While Europe Slept: Two book reviews
By David Forsmark
FrontPageMagazine.com
May 3, 2006

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
By Bruce Bawer(Doubleday, $23.95, 247 pp.)

Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too
By Claire Berlinski(Crown Forum, $25.95, 271 pp.)

In some of the most decadent liberal areas of Western Europe, where tolerance is considered the greatest (and often, alas, the only) virtue, non-Muslim women wear a hijab when they go out to avoid harassment by aggressive young Muslim men. In the suburbs of major cities of Old Europe that have large and expanding Muslim populations, such as Amsterdam and Paris, honor killings, forced marriages and spousal abuse are on the rise.

Such trends are at least a decade old. But for the European media and political elites, the symbol of dangerous cultural changes is not a crescent but Golden Arches. That's right -- McDonald's, although anything else that's quintessentially American will do.

In Europe's supremely politically correct climate, Christianity has all but disappeared, but it is still fashionable to bash practitioners, particularly fundamentalists. On the other hand, it is considered racist and culturally oppressive to negatively talk about anything that is even peripherally related to Muslim immigration. Some countries, including the Netherlands and Norway, are even passing laws to restrict such speech. the rest