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“In this book, Christopher Caldwell presents a daring, thoroughly researched and provocative view of the Islamic revolution underway in Europe. It’s a chilling account of how complacency, moral relativism and socialist dogma froze the European imagination while the agents of radical Islam proceeded, sure-footed, to claim Europe neighborhood by neighborhood. There have been many wake-up calls to alert Europeans to the challenges of immigration and the threat of Islam, but if anything should thaw the minds of the European leadership, it is this book.” —Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“Among the many brilliant things Christopher Caldwell has done in Reflections is write a how-not-to book about immigration. Once again Europe has shown us the way—to go wrong. Thanks to Caldwell’s careful reporting and keen analysis we know exactly what we shouldn’t do when new people move to our country.” —P.J. O’Rourke
“In Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell combines an authentically Burkean historical breadth of vision with a reporter’s keen eye for detail. No one can seriously doubt after reading this book that large-scale immigration, particularly of Muslims, is in the process of transforming Europe profoundly. From the strife-torn banlieues of Paris to the multiplying minarets of Middle England, as Caldwell shows, we are a very long way indeed from the merry multicultural melting-pot of bien-pensant fantasy.” —Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
“Among the many brilliant things Christopher Caldwell has done in Reflections is write a how-not-to book about immigration. Once again Europe has shown us the way—to go wrong. Thanks to Caldwell’s careful reporting and keen analysis we know exactly what we shouldn’t do when new people move to our country.” —P.J. O’Rourke
“In Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell combines an authentically Burkean historical breadth of vision with a reporter’s keen eye for detail. No one can seriously doubt after reading this book that large-scale immigration, particularly of Muslims, is in the process of transforming Europe profoundly. From the strife-torn banlieues of Paris to the multiplying minarets of Middle England, as Caldwell shows, we are a very long way indeed from the merry multicultural melting-pot of bien-pensant fantasy.” —Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
Product Description
Can you have the same Europe with different people in it? The answer, says Christopher Caldwell, is no.
Europe has undergone a demographic revolution it never expected. A half century of mass immigration has failed to produce anything resembling an American-style melting pot. By overestimating its need for immigrant labor and underestimating the culture-shaping potential of religion, Europe has 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 more than a decade. His deeply researched and insightful new book reveals a paradox. Since World War II, mass immigration has been made possible by Europe’s enforcement of secularism, tolerance, and equality. But when immigrants arrive, they are not required to adopt those values. And they are disinclined to, since they already have values of their own. Muslims dominate or nearly dominate important European cities, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Strasbourg and Marseille, the Paris suburbs and East London. Islam has challenged the European way of life at every turn, becoming, in effect, an “adversary culture.”
The result? In Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Caldwell reveals the anger of natives and newcomers alike. He describes guest worker programs that far outlasted their economic justifications, and asylum policies that have served illegal immigrants better than refugees. He exposes the strange ways in which welfare states interact with Third World customs, the anti-Americanism that brings European natives and Muslim newcomers together, and the arguments over women and sex that drive them apart. He considers the appeal of sharia, “resistance,” and jihad to a second generation that is more alienated from Europe than the first, and addresses a crisis of faith among native Europeans that leaves them with a weak hand as they confront the claims of newcomers.
As increasingly assertive immigrant populations shape the continent, Caldwell writes, the foundations of European culture and civilization are being challenged and replaced. Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is destined to become the classic work on how Muslim immigration permanently reshaped the West.
