Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society

by Bruce Bawer

Bruce Bawer exposes the heated controversy over gay rights and presents a passionate plea for the recognition of common values, "a place at the table" for everyone.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Islam, Religion, History, LGBT, Gay

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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."

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm ... Curious, to say the least. Let me get this straight (no pun intended): Bruce Bawer is a gay New Yorker who hooked up with a European lover and now currently resides in Oslo, Norway. Yet, he is also a proud American and (yeesh) proud conservative who takes pot-shots against the US quite personally, even going so far at one point to chastise German kids for wearing Che Guevarra T-Shirts? Sounds as ridiculous as the Log Cabin Republicans -- like Paula Poundstone once noted, "Gay Republicans? Grow the fuck up, you idiots."

Anyway, all that aside, I read this book because, as a frequent visitor to Europe, I have been noticing how out of control the "immigration issue" has become as of late. Herein lies the problem regarding European (mostly Western) immigration with North Africans and Middle Eastern extremists as opposed to immigration here in the United States and Canada: In Europe, they tend to be coddled and practically forced to reside in self-segregated neighborhoods -- Paris, Madrid, London, Stockholm, Oslo, Amsterdam, Rome, Marseille, Berlin, etc. etc. etc. As a result of that, and the odd passive-aggressive assertation that, as a politically correct Union, they won't help these people acheive a level of integration necessary to help them get off of welfare and become Dutch, Danish, French, Spanish, German, Norweigian, or Swedish (or whatever), the newly arrived immigrants (read: extreme Islamists) have basically created pockets of the Middle East in the Western World and have imported some of the worst their section of the world has to offer: Honor Killings. Forced Marriages. Female Circumcision. Gay Bashing. Holocaust Denial. Religious Attacks on Churches and Synagogues. Wife Beatings. Rape.

"While Europe Slept" is an alarming, almost bordering on propagandist, book. I was able to finish it because I have been there on occasion and have seen them with my own two eyes. From time to time whilst reading this book, I had to crings when Bawer would stray from his treatise (which is, and I agree with, "Islam wishes to conquer the West and institute sharia law"), and begin griping that the European papers "don't like Bush." Stop that, Bruce. Bush isn't worth liking. Yes, there's an element of racism here, but what Bawer is talking about here is how after World War II, European society set about in itself a deep-rooted self-hatred; and that particular self-hatred manifested itself into a haphazard throat-baring to the sword of the Middle East. Through little fault of its own, however, immigrants to these peaceful nation-states of Western and Northern Europe have, through coddling and massive welfare programs, ceased to even TRY to integrate. Forced marriages are still common, with wives being exported from the home countries, and, when children are born, refusing to let them learn the language of the host nation and, instead, shipped off to Pakistan or Iran or Algeria to attend Koran schools where they are taught that infidels are "less than human" and "not worth obeying for they are the scum of the Earth."

Alarming stuff, how all of this begins to snowball. I give it an 80% accuracy rating, and 3.25 stars. Worthwhile reading, all in all. It's sickening sometimes how the press in Europe just rolls over on terrorism time and time again, but a wakeup call, nonetheless. Worth a read, especially when this has such serious repercussions for the rest of the Western world.

[Leftbanker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I disagree 100% with the Bush war on terror or whatever the hell his malignant policies concerning Islam can now be called. The political views of the author of this book couldn’t be further from my own. His conclusions on many of the events described in this book are completely the opposite of mine. However, I am a firm believer that this religion is a very destructive force in the world.

I believe all religions are pretty much poison, but Islam is especially dangerous. As a long-time resident in Europe, I also feel that the immigration policy in most countries here is fatally flawed and what they have are not immigrants but economic colonists. Many of the immigrants be they Muslim or Chinese are not really interested in becoming citizens, of becoming integrated, or adopting the values and lifestyles of the host country.

The author was mugged, gay-bashed a couple of times, and found himself in innumerable verbal skirmishes with Europeans who insulted America and Americans. They say that if you meet more than two assholes in a day, you're one of the assholes. Both physically and verbally he seems incompetent at self-defense. I, on the other hand, have never had anyone utter a word of anti-American sentiment in my presence, ever, and I think I’m much better qualified at protecting myself both from muggers and bores. He also has a lot of completely ridiculous and absolutely childish ideas of what America has done for the rest of the world and how grateful they all should be.

He chides Europeans for being gutless pantywaists for not standing up to their Muslims immigrants, and he constantly mocks their socialist views. What he never mentions or ever seems to realize is that it’s just these socialist views that have built the sort of benevolent society where he has chosen to live. He obviously likes something about Europe or he would never had stayed so long. I defy him to point to a conservative society where an educated person would care to live. Were it not for the hyper-liberal mindset of many European intellectuals, Europe would be as backward and intolerant as much of the American south that the gay Bruce Bawer fled in fear and with loathing.

A right-wing gay man and a Christian: could there be a more conflicted, self-loathing soul than this guy? Even though I agree with his harsh criticism of Islam and European Muslims, his views on almost every other subject just I find to be ridiculous.

It’s curious to observe that here in Spain the community that is most willing to assimilate and become inculcated in Spanish life, culture, and—more importantly—values is the sub-Saharan Africans who seem to want nothing more than to become middle class Spanish citizens with all that entails and requires of the individual (namely, cleaning up after your dog!).

Almost any time immigration is mentioned, someone cries racism no matter what is being discussed, but there really is a huge problem with immigrants not caring one bit about becoming a part of the societies in which they now live, and rejecting everything modern European countries have to offer (except the high wages). Half of British Muslims feel that homosexuality should be illegal, is just on example of the divide between this religion and society.

With that said you are treading a very fine line between warnings about immigrants, and racism. The author relies a bit too much on anecdotal stories of the crimes of Muslim immigrants. It's almost impossible for me to take a man seriously who claims that the serial liar and drug addict, Rush Limbaugh, often has "to set the story straight" when the liberal press gets it wrong. the author also chided a Norwegian dinner guest because he had the temerity to not gush about how wonderful Ronald Reagan was and he was constantly saying how Europeans are anti-American because they weren't on board with the failed wars of George Bush. Like so many on the American right he takes everything he sees in politics and pounds it in a square hole to fit his ridiculous narrative.

To conclude, I don't feel that radical Islam is the problem. I think Islam is the problem as this religion desperately needs a reformation. Until that happens, radical and observant Muslims are basically one in the same.

[Skylar Burris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its subtitle, this book is not so much about radical Islam as it is about the essential cultural differences between the United States and Western Europe that make it less possible for Muslims to assimilate and liberalize in European countries than in the U.S. Although it made me concerned for the fate of Europe, it actually made me more optimistic about the future of Islam in America than did a sugar-coated apologetic like Who Really Speaks for Islam? Leave it to a gay New Yorker who fled for Europe because he so loathed American evangelical Christians to make me feel proud to be an American and a Christian.

For nonfiction, the book is a fairly quick read and is interestingly written. While Europe Slept reminded me of what I love about my country, of the importance of a nation having vibrant religious feeling (when coupled with true religious freedom), and it also provided some great insight into the anti-American sentiment so prevalent among Western Europeans (a sentiment which, popular misconceptions notwithstanding, pre-dates George W. Bush and has been alive and well for decades).

