence, have been bandied about for decades now – perhaps increasingly since end of the Vietnam War and the Arab Oil Crisis in the 70s -- but never has America’s purpose been made more clear than in Caldwell’s eye-widening analysis of the very real problem of Islam being drug kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear em out!

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although published in 2009, I would consider the book more relevant today given the current immigration crisis in Europe. Written by a neoconservative professing arguments that seemed to flow too easily, I thought it would be worth my time to consider the other sides view in order to better understand my own thoughts on the subject. Even though the author’s arguments may seem to be anecdotal, they are reasonably well articulated throughout the text with sources documented at the end.

Whether intended or not, there is a clash of cultures, and assimilation of Islam in Europe is significantly more difficult, if not outright impossible, to achieve than assimilation of Latin American Christianity in American secular society. European Islamic theocratic views are presented as a counterbalance to European political views that the separation between religion and state is being encroached upon. The convictions of the latter are more strongly held than those of the former, and thus cultural assimilation into a European secular system that has evolved over the past few centuries is resisted even more strongly. Western beliefs in human rights and tolerance are taken as a sign of weakness, which leads to clashes and further advances cultural segregation and intolerance. The current crises is the result unintended consequences of European policy set decades ago and the inflexibility of the European Union which lacks wholehearted support of its member states..

In retrospect, my views on immigration and the possibility of a tolerant relationship between Islamic cultural values and Western secular values were moderated by the material presented in the text.

[Nathan Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A penetrating, erudite, and well-written look at the present-day situation in Europe as it relates to Islamic immigration from North Africa and the Middle East. Europe's civilizational exhaustion and confusion, characterized by its secularization and low birthrates, is in stark contrast to the hearty religious identity of its new arrivals, who are forming a distinct, often segregated, culture within its borders. And one that is antithetical to many traditional European values.

Caldwell delves into this situation by examining the historical background, and many of the more recent incidents that expose it for what it is, such as the Danish cartoon fiasco. What is most interesting in the account is Europe's own cognitive dissonance -- if not schizophrenia -- in how it responds to and understands mass Muslim immigration.

What Europe -- particularly its elite -- cloaks as broadness, openness, and tolerance is often a festering fear that they are losing their distinctive cultures and ways of life. Which non-elites worry about more openly, but whose fears and opposition never really manifest as policy, despite often representing majorities of their democratic populations. Diversity is touted, and 'integration' (rather than assimilation) is the program, and despite the glosses used to prop them up, they are manifest failures which undermine European national identities and traditions.

Post-colonial guilt gives way to anti-colonial, culturally suicidal tendencies. Caldwell, while not putting it in those terms exactly, perceptively grasps this.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-researched, thought-provoking, and frankly frightening book on the future of Europe. WIll a Europe of declining native demographics and relativistic culture be able to assimilate the ever burgeoning Muslim immigration or will, as Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis suggests, Europe be a part of the Arabic west by the end of this century? Caldwell points out that for the past 1,400 years the West and Islam have been at odds; the only exception to that has been the period in the 20th century after the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire (post WWI). Islam is weak no more.


Caldwell concludes his book with the following paragraph:

"It is certain that Europe will emerge changed from its confrontation with Islam. It is far less certain that Islam will prove assimilable. Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers. For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest, in an obvious demographic way and in a less obvious philosophical way. In such circumstances, words like "majority" and "minority" mean little. When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter."

[Jason Born · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific warning for all who would abandon the fibers of our American culture in the name of modernity without regard to unintended consequences. Though the book is about Europe's contest with Islam, it has application to the US in the future. And even though the US is different in many ways to Europe, should we allow mass Islamic immigration, our society would suddenly experience many of the same issues facing them.

A forceful culture or religion need not be the numerical majority to begin extracting many untenable concessions from the current majority. i.e. Islam's adherents won't have to be 51% of the European population (though in places that won't take too long) before they begin affecting change in laws and customs.

The book ends with an astounding observation. In the confrontation with Islam, Europe is the weaker party. Islam binds together its adherents in an anchored, confident, doctrinal way. Europe's currently dominant culture is fragmented, insecure, malleable, and relativistic. History shows that in such a contest, the anchored culture will win. From the fall of Rome to the tumbling of the Ottomans, this has been the case.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. The author makes a very strong argument in that Europe is a too-open, un-unified, declining civilization, facing immigration from what is essentially a strong, unified, motivated, closed culture (Islam). He seems to prove through various examples that Muslims immigrating to Europe rarely assimilate properly past the first generation, and that they turn more to their country of origin, and, more importantly, to their unifying religion than their new country. He argues Europe has confused its politics in an attempt to run from claims of fascism and imperialism, and is now far too tolerant and wishy-washy for its own good. He also includes interesting points and quotes, such as those by Enoch Powell, and the idea that, in order to combat internal Islamic dominance, Europe may have to become much more like the United States. Caldwell writes clearly, intelligently and explicitly, and while it is no secret which side of the pro/con Islam debate he is on, he manages to maintain a relatively non-biased narrator/commentator role.

[Marcos Junior · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the last few decades, mass immigration, particularly of North African Muslims, has become a reality in Europe. Caldwell avoids taking a political position about the issue, focusing on analyzing the actual situation, and presenting perspectives for the future. There's no doubt that in a few decades Europe will be more Muslim than today, specially among youth. What are the implications of that? What will the European economy, political system, culture, be affeced? According to Caldwell, a revolution is happening and changes not only are happening today, but also will be more intensive in the days to come. A book that offers a diagnosis of the problem of immigration in contemporary Europe, but not as a political manifesto, in favor or against immigrantion. In that sense, Caldwell's book is successful, giving a clear picture of the problem and inviting us to reflect about what is happening and what could happen in the near future.

[Lauren]

Not impressed. I came into this book looking for a more ethnographic perspective, where the voices of Europeans and Muslim immigrants made up the bulk of the research. Instead, that data is kept at arm's length. I have to agree with another GR reviewer that this book sounds like a bad undergraduate thesis, where the student tries too hard to tie everything together and ends up with one redundant sentence after another. Shallow; I learn more by reading the world news section of the newspaper every day.