Debating Islam: And Other Essays from the Post-9/11 Era

by Bruce Bawer

In his bestselling 2006 book "While Europe Slept", Bruce Bawer sounded the alarm about the rise of radical Islam in Europe. In Debating Islam, Bawer brings us up to date, showing how Islamism has continued to advance in Europe – and revealing that America, too, contrary to his earlier expectations, is proving vulnerable to its depredations.

Among the topics he takes on are the prosecution of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for speaking his mind about Islam, the refusal of the media to face the obvious facts about the Fort Hood massacre, the controversies over Koran burnings and the Ground Zero mosque, and the ominous rise in European anti-Semitism. This book is a must-read for everyone who is concerned about the threat posed by Islamist ideology to the freedoms of the West.

253 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Theodore Bruce Bawer, who writes under the name Bruce Bawer, is an American writer who has been a resident of Norway since 1999. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and novelist and poet who has also written about gay rights, Christianity and Islam.

Bawer's writings on literature, gay issues and Islam have all been highly controversial. While championing such authors as William Keepers Maxwell Jr., Flannery O'Connor, and Guy Davenport, he has criticized such authors as Norman Mailer and E. L. Doctorow. A member of the New Formalists, a group of poets who promoted the use of traditional forms, he has assailed such poets as Allen Ginsberg for what he views as their lack of polish and technique.

Bawer was one of the first gay activists to seriously propose same-sex marriage, notably in his 1993 book A Place at the Table, and his 2006 book While Europe Slept was one of the first to skeptically examine the rise of Islam in the Western world. Bawer's work is cited positively by Anders Behring Breivik in his manifesto.

Although he has frequently been described as a conservative, Bawer has often protested that such labels are misleading or meaningless. He has explained his views as follows: "Read A Place at the Table and Stealing Jesus and While Europe Slept and Surrender one after the other and you will see that all four books are motivated by a dedication to individual identity and individual freedom and an opposition to groupthink, oppression, tyranny."