Bawer talks of many cultural difference, but the primary distinction he explores is the way Americans view multiculturalism as compared to western Europeans. While he does not claim America is without its problems and racial prejudices, his analysis made me appreciate the machine of assimilation in America, the way people really can be relatively easily incorporated into the fabric of the nation within a generation, which is not so much the case in Europe, where people of non-western descent will often be thought of as "second" and "third" generation immigrants rather than as, say, Norwegians or Dutchmen or Frenchmen or Germans. For Europeans, race and ethnicity is more defining than it is for Americans. An African immigrant who became a citizen of Holland, for instance, remarks that when he went to the U.S., the Americans accepted him as Dutch in a way the Dutch never had.

This is a problem when it comes to Islam because it means that, "As a rule, the [European] establishment strives to overlook the fact that being Muslim is a matter of holding certain beliefs and living (and dying) by them. It prefers instead to think of Muslim identity as having to do with cuisine, clothing, and skin color." The consequence is that any criticism of Islamic ideology or of the actions of individual Muslims is automatically equated with racism. Thus, Muslim immigrants are not generally encourage to accept Western values of tolerance and gender equality and religious freedom and are held to different standards of judgment for their actions than a native would be.

European multiculturalism, Bawer implies, is not so much a matter (as in the U.S.) of the natives appreciating and borrowing from immigrant cultures and the immigrants learning from and assimilating to the native culture while at the same time retaining many of their own distinct customs, as it is a matter of saying (my words, not Bawer's), "I respect your culture, which is equal to mine and just as great as mine; now keep your culture over there on this side of the invisible wall, and stay over there with it. Don't let me change your wonderful culture in any way, and don't try to come over here and become a permanent part of mine."

One passage in particular warmed the cockles of my American heart with sentimentalism some might well mock:

"The more I thought about such things, the more I saw how American I was in my thinking about races and ethnic groups—and, by European standards, how radical. For most Europeans, a foreigner was unalterably foreign. An immigrant might live next door to you for decades, but he'd always remain, in some fundamental sense, an alien. This wasn't the way things worked in America. Growing up in Queens, I never for a moment thought of myself as part Polish, German, French, English…I was an American kid, the product of a society that had rejected the European way of thinking about such things. One day, years after moving to Europe, I found the last names of my childhood neighbors and classmates rolling through my mind. Huber. Cino. Salholz. Friedman. Maurer. Kunz. Toohy. Conticelli. Fedorowich. Diaz. Schmiemann. Woknicki. Ikeda. Paluszek. After years of living in Norway, I heard those names in a different way. I suddenly realized I'd grown up in the middle of a veritable United Nations of names…And I'd never given a thought to it. It just was. And that was the beauty of it. The sound of those names—names that reached back through the generations to people of more primitive times who had hated, persecuted, enslaved, and made war on one another—was the music of America. It was one more thing I'd taken for granted all my life."

One failing in this book, however, is that he does not explore (and perhaps this is because he lived away from U.S. for so) the way that the U.S. has lately seemed to be emulating these European ways of thinking about culture, race, ethnicity, and identity by focusing, especially in the school system, so intensely on "multiculturalism." I feel just as he does in the above paragraph; I too grew up not thinking very much about what defined me ethnically or considering that my closest friends, whose parents and siblings had been born in Korea and Vietnam and Taiwan, were anything other than simply "Americans." But I do wonder, will my children--after years in a public education system that routinely encourages students to identify themselves (and each other) not so much by their common American nationality as by their divergent ethnic backgrounds--feel the same? A second failing is his tendency to make total approval of homosexuality a measuring stick of tolerance. Because of the way he wrote about religious conservatives in general, I occasionally found myself wondering if his assessment of Muslims in Europe had at least a little something to do with his own intolerance for religious conservatives in general.

As for what the book has to say about radical Islam, that can probably be summed up in three words: Europe, wake up. The author brings to the forefront an issue that has always puzzled me: why do those liberals who so loathe fundamentalist Christians (and who are so certain that if only said Christians had a chance they would take us all back to the 1950's) seem to have only apologies and excuses to offer radical Muslims, who fall far to the right of fundamentalist Christians on issues such as women's rights, homosexuality, and the melding of church and state? And will liberal Europeans, in the name of tolerance, allow their own tolerant societies to be destroyed from within?

[Alan Ireland · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book out of a sense of duty - so that I would understand the position of an intellectual Islamophobe. Needless to say, it's mainly rubbish. Glancing at the above blurb, I'm amused by the bit about "the dangers of militant Islam and America’s role in combating it". In reality, America is the creator and sustainer of such militant groups as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. To America, the "terrorist" is both ally and perpetual casus belli. "Terrorism" is an integral part of the New World Order, which is based on the Orwellian concept of endless war.

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

A PLACE AT THE TABLE by conservative writer Bruce Bawer was first published in 1993, and even twenty-five years later is still considered controversial by some. Generally gay readers applauded this sympathetic appeal for the inclusion of gays and lesbians into the full society. Some, though on the more militant side, thought it a little too "gay like me," since Bawer draws on his own experience in showing how he, as a well-thought-of freelance writer, quickly lost a job for an unspecified but inescapable reason after he came out to his allegedly liberal editor, "Vlad."

Reaction was more mixed among non-gay readers. Many found it refreshing and readable, while others, who had had no trouble when Bawer recommended immigration quotas for Muslims, objected to his advocacy of gay rights. (Really, does it always depend on whose ox is being gored?)

Sadly, this "controversy" still goes on, but I can say this about A PLACE AT THE TABLE: (1) it hasn't aged as much as I might have hoped; but (2) it is, as in all Bawer's works of advocacy, very well-written and engaging. The reader who picks it up is likely to be give much food for thought, even in 2018.

[Bracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two things stood out to me as i read this book. First, the dire situation that the old continent finds itself because of its cultural/economic socialism and immigration policies. The fact that Europeans have seriously slowed in having children is producing chaos for their economic system. How can Europeans enjoy the perks of their supposed 'socialist' government benefits if there are less and less of them (Europeans) to fill the employment void as more and more workers retire, in order for them to be taxed so that they can pump money into the system? The answer leads to my second point...Immigration. Bring in Muslims from north Africa and the middle east to fill the void. Problem - Muslims refuse to culturally assimilate with a culture they deem decadent. They want to come in and partake of the benefits but often times without giving back into the system that they partake from. Honor killings are happening across Europe, calls for Sharia Law to be implemented have been accepted in England where Islamic parallel courts have been set up, and Islamic intolerance to an ever growing multicultural society is causing nightmares for Europeans.

All of this is written by a homosexual man who ironically says that living in predominant judeo Christian conservative America seems like a beautiful thing in light of living in the midst of angry muslims in Europe.

[Nick Imrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have you ever had a conversation with a friend, where you suddenly realised that you both held a secretly unpopular opinion, and then enthusiastically raved together for hours, finally able to share with sympathy? Bruce Bawer writes like a man who has been supressing his unpopular opinions for years and suddenly found a friend. This means that the book is an easy read and a great polemic. Bawer's sincerity is clearly genuine, his passion for enlightenment values is heart-warming, and his prose is simple and clear. But - like many great rants - the book is rambling, poorly structured and often over-reaches itself. If you want to understand the fears and reasoning of the growing anti-islamic movement in the west then this is a great place to start. If you want a clear investigation into the state of Muslim communities in Europe then this is disappointing. And if you were hoping for a cogent defense of the United States then move on quickly - this is not it!