www.doubleday.com
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Adios Europa!,
By
Ce commentaire est de: Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Hardcover)
With a population of approximately 500 million people, the European Union's current 27 member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia may eventually join the behemoth, whilst Norway, Switzerland and microstates like Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino & the Vatican have close cultural, geographic and economic ties with the EU.But Caldwell's book is about Western or Old Europe, the latest addition to the growing corpus of literature on the demographic transformation taking place in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain. Oriana Fallaci's The Rage & The Pride and The Force of Reason are both inspired, highly entertaining polemics of hair-raising political incorrectness. In Eurabia, Bat Ye'or documents the history, especially the agreements reached between the then-European Economic Community and the Arab states by means of the EAD (Euro-Arab Dialogue) and the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Co-operation (PAEAC) after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept is an arresting mix of personal experience & analyses that focuses on Norway and The Netherlands whilst Claire Berlinski's Menace in Europe is a witty and perceptive travelogue comparing European history - especially its darker moments - with current trends and the "black-market" nationalism that thrives underneath the EU veneer. In contrast, The Last Days of Europe by Walter Laqueur is a resigned and melancholy appraisal of the situation. Caldwell takes a scholarly approach in analyzing the continent's culture, the 1960s cultural revolution, political elites, welfare statism, multiculturalism, the Brussels Eurocracy, the attitudes of both unassimilated immigrants and native Europeans, the history of immigration since the end of World War II and how this is altering the region's demographic profile. Liberal asylum policies joined guest worker programmes to open the floodgates of immigration. Caldwell argues that Western Europe became a magnet for immigrants by the decision of its political and business elites who expected the foreign workers to come and go. The voting public was never consulted and always opposed it. Unlike the melting pot of the USA, very little integration took place so that former Western Europe now consists of two societies between which there is growing resentment. The North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants arrived with their religion and values which they cling to. Muslims are about to become the majorities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Marseille, Malmö, the Parisian suburbs and Eastern London within a decade or two. Gender equality, attitudes towards sex and secularism are some of the issues that divide whilst Anti-Americanism and Anti-Zionism are the only two that unite natives and newcomers. It seems the Europeans had no desire and made no serious effort to integrate the strangers in their midst. The new arrivals grew more and more demanding as their numbers increased. They took full advantage of the welfare state and there were plenty of opportunists among the stream of immigrants. If I understand correctly, Caldwell is of the opinion that Europe did not need foreign workers at all and that they were imported to satisfy some psychological need of the elites. As penance for the Holocaust, the philosophers and bureaucrats building the EU enshrined multiculturalism and demonized nationalism, as if it were that simple. It is not nationalism per se but the way it is expressed that may be good or evil. The author brilliantly points out the contradictions in the words of the spokespersons for the multiculti cult who, being secular, hopelessly underestimated the force of religious zeal. Accurate figures are hard to obtain but a conservative estimate of unassimilated foreigners in Old Europe is 15 million, of which 5 million are in France, 4 million in Germany and 2 million in the UK. Other estimates are much, much higher, running to 25 million. In addition, the fertility rate of the newcomers dwarves those of native Europeans so their numbers are increasing exponentially as they become ever more assertive. Thus far, the desire for consensus across the political spectrum and censorship have been able to contain the unease of native Europeans. But escalating crime rates, the 2005 riots in France and those following the cartoon controversy in Denmark the next year, plus the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh and the threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders bode ill. Worst of all, Europe's house guests have had their ancestral Antisemitism reinforced by the continent's residual forms of the mental virus, both the rightwing and the leftist anti-Zionist varieties although it's the leftist parties that get the Muslim votes. The region's accelerating demographic, legal, political, religious and social transformation holds the potential for great conflict and tragedy. As Caldwell observes, terms like 'majority' and 'minority' mean nothing when an insecure, relativistic culture encounters one that is rooted, confident and driven by expansionist zeal. The secular welfare state is simply no match for a resurgent faith funded by petrodollars and the determination to dominate. Two books by the French philosopher Chantal Delsol are of inestimable value in understanding Europe's current predicament and the fragility of our civilization: Icarus Fallen and The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Other informative works dealing with various aspects of Western Europe's weakness and the way it imperils Western Civilization include Muslim Anti-Semitism in Christian Europe by Raphael Israeli, Londonistan by Melanie Phillips and Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide by Bruce S Thornton.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (48 customer reviews) 124 of 140 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charles Martel- Eat your heart out,
By Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Hardcover)
There is now a growing literature on the subject of the threat presented to Christian or perhaps secular- post- Christian Europe by its post- War immigration from Islamic countries. As Christopher Caldwell points out in this book, a prospering Europe hungering for workers, and perhaps overestimating its need for them opened the gates to what it thought would be a temporary immigration of foreign workers from Islamic lands. But today Europe has between fifteen and twenty-million adherents of Islam, whose continued growth is promised even if the gates of immigration be shut. The Islamic minorities have far higher rates of population - growth than do the native populations of the host - countries. There is even in Caldwell's book a study of the psychological and sexual implications of the virile East over against the zero- population- growth West. The demographic component is then one real element in the threat Caldwell sees to Europe's future.But an even more major element in the threat is as Caldwell sees it the failure of the Europeans to truly integrate the new immigrants. Instead of being encouraged to assimilate to the host cultures the new immigrants were given a kind of laissez- faire treatment. This was one of the reasons they persisted in holding on to their Islamic loyalty as first element of their identity. So instead of there being a Europe in which Islamic populations in some way enter a kind of melting pot, there is a Europe in which whether in East London or the suburbs of Paris in Rotterdam and Amsterdam in various other European areas, Islamic population concentrates and remains in a world of its own. There are many consequences of the European failure to present their own respective national identities or even a collective European Western identity as appealing. One has been outbursts of terrorist violence . Another has been the development of a hostile minority attitude towards the general culture. There are too the economic sides of this with the immigrants suffering from higher unemployment rates as they swell the welfare rolls. There is a vast culture of the unemployed, living off the social services and network of the host countries. Caldwell analyses brilliantly the collapse of moral will and identity on the part of the host countries. When one no longer believes in oneself it is apparently easy to be manipulated by others. He also points out how the Islamic element has revived anti- Semitism in Europe. Like all those who have written on this problem including Ba'at Yeor, Bruce Bawer, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Caldwell does not provide a very hopeful picture of the European future. For even if the Islamic groups fall far short of ever really 'taking over' in any country they represent they promise to be a continual source of economic and social disturbance for the future. Caldwell is far more sanguine about the United States, in which he believes there has been better integration of minorities. Yet an Islamicized Europe in presenting a global threat to the forwarding of values of liberty and individual rights, threatens the United States also. 33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important analysis of Europe's malaise,
By William Muehlenberg - Published on Amazon.com
Achat Amazon vérifié(Quest-ce que cest?)