In Bawer's mind, European disdain for the USA is all part and parcel of its surrender to Islam: a rejection of liberty, equality and western values. But, he doesn't really argue this well and the book feels disjointed: it's sometimes a criticism of European integration policies, at othertimes a colossal whine about how America doesn't get enough respect. Many of his complaints about the lack of respect for the USA are anecdotes about dinner parties that Bawer attended where people slighted or snubbed him for being a yank. Bawer comes across as a bit petty, to be honest: a member of the chattering classes complaining that other members of the chattering classes disagree with him.
On the other hand, he's not wrong. It's true (at least in the UK) that the intelligensia are terrible hypocrites. Despite the fact that a great deal of the films, TV and music that they consume is American, they feel confident to make gross generalisations about the vulgarity of American culture, the stupidity of American politics, and the obesity of American people; and they consider it not only racist but utterly taboo to make the same sort of negative generalisations about Islamic cultures in their own country. Criticisms of American Christian fundamentalism are de rigeur and proof of American awfulness; criticisms of European Islamic fundamentalism are racist.

But Bawer over-reaches when he keeps trying to spin the lack of European support for the Middle Eastern wars as anti-democracy: 'To them [Norwegian journalists], Iraqi freedom didn't matter - nobody's did' and 'Never mind that countless lives were saved; never mind that a bloody tyranny was replaced by a democracy. For Galtung, no miltary action - and certainly not one carried out by America - can ever be acknowledged as having positive results'.

Comments like these have not aged well.

The Middle East is not a happy, safe democracy thanks to American intervention. Instead, it's gone from bad to worse: theocratic nutjobs have set up a caliphate, hundreds of thousands have died, minorities like the Yazidi are suffering genocide, Christians and Jews are fleeing for their lives, and millions have been displaced, exacerbating the very Islamic immigration that Bawer is opposed to! Bawer, frankly, looks like an asshole when he insists that his opponents are motivated by anti-democratic, freedom-hating cowardice rather than moral and practical objections.

In fact, Bawer's position seems to be an American chauvinism that is the equal and opposite of his friends' anti-Americanism. Take this, for example:

If the document's authors were serious about listing America's contributions to the world, why hadn't they mentioned - along with Lincoln and Elvis - such inventions and discoveries as airplanes, anesthesia, calculators, computers, DNA, compact discs, elevators, electric light, artificial hearts, helicopters, magnetic resonance imaging, the Internet, microprocessors, microwave ovens, motion pictures, nylon, pacemakers, photography, phonographs, quasars, sound recording, sewing machines, mass spectroscopy, electric stoves, telephones, television, transisters, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and the polio, measles and meningitis vaccines - just for starters?

I realise that I'm about to make a massive detour, but really! These are not by any means all American inventions.

The first calculators were invented by Blaise Pascal (French) and Wilhelm Schickard (German) and various improved versions were invented by Europeans right up until Frank Baldwin (American) and W.T. Odhner (Swede) simultaneously developed pinwheel calculators.
The first computer was invented by Charles Babbage (British) with programming by Ada Lovelace (British). Alan Turing (Brit) built the first model of a general purpose computer and basically founded theoretical computer science. The US navy developed an electromechanical analog computer for submarines in the 1930s, at the same time Konrad Zuse (German Nazi) developed the first world's first programmable computer, with wikipedia crediting him as the inventor of the modern computer.
DNA was discovered by Friedrich Miescher (Swiss) and its structure was discovered by Watson and Crick (Brits) based on the work of Rosalind Franklin (Brit).
Compact Discs were invented in a joint collaboration between Sony and Philips, the engineers were a team of Japanese and Germans, based on work by James T. Russell (American).
Elevators have existed since the Roman period, but the first steam powered elevator was made by Burton and Hormer (Brits), with various improvements made by Henry Waterman (American), Gaetano Genovese (Italian) and Elisha Otis (American).
The first artificial heart was made by the Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov in 1937, but the first patent went to an American Paul Winchell.
The internet was created by hundreds of people, not least the American military, but the world wide web (i.e. what most people think of when they think of the internet) was created by Tim Berners Lee (Brit).
No one person invented motion pictures but many people contributed; Robert W. Paul (Brit) developed panning shots, Georges Méliès (French) built the first film studio; stop-motioned animation was invented by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper (Brit). The first feature length multi-reel film was Australian.
Nicéphore Niépce (French) and Louis Daguerre (French) invented photography.
Thomas Saint (Brit) invented the first sewing machine. A whole host of Germans, Brits and French made modified designs on sewing machine right up until Singer (American) made his version.
Mass spectrometry was invented by Francis William Aston (Brit).
The first television was invented by John Logie Baird (Scot), but check wikipedia for the long list of Germans, English, Russian, Scottish, and French inventors and scientists who made it possible.
The first domestic vacuum cleaner was made by Walter Griffiths (Brit).
Telephones were invented by Alexander Graham Bell (Scot), although he was working in America at the time.
Washing machines were being developed by Brits from the 1700s, with Americans getting into the game later and the American company, Avco, producing the first commercial domestic machine.

I apologise to any readers who were hoping for a review of a book on Islam in Europe, but instead got a potted history of 19th and 20th century inventions! But really, it is arrogance of the first order to create a list of 'American' inventions and discoveries without first checking that they were actually done by Americans. This list is a mismash of genuine American inventions, collaborations that draw from many nations over time, and things that were discovered by people who were unambiguously neither American nor working in America. The strongest argument that can be made here is for free markets, exemplified in America. Even when Europeans invented or discovered many of these things, Americans are much quicker off the mark to commericialise and mass market (film, computers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners all being good examples).

He's on firmer ground when he criticises European policy towards Islamic integration. The American melting pot has encouraged refugees and immigrants from hundreds of different cultures to give up their differences and embrace an American identity, while European multiculturalism has allowed colonies to thrive and deepened divisions between ethic groups. But again, most of Bawer's argument depends on anecdotes: the time his friend was beaten up by homophobic Muslims, the time that a Muslim anti-fundamentalism march was held and embarrassingly nobody showed up despite the fact that weeks earlier thousands had turned out for the pro-sharia march, the time that Jewish kids were abused at schools by Muslim kids. But anecdotes are not a useful argument about broad social trends. There are millions of Muslims in Europe, one could fill a book with hundreds of anecdotes about Muslim-on-kafir crime and it still wouldn't tell you anything meaningful because hundreds are just a tiny fraction of millions.
When Bawer does try to use statistics, maddeningly, he doesn't include any references. So he says things like: 'Polls show that young European Muslims today - even those born in Europe - identify more with their ancestral homelands than with the countries whose passports they carry.' Which may very well be true - but which polls?! Likewise, he claims that there is a secretive EU initiative called the Euro-Arab dialogue which works with Arabian countries. Europeans gain markets for their goods and oil supplies and in return they help to spread anti-semitic, anti-American attitudes in European media, schools and universities. Can this be true? Is sounds like paranoia. And since Bawer has failed utterly to include any references he makes it difficult to check or verify.

In some places his argument rather contradicts itself. For example, he claims on the one hand that Europeans are filled with self-loathing and self-doubt because of their history of colonialism and the horrors of the world wars. This is, he suggests, one of the reasons that they've failed to defend their culture and stand up for their values. Buuuut, he also says that Europeans are not taught to think critically about their history, which is why they trust their governments too much. But these can't both be true.

This review has been more negative than I intended. Despite the occasional self-pity and the infuriating lack of statistics, it is a very good read. And even though Bawer seems overly defensive of the States, it is because he loves his country and he is a true believer in Enlightenment values. There is an endearing modesty in his mixture of anger and embarrassment after he loses his temper with smug Europeans who think they know everything about his country. His tone is passionate because he cares deeply about Europe, and he wants it to survive and thrive.

And most of all, I think this book is a very useful look into the worldview of the anti-islamic movement. There has been a great deal of hand-wringing about whether racism against Muslims is growing, and to what extent criticism of Islam is really motivated by racism against Arabs and Asians. Bawer demonstrates the mindset of someone who wants to live in tolerance and peace with everybody, but as a gay man he isn't perpared to accept murderous intolerance from others just because 'it's their culture'. It really isn't racism, it is a desperate defense of human rights against an ideology that hates the very concept. He isn't alone in his fears when he says:

'That a silent majority of European Muslims believed in democracy and despised terror was by now a truism. Observers found themselves thinking, however, that if that silent majority existed at all, it had to be one of the most silent majorities ever. It had remained silent after 9/11, Madrid, Beslan, and van Gogh's murder. Each time, European journalists and politicians had repeated the mantra that extremists were not representative of most European Muslims, who were peace loving and rejected violence. Yet why were these declarations always being made by non-Muslims and almost never by Muslims themselves? What did it mean to claim that European Muslims were overwhelmingly moderate when, as Kevin Myers noted in the Telegraph, '11 percent of Britain's two million Muslims approved of the attacked of 9/11, and 40 percent support Osama bin Ladin'? Was one seriously supposed to consider these people 'moderates'?

[Danusha Goska · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming across this recently, I was initially surprised that the same Bruce Bawer who penned one of the great pro-gay rights books, "A Place at the Table", wrote this. Naturally, I picked it up having recently finished the mind-bending "A Death in Amsterdam."

I’m not the reactionary-type – being the liberal-minded gay man that I am. But Bawer did fully awaken my latent frustration and internal dilemma that our War on (Islamic) Terror has its justification, if not my quiescent approval at times. Do I miss Saddam Hussein, or the Taliban in the few places they’ve been wiped clean? Not on my western, pro-democratic, gay life, say I. My kind would be quickly lined up and executed according to sharia law in those countries that live and breathe by it. Bawer compares Islamism to Nazism, and I have to say that he’s not far from the truth. [On the contrary, fundamentalist Christians may spout hatred, but they rarely brow-beat, rape, or – worse – kill their victim; the latter of which are always non-believers (usually Jews), women, and homosexuals.]

Like Bawer, I’ve found it increasingly disturbing that the liberal European tendency to condone Islamist sentiments in order to protect their freedom of speech (and actions, as Bawer argues) completely nullifies the same for the rest of us infidels. It’s as if because of their fear of being perceived as intolerant, Europeans have become stymied with a “see-no-evil” mentality that allows real intolerance to suffocate them. It makes one wonder: Did Europe learn anything from Nazism and Fascism?

Even though he spends most of his book with a “too little, too late” mentality when it comes to the future security of Europe, he does back off just a little with some more recent developments in immigration and naturalization policies that are more in alignment with what we already have here in the United States; namely language requirements and citizenship tests.

But I think they also need to ditch the state-welfare pay-outs – that proud socialist tradition across Western Europe -- that has unfortunately been the sugar-daddy for Islamist groups. By not expecting poor immigrants to find jobs, go to public schools, and participate and respect fully western values in the public sphere – what you believe in private is your own damn business, ultimately – Europe has unwittingly created a monster that’s been eating away at it in recent years.

For any red-blooded gay American: You need to read this. You may not agree with everything that Bawer says or interprets – and he certainly has a harsh (and some would argue realistic) take of what’s going on in the West – but he will force you to confront the genuine ugliness of radical Islam. His points are refreshing in a time of war. And it just may remind you that even in the worst of times here on the home front (anti-gay marriage sentiment), we’ve got it good (we’re are moving in that direction). I may not agree with everything that Bush and the neo-Cons do, but I’ll gladly take them any day over the likes of most Middle East leaders, if not half of the over-educated yet dim-witted elite in charge of Europe.**

I never imagined myself saying this, but three words reverberated in my non-Christian mind by book’s end: God Bless America.
________________________________

* Before becoming a paid public elementary school teacher, I taught citizenship classes (as a non-paid volunteer) to elderly immigrants, and not only can I be more proud that public and private donors are willing to provide grants to offer these, but also that our government values our democracy enough to require incoming citizens to go through this process. Europe makes it too damn easy.
** Although I argue that conservative-minded Merckel and Sarkozy, in Germany and France respectively, are much-needed shots in the arm to help protect treasured Western liberal values against palpable belligerence and intolerance.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Bruce Bawer begins his book WHILE EUROPE SLEPT: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from within, he introduces himself as a gay man who moved to Amsterdam and Oslo and became appalled at how European countries are undermining their own fabled tolerance of gays and freedom of expression by condoning growing radical Islamist sentiment that is anything but tolerant. I am worried by the implications of EU demography, which suggest that unassimilated Muslims will soon wield immense political power in a couple of countries (if, as Bawer notes, they don't already). Certainly Bawer's long, long series of quotations from European media on the rise in Muslim violence and the problems of integrating immigrants into European values can serve to show just what the scale of the problem is. I found particularly informative his explanation of "fetching marriages", an extremely common custom where the daughter of Muslim immigrants, never allowed to assimilate herself as a girl, is married to someone brought over from her country of origin, ensuring that these communities are never integrated as intermarriages with locals would accomplish.

But Bawer isn't just a gay man wanting respect for his lifestyle, he's also a strong supporter of American ideals and disillusioned with Europe. So much of the book is taken over by ranting about aspects of European society that have little to do with the problem of growing Islamism. He damns social services and calls the continent to adopt the American-style free market. He complains about the traditions of the French labour movement without considering that, hey, people are pretty happy with the way things are. He thinks European customer service sucks and wants it to be like it is in America. (For my part, when I go back to the US, I find everyone's fake smiles annoying; I know low-paid employees aren't really that happy to serve me.) He claims that Americans are so friendly that they often invite foreigners to their homes, without acknowleding that most invitations to strangers in the US are hollow and folks would feel pretty awkward if the person did drop by. European prisons are too comfortable, Bawer says, even when the incarcerated person he uses as an example isn't even a Muslim extremist.

Too often he depicts the US as if it doesn't suffer from the very same problems. For example, he points out the limited range of viewpoints in the Norwegian press, claiming that the entire spectrum from left to right would fit within the American left. Nonetheless, the American media itself has a fairly limited range and is reluctant to directly confront the growth of Islamism, one of the reasons for the rise of the much more varied blogosphere. America has all the same problems with immigrant ghettoes and limited assimilation that the EU does, it just doesn't have the demographic problem because it draws enough immigrants from other sources.

Nowhere in the book does he discuss the possible solutions that EU expansion to the mainly Christian nations of Eastern Europe may offer. It's as if the EU stops at Germany. Rather, he even calls for EU countries to withdraw from EU ideals and boost their own national consciousness, which I don't think would be very helpful. And he is strangely enthusiastic about the American invasion of Iraq, which from a Realpolitik perspective probably ended up helping Islamism by removing a brutal but mainly secular dictator. At one point, he even claims that the invasion of Iraq was such a shining blow for freedom that it singlehandledly inspired the people of Ukraine to launch their Orange Revolution, which is completely out there.

As concerned as I am about the fate of Western Europe over the next few decades, I cannot really recommend Bawer's book. I'm still searching for a suitable introduction to the issues.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've sent this book to several friends. If they're not buying the war on terror from the American right, maybe they'll listen to a gay guy.