Ce commentaire est de: Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Hardcover)
In this important volume a number of important issues are explored concerning the present state of Europe, chief of which is how fifty years of mass immigration - especially by Muslims - has forever changed the continent.In the first third of this book Caldwell examines the history and rationale for mass immigration into Europe since the end of WWII. There was certainly a labour shortage back then, and bringing in guest workers on a temporary basis seemed like a good idea at the time. But the temporary usually became permanent, contrary to common expectations. For example, foreign workers demanded - and got, in most cases - the right to have their families come and join them. Since a large percentage of these workers were Muslims, major demographic and religious shifts ensued. While native Europeans were going through a birth dearth, the new arrivals were having rather large families. Thus Europe changed dramatically, even simply in terms of the numbers. For the first time in its recent history, Europe is now "a continent of migrants. Of the 375 million people in Western Europe, 40 million are living outside their countries of birth." But since postwar Europe was "built on an intolerance of intolerance," very few Europeans actually said these folks should return home when they had finished their work. They were also at this time losing all commitment to their own core beliefs and values, and "behaved as if no one's culture was better than anyone else's." Caldwell examines the economic value of an immigration culture. Just who has benefitted? While Europe made some gains, it may be that the sending countries benefitted the most. No model of development aid comes close to competing with what we find in Europe, says Caldwell. Europe allowed "migrants to set up a beachhead in an advanced economy and ship money home in the form of so-called `remittances'." Then there is the whole question of the welfare state and how it can fare in quite multicultural climates. Caldwell notes that they were originally set up in Europe under conditions of ethnic homogeneity. But the massive wave of migrants is heavily testing both the welfare state, and the ability of host nations to remain cohesive. The second part of the books focuses on Islam, and how well - or otherwise - it is fitting into post-Christian Europe. The non-judgmentalism of so many Europeans - especially the ruling elites - along with the decline of Christian values and beliefs meant that Islam became not just an accepted part of Europe, but a politically protected part. Fear of "Islamophobioa" and being politically incorrect resulted in numerous policies and practices which basically lead to Continental suicide. Even after September 11, EU bureaucrats debated whether it was even right to use such terms as jihad and terrorism. Indeed, there really was a clash of civilisations which emerged. On the one hand, a civilisation which was exhausted, no longer believed in itself, no longer seemed to care, no longer held up anything as worth fighting for, had come face to face with a worldview full of confidence, contempt for the infidel, sure of itself, and with an evangelistic and millennialist faith. The modern values of diversity, tolerance, secularism and relativism "that were supposed to liberate Europeans had left them paralysed". A guilt-tripping, cowering, faithless Europe is no match for a triumphant and militant faith system. Thus any talk of integration and assimilation is mainly a pipedream in Europe. If anything, the tensions and frictions are as strong as ever. Indeed, many Europeans - perhaps a majority - are now not at all happy with the way things have panned out on the Continent, and many wish the migrants would simply go back home. Compared to the American experience of immigration, in which the nation really did become a grand melting pot of cultures and peoples, the Europe-Muslim divide looks too difficult to easily overcome. A divided loyalty is the result. As Caldwell rightly remarks, "Imagine that the West, at the height of the Cold War, had received a mass inflow of immigrants from Communist countries who were ambivalent about which side they supported". And Caldwell documents how so often European authorities encouraged and assisted in separatist policies and mentalities. This has resulted in a completely foreign culture growing up within the European culture, with little hope of resolution. It is in fact an adversarial culture, and few Europeans seem to know how to deal with it. The third part of this book looks at the West and its response to the rise of Islam. Is it in fact capable of compatibility with Western liberal institutions? While the meeting of cultures can be a good thing for all involved, in this case one must ask who will be the winner: the West or Islam? Caldwell suggests that "What Islam will contribute to the West is Islam". It seems to be one-way traffic in other words. Western nations bend over backwards to accommodate their Muslim guests, to make life easy for them, to assure them that they are fully wanted. Yet at least a dedicated minority of Muslims are convinced that the end of history means a universal caliphate. Gullible and clueless Westerners are mere fools standing in their way. Caldwell concludes by looking at how many European nations are now, belatedly, sobering up and clamping down. Radical nationalist and anti-immigration parties have of course sprung up, and the EU has recently been dealt some major blows at the ballot box. But even if Europe now wanted to defend its values against those of Islam, the real problem is Europe no longer knows what those values are. It has long ago jettisoned its Christian foundations, and is now floundering in a sea of relativism, diversity, hedonism and secularism. "Whether or not it can defend itself, it has lost sight of why it should." 40 of 46 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intellectually powerful,