Bawer moved to Europe, enamored by "a world that had moved beyond bigotry," where "people's sense of identity and self-worth didn't depend on jobs or salaries," and folks "are appreciative of and satisfied with everyday pleasures." He wanted to love Europe, did love Europe, apparently still does.

All the more powerful, then, his eye-opening, highly readable account of events and attitudes in Europe through 9/11 and beyond. Wonder at the bizarre embrace of Islamic extremism by the European intellectual and political communities even as they encourage the flood of North African immigrants to establish their own isolated communities under sharia law.

Reading this book is like watching a horror movie unfold, but you can't look away. Read it with Mark Steyn's "America Alone," and you'll lie awake nights. Follow it up with Spencer's "Stealth Jihad" and face our future.

Here's Bruce Bawer on Bruce Bawer quoting blogger Roger Simon:
"What if you're one of these people who think that Gay Marriage is a natural outgrowth of the human rights movement and that the War on Terror is protecting those same rights? That's not a contradiction in my mind. In fact, it's almost evident."

[Jeremy Hatfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has been following the problems Europeans have been having with Islamists, I found this book strongly resonant with the concerns I have for Europe and her culture.



I suspected that part of the reason Europe was in the fix it is now was due in part to her abandoning her Christian heritage. For all the problems European Christianity has had, it did provide Europe with a certain strength of character and a certain clarity of vision. Abandoning this backbone has left her defenseless against a cultural force with a clear agenda for conquest, backed by the very thing Europe has tried to abandon--religious fervor.



Surprisingly, Bawer seems to agree with my assessment, given double impact by the fact that he is a gay man with no love for Christian fundamentalism (in fact, he left Europe in part to get away from American Christian fundamentalism). I can only respect his honesty in that regard.



While he and I may disagree on gay rights issues, and I think he focuses a little too much on the threat Islam poses specifically to those rights, the book is nonetheless a very good, well-written, and highly informative treatise on the growing problem of radical Islam in Europe.

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author/journalist Bruce Bawer had looked forward to living in liberal Norway with his new husband. When he got there, though, he found that Norwegian society was in a period of reaction so as not to offend Muslims, instituting some prohibitions against speech, liberty and other forms of open expression -- whether one is a co-religionist or not. Bawer researched this book in Western Europe and it was published here in 2006. It is cogently argued and well worth reading even today -- you might think Bawer was correct in predicating an authoritarian, rights-diminished Europe and USA, or you might think he overstated the case. Either way, this book should still be read.

[Michael Estey · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

Author: Bruce Bawer

Book Review

If you're not paranoid now,
in these post 911 times of terrorism,
sky bombings, anthrax, and all that shit.
Then read this book.
You will be.

Basically about tolerance (Europe)
and intolerance (Islam)
The Islamic Master Plan.

Bruce Bawer the author, a gay man moves to Europe with his lover, -- as if that matters, but it does give you a prespective from a gay persons viewpoint -- he tells of his experiences and observations as he see's them, the mass migration of Muslims, infact the largest migration of any humans ever, and it is happening in Europe and other places right now, as I type. The infiltration of all European Governments. The assimilation that was promised but never materialized, multi-culturalism collapsing, all these things happening, right now in Europe.

Actually he calls them problems, and you might agree which I hope you do.
Homosexuals, harrassed and killed.(for the author I listed this first)
Women, oppressed and abused.
Honor killings and disfigurings. (gasoline the preferred method.)
Forced marriages. (Prearranged at birth)
The illusion that multiculturalism works, Muslims not assimulating, forming there own neighbourhoods, infiltrating the govenment to change laws for their protection, to build, etc.
Living off the system. (Welfare fraud)
Buying up property.
The list goes on, until you get to the final solution... The Extreme Islamic Ultimate Plan for the world.(the scary part)

In other words Muslim, dominance...

Will Europe stand up to them?

Watch our own parliament while in session. Count the turbans. I live in Surrey remember. I'm the minority one here and I also know how extreme some Islamic people can be with there religious beliefs.
I'll say no more in fear of some Thuggie, come slit my throat.

Hey,
I saw those al-Qaeda videos of the beheadings...

I know they are still out there on the internet somewhere, you'll have to search it out yourself. They are real.

They have cases here in Vancouver, of women, burned with gasoline, by her fanatical husband, for stepping out of line. So, I know it happens and is not just here-say.

It all boils down to religion, which were not supposed to talk about, are we? Gets people upset.

A great read. Bruce is a good investigator, his observation and communication skills are bar none. For such a complicated subject, he drives right in with his foot off the clutch and you go along for the ride, I couldn't put it down.


I give this book two thumbs up,
and highly recommend it.

Read the Book
Dog Brindle
dogbrindlebarks.blogspot.ca

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A depressing and infuriating read. The European stage is set for a second Dark Ages and no one seems to care. When Rome fell in the fifth century, it took a thousand years for reason and humanism to triumph over superstition. I fear we may be seeing a repeat. Brexit makes sense to me now.

I would have given 3.5 stars had it been an option. The information contained within is worth five stars, but I removed a star because the book contains no references which gives its critics ammunition to ignore or belittle it. The book is also poorly organized; three seventy page chapters make reading it more difficult than it should be. Regardless, I will be reading more or Bawer's work in the future.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deserving nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award is every bit as relevant today as it was when published eleven years ago. Maybe even more so because the tension and violence and antisemitism related to terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism in Europe has only continued to grow. Look no further than this week's headlines about unrest and attacks in Sweden, and look no further than those headlines and the attendant propaganda to see the same old cover-ups by the officials of government and journalist elites, the snillister (Norwegian for "do-gooders") who are persistently in denial that fundamental Islam, which is growing, is at odds with the West and that it fully intends to subjugate it in time.

The writing is fluid, clear, engaging, and illustrative through facts, figures, and numerous anecdotes, both personal and from a variety of press coverage and academic sources, demonstrating Europe's gradual but persistent acquiescence to totalitarianism. The elites of Europe aid the growth and isolation of Islamists, denouncing as "intolerant" all who oppose it, despite the Islamists' clearly stated objectives to eventually take over and impose sharia in the West.

Perhaps the greatest weapon in any politically correct toolkit is to brandish the epithet "racist" upon noncompliant opponents, for nobody in Europe wishes to be labeled a racist and Europeans will do practically anything to avoid the label. Forget the fact that Islam is not a race. And ignore the fact that up until very recently Europeans have overwhelmingly approved of mass immigration by Muslims without regard to the stark differences in cultures that are difficult to reconcile. Make no mention of the fact that numerous areas of Europe are ceding authority to Islamists who insist upon sharia (e.g., Oldham and Bradley in England, Rinkeby in Sweden, numerous banlieues in France).

Of course, Europeans mocked and opposed the efforts of the U.S. in liberating nations in the Middle East from the Taliban and other dictatorial rule, even bizarrely blaming 9-11 on the U.S. and Israel. Europeans are so determined to maintain the peace at any cost -- no war is justified -- even though there is ample evidence throughout history that freedom and peace come with a price. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

The author, a homosexual Democrat, shared many of the same "values" as his compatriots from his native New York City who view themselves as cosmopolitan citizens of the world and who eschew the provincialism of middle America. But much of that changed when he actually lived in Europe, not just visited it, first in the "liberal" Netherlands, and then in Norway, and subsequently recognized how wrong he had been.

Europeans are served a constant diet of anti-Americanism that pervades all levels of society. They are much more provincial and timid than their world image. With few exceptions, they are primarily familiar with their own country's language, media, and entertainment, and that in English (America and Britain). That's it. Publicly Europeans engage in bashing America and its ideals in much the same way the younger brother constantly aims to assert his worth and manhood by one-upping his bigger and more successful older brother.

Europeans deride Americans who come to their countries and walk with a swagger they claim is meant to intimidate and to show arrogance and disdain. Projection? Inferiority complex? Dutch friends of the author's are shocked when he assures them that most Americans will live their entire lives without giving a moment's thought to what Europeans think of them. It's true. And it's amusing to think that Sweden and other similar countries are desperate to be viewed as a world moral authority, for example, by taking in as many immigrants as possible as if to say, "Hey, look at us, see what we did here," when nobody really cares. And then they are left dealing with the violence and growing threats to the very values of openness and inclusiveness that led them to expose their homelands to complete strangers in the first place.

Europe is obsessed with self-loathing, perhaps as penitence for its misdeeds throughout the 20th Century. Yet in secret (and not-so-secret), regular Europeans are in love with all things America -- its pop culture, music, books, movies, and privately they even admire the strength shown by many American leaders such as George W. Bush. But regular Europeans have seldom questioned the authority of the elites in their own countries' politics and journalism. It's a holdover from the feudalism days still deeply entrenched in the European psyche. Unlike Americans, Europeans have great faith and trust in their governments and their press, even though politicians and journalists are laden with their own agendas and often selectively report the facts. This book shows example after example of how tyranny and intolerance are covered up by the officials, and are continuing to grow aided and abetted.

All of that is beginning to change as populist waves are making great advances in Britain (Brexit recently passed), Holland, Germany, France, and Denmark. The author laments that the reaction to the leftist fascism in Europe could be an equally fearsome fascism on the right. But it's understandable that people are no longer accepting the lies told by government and the press who blame everything on racism and supposed Islamophobia. It is the Islamists who support sharia, subjugation of women (genital mutilation, domestic abuse, oppression), persecution of gays, and who openly hate the values of the West such as gender equality and freedom of speech.

I would love to see a follow-up to this book with developments from the last ten years. There have been devastating terrorist attacks in Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Britain, and there are still more to come. I would love to see a little more realism in Europe to confront the challenges that threaten their societies and the entire West. I'm encouraged to see the political landscape shifting and populations taking their countries back from the naive and incompetent "elites." However, I share the author's concern about a populism that goes too far in the other direction. Time will tell. Freedom comes with a price, but the price is worth paying only if you value freedom more than a [false] sense of safety.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bawer makes a great case here, showing how much of the intelligentsia of Europe has stabbed gays and women in the back in order to not offend an ideology that views both groups as less than equal. I know what it's like to live abroad during the Bush administration, when one bigot after another would wear their anti-American prejudice as a badge of honor but would not dare say a thing against an ideology completely at odds with the modern world. Bawer puts up with plenty of it in Norway and the Netherlands.

The fetching marriages that bring over a teenaged cousin of a welfare-taking inhabitant who has recently migrated to Europe, so that she can be a good 3rd-class citizen and stay in the kitchen and make babies, is told again and again in the book. The physical attacks on gays by violent Muslim groups in the streets, the murders of Dutch politicians, the attempt to outlaw anything that may blasphemy Muhammed, it just causes anger as you watch this society commit suicide at the altar of political correctness.

Bawer holds out hope for Europe at the end of the book, written a decade ago, as Sarkozy and Merkel are on the verge of taking power and perhaps stemming the invasion. I bet Bawer, especially in the case of Merkel, would like to take that one back.

[Lucas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe that the topic of encrochment of Islam upon the West bears the need of a careful, steadied report, but this was not the intention of this author. This book is absolutely littered with so many logical fallacies that any point that Bawer makes is suspect. I state that there may be a need for a stronger understanding of the intentions of the leaders of religions whose dictates countermand the laws of the nations, but this is not the book for any logical understanding.

[Matty-Swytla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm... I find it hard to rate the book - on one hand, it does a good job explaining the mainstream political situation in Europe before the shock of rising right injected some new thought in its muddied and utterly calm waters, but it also does not delve deep enough into the problems of Muslim immigration and non-integration. Then again, the author wrote it before the shocking revelations of mass gang rapes of non-Muslim girls in Britain and elsewhere perpetrated by Pakistani men and how the government did absolutely its best to cover it up in order to not be racist. (Is Islam suddenly a race now? I wasn't told.) These revelations certainly shifted perceptions, not to mention the year of terror in France.

The focus of the book is mainly on Scandinavian countries and how the media and journalists collude with the predominant policy of non-reaction and appeasement, even in the wake of assassinations and blatant calls for censorship, blasphemy laws, and bullying by Muslims. It makes your blood boil at the injustice and abuse descriped here. Critics of Islam are certainly swiftly silenced and pushed to the side, which just might push the more radical reactionists towards the dangerous far right everyone is so quick to cry about. (In their calls for debate the governing parties certainly are quick to silence any critics who dare say anything Muslims might find 'problematic'.)

And yet, I can't swallow the optimism he feels about the role of America in the fight against extremism. America will most likely let Europe and the Middle East sort itself out since politicians and bureaucrats are doing their level best to ingratiate themselves to China and adopt some of their 'delighful' Orwellian populace control methods, while distancing themselves from the USA. The migrant crisis only worsened the situation in Europe and the economic crisis now threatening generous welfare programs will only sharpen the divide among people and nations while also throwing the masses under the proverbial bus so long as the elites can enjoy their privileges. And when a rising number of lower classes are now Muslim, this will not go down very well.

So, the author is right in a sense about the self-destruction found in the European mindset, but I guess the general incompetency and corruption of leading parties just might shake up the voters into moving their butts and doing something constructive to save their culture and nation without losing their values of human rights and liberty. The sharp rise in EU-sceptics might do something good and wake them up. We'll see. I'm not holding my breath.

[Moataz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Islamic terrorism has done great damage in Europe. From the less talked-about assassination of Journalists and thinkers and politicians to the more talked-about bombings and terrorist attacks. I was hopping the book would be about that, but it was disappointing.
The book is poorly structured; just rambling chatter about stories and anecdotes that has touched the author himself. It couldn't get more whiter than that! No wonder he compared Islam presence in Europe with Nazism. A famous American analogy for anything they don't like - literally anything, even if it's a type of cereal or something. But on what basis is this analogy made? No clue. Is there any Islamic political party in any European country? Is there any Islamist politician in any European county? No, and no - of course. Is Islam ethnocentric? No. Is it nationalistic? Also no. The concept of Umma, unlike the popular belief is different from the nationalist concept. But there isn't have to be any similarities between Muslims and Nazis - be it historically or ideologically. In fact, through out the whole book, there was no need for facts or numbers or references. We have to take the author's word for it. The book is lazy beyond description. No real effort or research was carried out for this book. And why? This book doesn't have any argument, it's just some urban myths and conversations of European racists and their "feelings" about Islam or the way they processed Islamic terrorism around them.
I hated how he pretended to be impartial. Calling the book 'Radical Islam', then make little distinction between Islam itself and radical Islam. Islamic Fundamentalism exists, but it seems for the author that Islam is Fundamentalism and Fundamentalism is Islam. An Islam that isn't extreme doesn't exist. Then attack the concept of "moderate" Islam. Then assert that many Muslim thinkers suffer from Radical Islamists just as much as Europeans. Again, no effort was made for this book. Many points seemed to contradict each other.