By Steve Sailer - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (Hardcover)
Christopher Caldwell's "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West" is an important and surprising book.In essence, Caldwell's Reflections is a Brimelovian vindication of Enoch Powell, the brilliant Tory who warned against immigration in a prescient (and thus notorious) 1968 speech that began "The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils". Caldwell points out in his opening pages: "Although at the time Powell's demographic projections were much snickered at, they have turned out not just roughly accurate but as close to perfectly accurate as it is possible for any such projections to be: In a 1968 speech, Powell shocked his audience by stating that the nonwhite population of Britain, barely over a million at the time, would rise to 4.5 million by 2002. (According to the national census, the actual "ethnic minority" population of Britain in 2001 was 4,635,296.)" Readers who get their views from the MainStream Media, though, will be startled by how gracefully--yet bluntly--Caldwell delivers an intellectually cohesive assault on the conventional wisdom of the diversity dogma. Reflections is also a model for how a working journalist can transform years of old articles researched on scores of trips to Europe into a stylish book. Caldwell's solution is to enhance his prose style with aphorisms worthy of G.K. Chesterton. For example, in Caldwell's original February 27, 2006 Weekly Standard article on Nicolas Sarkozy, The Man Who Would Be le Président, he discussed Sarkozy's call for affirmative action in France to appease riotous Muslims: "It can be argued that France needs such measures desperately, ... but, ... Sarkozy shows a bit of the naiveté of, say, Hubert Humphrey in 1964 when he implies the program would be only temporary. ... How long would the program last, then? Twenty years? 'No, twenty years is too long.'" In his book, however, Caldwell adds this memorable dictum in reply to Sarkozy's Continental innocence about America's experience: "One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong." Unexpectedly, Caldwell takes the arrogant bluster of European intellectuals and patiently and quietly extracts the simple silly-mindedness at its heart: "Bizarrely, as immigration began to change Europe at its economic and cultural core, the political vocabulary remained the same as when immigration had been a fringe phenomenon. People kept talking about restaurants." He points out the endless contradictions of the cult of tolerance: "The policing of tolerance had no inbuilt limits and no obvious logic. Why was 'ethnic pride' a virtue and 'nationalism' a sickness? Why was an identity like 'Sinti/Roma' legitimate but an identity like 'white' out of bounds? Why had it suddenly become criminal to ask questions today that it was considered a citizen's duty to ask ten years ago?" And yet, as the Danish Cartoon Riots of 2006 showed, the absurdity of Europe's ever-growing restrictions on freedom of speech about immigration -- both legalistic (what Caldwell calls "the criminalization of opinion") and vigilante (enforced by young Muslim thugs) -- aren't funny. As Caldwell explains, "Immigration exacts a steep price in freedom": "A new, uncompromising ideology was advancing under cover of its own ridiculousness--not as the Big Lie of legend, perhaps, but as something similarly ominous that might be called the Big Joke." Caldwell is extremely good at disentangling the ideological evolutions -- the "He who says A, must say B" thought processes -- that got Europe into its Muslim mess. "The Holocaust has in recent decades been the cornerstone of the European moral order. ... Under the pressure of mass immigration, however, post-Holocaust repentance became a template for regulating the affairs of any minority that could plausibly present itself as seriously aggrieved. ... Once on the continent, Muslims took up a privileged position in any public debate on minority rights: they, too, were 'victims.'" Europe's elites needed a new minority in order to feel morally superior to European commoners. And the Muslims agreed: "[M]any Muslims felt their community offered native Europeans a more appropriate object than the Jews themselves for moral self-examination and moral self-flagellation. An increasing number of Muslims saw themselves, in fact, as the 'new Jews.'..." Ironically, Europe's obsession with the Holocaust has stimulated the outbreak of anti-Semitic violence by European Muslims in this decade: "As the Jews accumulated 'rivals' with an interest in dislodging them from their position as Europe's top victims, the system was suddenly turned inside out. The ideology of diversity and racial harmony ... now became the means through which anti-Jewish fury was reinjected into European life. ... If the Muslims were the new Jews, apparently, then the Jews were the new Nazis." Caldwell sums up with a quote from French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut: "I think that the lofty idea of 'the war on racism' is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. ... And this anti-racism will be for the twenty-first century what communism was for the twentieth century: a source of violence." |
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