I think what I hated that most is his takes on "Islam", theologically speaking. When he quoted Koran like many white people pretending to know what he's talking about it. And his takes on women, queers, and Jews. Islam, for the author, seems to be uniquely inherently prejudiced against these communities as part of its foundation. Any christian attacks on the same identities are wrong and comes out of ignorant and fanatics who has nothing to do with Christianity - that was his message in Stealing Jesus. Any similar rhetoric from Muslims is somehow unacceptable. Perhaps the author "knows" Islam more than Muslims themselves!!
In Sophie's World, there was a mention of France beheading the first feminist ever, subsequent to the french revolution. In queer theory, I read that in the nineteenth century Britain mastered executing gay men more than murderers, exceeding 50 executions in one year. What's "the European soul" that people keep mentioning? Why the need to be racist when you can acknowledge that societies go through periods of progress and backwardness, ups and downs? Wouldn't that help find better resolutions to violence and extremism?

The author is racist; he's bluntly racist. He described Muslim neighborhood as ghettos. "... a claustrophobia-inducing square of Dickensian ugliness." He called a very nostalgic American expression "a ghetto'' and if you ever read to Dr. MLK or James Baldwin you'd understand the sheer horror of such an expression. Unlike in American, you can't blame Black people being in ghettos these days, but they used to before it was known that it was the American government who kept black people there as cheap labor. It's very strange to see a white American man using the same word and also blame the racial minority for segregation and not being integrated in the society. And he even showed discomfort seeing middle-eastern looking tourists, even though they might not be Muslims and even though white Muslims exist, but anyway he said "... if you lived in Amsterdam and never left the city center, you could almost forget that Islam existed.... a profusion of tourists—but few men, and almost no women, who looked North African or Middle Eastern. If you got on a tram or subway, however, and took it a few stops in almost any direction, you'd confront a vastly different reality." Oh my! I don't know what to say but repeat the horrifying sentence. "... Few men, and almost no women, who looked North African or Middle Eastern ..."

[Skylar Burris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part “mediation” and part “manifesto,” A Place at the Table strives to dispel stereotypes about homosexuals that are, Bawer believes, all too often reinforced by gay activists. It is sometimes a calm, measured, and reasoned book, at other times a passionate polemic. The objects of Bawer’s frustration lie on opposite ends of the spectrum: on the one hand, “homophobes” (particularly the religious conservative variety, but all varieties); on the other hand, the “gay subculture” and its militants.

As the title implies, Bawer’s hope is that homosexuals come to be regarded as individuals deserving of an equal place in society and not as mere members of a stereotyped group, that their sexual orientation be seen as a part, and not as the whole, of who they are as individuals. His other main concern is that young men (he doesn’t have much to say about lesbians) who begin to discover their homosexual feelings be aware that they do not have a choice only between suppression or promiscuous indulgence. He argues that the social acceptance of homosexuals, and extending them domestic partnership rights, is essentially a conservative course of action, because it will reduce promiscuity among homosexuals and encourage more stabilizing and civilizing relationships as well as a certain amount of social conformity. He blames the promiscuity and anonymous sex of many homosexuals in part on the fact that they are not accepted by society and therefore tend to congregate in ghettos in the confines of a limiting gay subculture that does not (anymore than a homophobic society) view them as real individuals. Society is more likely to tolerate the "bachelor" homosexual than the committed homosexual couple, thus encouraging promiscuity. Society is, he writes, more tolerant of homosexual sex than it is of homosexual love.

His arguments are sometimes reasoned and persuasive, and at other times anecdotal and insubstantial. He relies heavily on his own experience as a homosexual Episcopalian neo-conservative, and perhaps at times regards his own assumptions about other people and their motives as something like statistical evidence.

While, overall, I found his political and social arguments fairly convincing, I found his Christian arguments lacking, as he does not address the issue of tradition at all and too facilely deals with the relevant Scripture. He does not, for instance, explain why, if the prohibition of homosexual sex is to be regarded merely as a part of the Holiness Code (which Christians need not practice), it is mentioned in conjunction with adultery. If we Christians are freed from the prohibition on homosexual sex, then are we also freed from the prohibition on adultery? If not, why not? He does not explain how a Christian is to justify not only the reversal of a 2,000 year old Christian tradition of prohibition, but an actual blessing, in God's name, of that previously prohibited thing. He does raise many pertinent questions about the logic of considering homosexual sex (within a committed, loving relationship) to be immoral from an ethical/philosophical viewpoint, but he does not adequately deal with the issue from the perspective of traditional Christian *practice*. He does recommend a book on the question from a Christian perspective, however, and I may dig into that later.

Another unrelated issue I wish he would have addressed in more detail is the idea of woman as a civilizing influence on man (who is presumably willing to limit certain uncivilized behaviors in order to appease/win her). He mentions this idea very briefly, but he simply states that homosexual men can civilize each other, without expanding on the argument.

He writes well, and the book is fascinating to read. A lot has changed since he wrote this book, and it would have been more beneficial to read an updated version. Nevertheless, I appreciated it for its unique perspective and it’s impassioned recognition of the importance of seeing the individual in a society currently bent on enshrining multiculturalism and group identity. Bawer is also a literary critic, and there is a fine little section that is an analysis of homosexual literature and literature by homosexuals.

[Chip Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, highlights a VERY serious problem facing the world today. This book will influence the way you view Europe and the Muslim world. Bruce Bawer's unique standpoint (being a gay man that has become disenchanted with the paradise he believed Europe to be) lends this rather old story a new perspective. This isn't your typical right-wing journalist.

This fascinating book results from the author's extensive travels and experiences in Europe. Many of his conclusions and arguments are based on his personal observations over the last 10 years or so. He claims to have noticed a very disturbing trend towards the radicalization of Europe's large Muslim population in that time. Additionally, the author has become extremely jaded by the European 'elite' establishment. Politicians and journalists that refuse to acknowledge or talk about the problem and maintain their illogical stances of accommodation, understanding, and compassion for Muslim extremists in the name of political correctness and liberalness are a huge part of the problem. Bawer's most powerful idea is that tolerance for intolerance doesn't make any sense and is extremely dangerous.

'While Europe Slept' will make you appreciate America like you never have before. Many of us see our country sliding inexorably towards a socialistic democracy where Big Brother will take care of all of our worries (while degrading our liberties and sense of individuality). Well, Europe is much further down that road than we are, and if we learn anything from their experience, it should be a wariness of socialism. Bawer's experiences with anti-Americanism in Europe are very revealing and extremely entertaining. Europeans' frustration at the success and attitude of America has resulted in widespread bitterness and cynicalism towards Americans. Unfortunately, it makes it worse that we don't really seem to care what they think!

While this book is very powerful and convincing, if you're already somewhat aware of the issues, you may find parts of it rather dull and repetitious. Reading story after story about radical Islamists and weak-kneed politicians eventually gets a little old. Numerous times I felt a bit annoyed, thinking "Okay, okay, I get it already", but never to the point where I wanted to stop reading, just to the point where I wanted some new subject matter. I just didn't think it was such a page-turner as some reviewers have claimed. Actually, I'd recommend America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn for a more enjoyable read that tells essentially the same story, but in a more concise and entertaining fashion.

Still, 'While Europe Slept' details [IMHO] the most important issue facing us today, explaining the causes, effects, and possible solutions for the Islamicization of Western Europe. Highly recommended.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book by Bruce Bawer that raises the alarm of what is being called the new rise of Islamic facism. There are several counterparts to this alarming book for it seems that if there is a rise of a hate group, there would be another counter hate group to go against that group and it will result into violence that would spread across Europe like the new hate group, the British National Party, a Neo-Nazi organization that many white people who are afraid or angry about the rise of Muslims immigrants that lives on the infrastructures of the socialist systems of British, Norwegian, Dutch, Finland and Sweden. Evil begets evil, as violence begets violence.

In here is the same outrage of the religion fundamentalism that would disrupt the rest of the secular society, oppress women and gays, and I am bewildered at the so called socialist progressive parties group that excuses terrorism and violence of the fundamentalism because of fear of racism charges and because of bowing down to altar of multiculturalism that they are even willing to sacrifice gays and women to.

We need to understand that freedom is always earned in the ages through the blood of heros from Revolution War, World War II like Wilson Churchill, and the everyday American soldiers that joined in the fight after Pearl Harbor attack by the Japan Immperialist suicidal bombers, and those who are serving in Afghanistan to break down the Taliban fighters. ( I was against the Iraq war but it seems that Bush whom I don't support and believes that Kerry should have been beaten to a pulp with his own shoes by his Democratic Committee for losing to him, anyway, Bush is being quietly admired by various Dutches and they even look up to Donald Rumsfield a fellow Dutchman himself whom I think is a cold hearted prick who did not even prepare for a war that had been ten years in the making and then BULLSHITS our soldiers by saying we can't fight a war with the weapons we want, only with what we have when he and that dick, Dick Cheney should have manufactured V shaped supply vehicles to make the soldiers less vulerable to I.E.D. ten years ago...anyway there are many Dutches who quietly admires George W. Bush for establishing an Iraqic Democracy but we will have to wait and see if that is a good thing or not. I hope I am wrong about my opinions about this.

It seems that this book is slowly turning me into a Republican instead of Independent. ( I did vote for Bob Dole, a Republican, because Clinton just looked too smooth an operator and I don't trust him because of the Whitewater scandal and too many baggages from his governship in Arkansan.)

[Frank Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 2006 by one of the better writers and commentators around, the book is clear-eyed vision of what Europe refuses to acknowledge: terrorism comes in various forms and one of those forms is intimidation and veiled threats. Bawer, who has lived in Europe for years, gives a highly factual and focused account of what he has witnessed during his time there. Two points that stood out for me: 1) Timothy Garton Ash, in his recently published collection of essays ("Facts Are Subversive: Political Writings From a Decade Without a Name") takes issue numerous times with Bawer's vision of the Islamic threat in Europe -- in short, Ash thinks Bawer is over-hyping the threat. I think Ash is wrong here and Bawer is exactly right, and; 2) Bawer is an openly gay man who shares with his readers his experiences being taunted, threatened and assaulted by Muslim men numerous times in Europe. My question is: why is that that some of the most outspoken observers of the radical Islamic threat in Europe are gay men? (i.e. the Dutch political leader Pim Fortuyn, Bawer, etc.). Bawer gives the answer about mid-way through the book: "The main reason I'd ben glad to leave America as Portestant fundamentalism. But Europe, I eventually saw, was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their American Protestant counterparts look like amateurs..." Gay intellectuals understand clearly that radical Islamists "...view that homosexuals merited death" and were not afraid to make that happen. A fascinating cultural difference from the US: European gays are in many ways becoming the most culturally conservative (and anti-radical Muslim) leaders in Europe. Well worth the read.

[Jim Reaugh · Rating 1 out of 5]

After getting half way through this book, I decided it was not going to be a trustworthy and unbiased source and I put it down. I am not saying that I did so because I took a fundamental exception to the author's conclusions, rather, the way the book is written makes me doubt the author's objectivity and reliability.

For instance, the author makes it clear in the opening passages of the book that he is gay. Naturally, that fact hardly disentitles him to an opinion on the subject at hand, but his personal experiences with homophobia and his clear - not to mention quite rightful - disgust with the hardcore Islamic position on homosexuality are emphasized repeatedly from the beginning.

Eventually, I could not help but begin to feel that his personal affront at Islamic anti-gay hatred (again, perfectly understandable), has unfortunately colored his ability to be objective. As I read on, this feeling was only compounded.

The more I read, the more I became convinced that this author has not done proper research and has merely spouted his own half-formed opinions. It is a diatribe... more suited to the 'conspiracy theorists' than those looking to learn more about an important issue.
I am sorry I wasted my money.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had expected this book to be about the growth of radical Islam, particularly in Europe, but it focused more on Europeans themselves and why they are not responding aggressively to the threat of radical Islam. The author moved to Europe ten years ago, and was astounded by the growing danger of Islamic radicalism and the fact that Europeans seemed to be doing little about it. The book offers the best analysis I've seen so far of the European psyche and why Europeans are so reluctant to confront radical Islam. The author also does a good job of presenting both ancedotal and statistical evidence to demonstrate a problem. The book's greatest weakness, in my view, is that the author implies that a secular, liberal state (the kind he would most like to live in) will not be able to confront radical challenges to its authority, but he never discusses this problem openly or offers any solutions.

[Jibran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some things the writer says about the fundamental cultural difference of European Muslims are understandable from a liberal-secular perspective but on the whole it is a typical right-wing Islamophobic false alarm that sees no way for the native Europeans and migrant Muslim communities to coexist in peace.

To support his point he lists a few recent 'incidents' over a few short period of time - rather spiced up and exaggerated - to interpret a basic incompatibility between Europe and peoples of Islamic faith. And, of course, massive conflict is well nigh!

Such doomsday scenarios are sounded regularly, they are a dime a dozen. But the way Europe has pushed itself towards this conflict makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though Mr Bower is American, the fact that he chose to study and write about immigration in Europe seems to be a rather preplanned attempt to kick up a debate in Europe which, now a decade later, has reached hysterical proportions. A conspiracy? Who knows.

[Peg · Rating 1 out of 5]

FRIENDS - somethingwrong with my goodreads profile, haven't received a piece of news from any of you (yet my neighbor Sandy Holland has). Please invite me to be a friend
aquarius2943@hotmail.com PEG RICHARDSON

2006 book by author of Place at the Table, Stealing Jesus, and Diminishing Fictions. Story of one American's experience in Europe before and after 9/11 and of his many arguments with Europeans about the dangers of militant Islam and America's role in combatting it. Author writes for NY Times, Washington Post Book World, Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic.
Premise was a good one, but author seemed to me had an agenda other than discussing Americans, post 9/11, dangers of militant Islam. Much of the book related to his and his partner's experiencing condemnation abroad.

[Jennifer Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I love to read, I often have a hard time staying with non-fiction books. Not so with this one! I literally couldn't put it down. I appreciated Bauer's perspective and I learned SO much about the effects that Europe's immigration policies are having on those countries. I had no idea how invasive the radical Muslim agenda is, and I finished the book with a renewed love for our country and a determination to spread the word so that what is happening in Europe doesn't happen to us, too.

[Kyle Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author wishes he was king of the gays and is somewhat narrow minded in my opinion regarding certain aspects of the gay subculture. He often criticized the lack of monogamous relationships and promiscuity among gay men. He fails to point out that many straight people are equally promiscuous and instead of saying that both groups have individuals that behave this way and only one is stereotyped for it he suggests that gay people just shouldn't be promiscuous. The book is also extremely dated and not so relevant to 2010.