Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom [Hardcover]

Praise for Surrender:

“The Fatwa against Salman Rushdie caught all by surprise. Since then, many Americans and Europeans know that their world of ‘live and let live’ has been declared ‘the House of War’ in the name of Islam. Surrender is written with an urgency and clarity that makes it hard to stop reading and re-reading it. It should be studied by all who wish to understand the forces at work that make an Islamic ‘House of Peace’ a brewing nightmare.”
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali


“Looking at recent history and current events, it is all too clear that many people in Western societies are still blinded by the illusion of multiculturalism and don’t see the danger Islam poses to our way of life. Bruce Bawer has yet again written an excellent book that reveals just how critical the situation has become. To preserve our precious liberties, the Islamisation of the Western world must be stopped as soon as possible. This book is vitally important in the struggle to turn the tide and I truly hope that it will serve as an eye-opener for everyone.”
—Geert Wilders, member of the Dutch parliament, political leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) and maker of the film, Fitna


“With courage and verve, Bruce Bawer builds the case for how ‘the West is on the road to sharia,’ or Islamic law. Drawing mainly on examples from Europe and North America, he shows how multiculturalists routinely appease Islamists, with freedom the inevitable loser. In response, Bawer rousingly and rightly argues that the West’s unwavering principle must be ‘a refusal to sacrifice or compromise liberty - no matter what.’”
—Daniel Pipes, Director, Middle East Forum


“Liberals should be in the forefront of the defense of free expression against the deeply disturbing threats Bruce Bawer documents.”
—Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

"Narrowing his scope from While Europe Slept (2005) but retaining its theme of radical Islamic assault on Western civil liberties, Bawer files a hefty brief of case reports on Muslim campaigns against free speech, primarily in western Europe buy also in Canada and the U.S. Official infatuation with political correctness (PC), the determination that no one ever be offended, and multiculturalism, the dogma that all cultural perspectives are equally and universally valid, undergird what Bawer believes amounts to a surrender of Western liberal tradition. What may seal the fate of free speech, he argues, are the apparent inabilities of Western ruling elites to be offended by Muslims rioting, threatening by fatwa, and murdering non-Muslims (Bawer fully presents instances of all three, many of them known, though insufficiently, by Americans) and to assert the priority of Western liberal values in the West. Since he continues to write about free-speech clashes, Norwegian resident Bawer says, he increasingly risks charges of violating Muslims’ legal right not to be criticized in more and more European countries. Moreover, because he is gay, and because radical Islam prescribes death for homosexuality, as sharia law becomes the law in Muslim-majority areas—a development well underway—his life is in burgeoning jeopardy, too. Sublimely literate and rational, Bawer is no crank, however angry he gets. This, like its immediate predecessor, is an immensely important and urgent book."
—Booklist (starred review)


"Clash of civilizations? You bet—it’s Western civilization versus the multiculturalist abettors of al-Qaeda and the ayatollahs. Literary critic and cultural commentator Bawer (While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, 2006, etc.) opens with the well-known story of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie’s book that earned its author a death sentence courtesy of the Iranian mullahs. Rather than rise up to present a united front against censorship, many Western lit-biz types—from chain bookstores to Germaine Greer—opined that Rushie had it coming, a sentiment that plays out, by Bawer’s account, every time a newspaper editor censors a cartoon or column that might conceivably offend some fundamentalist Muslim anywhere on Earth. Bawer has a field day deriding the multiculturalists—academics, mostly—who would sooner consign their own culture to the flames than defend it against its many enemies abroad. 'Multiculturalism,' Bawer writes, 'means exalting non-Western groups, treating their collective values (however illiberal) as sacrosanct, and either choosing not to notice their lack of freedom or pretending there’s no such thing as freedom…' The author's work has drifted toward the right over the years, but his argument is often well-reasoned and to the point. It is beyond question that the imams would not brook cultural criticism of this or any other ilk in the unlikely event that they came to power in Washington, D.C., or London. Still, Bawer’s argument occasionally takes silly turns, as when he condemns the Dixie Chicks for “telling their critics to shut up” via the documentary Shut Up and Sing, and the State Department for doing away with the useless term 'Islamo-fascism.' Merits discussion, despite its shrill moments and its tendency to paint all Muslims with an enemy-of-democracy brush."
—Kirkus




Praise for While Europe Slept:

“A book of the utmost importance, full of deep concern for Europe and almost unbelievable revelations for most Americans.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A must-read book.” —Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

“A clarion call for the West to understand the radical threat to our freedoms from politicized fundamentalist Islam.” —Andrew Sullivan

“Indispensable … a portrait of a powder keg continent.” —J. Peder Zane, Raleigh News & Observer

“If you want to understand the car burnings, the killings over cartoons and films, and other outrages sure to come, you won’t do any better than While Europe Slept.” —Scott C. Yates, Rocky Mountain News

“Bruce Bawer reveals how self-acclaimed European morality proves abjectly amoral in its appeasement of radical Islamic anti-Semitism, homophobia, gender apartheid, and religious intolerance. A sensitive and sober portrait of an increasingly insensitive and reckless continent.” —Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of Carnage and Culture and An Autumn of War

“Bawer paints an alarming picture of a continent in deep trouble and deeper denial—but now, perhaps, on the verge of waking up. Some books are merely important. This one is necessary.” —Jonathan Rauch, senior writer and columnist for National Journal and correspondent for Atlantic Monthly

“Bruce Bawer has produced a book that is at once riveting, disturbing, fascinating, chilling, and shocking. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how militant Islam has insinuated itself into the heart of the West.” —Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

“Bruce Bawer’s book is obligatory reading for everyone who wants to know what is happening to Europe today. And it is grim. This is perhaps the most important book written in many years. And as an observer from outside, Bawer can more easily see and diagnose what is going on.” —Henrik Gade Jensen, Jyllands-Posten (Denmark)

“Excellently written … a book that everyone in Europe should read.” —De Leestafel (Netherlands)

“Obligatory reading.” —José María Marco, Libertad Digital (Spain)

There is a new form of jihad to fear—one that threatens the very values on which our freedom rests

Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept sounded the alarm about the dire impact of Muslim immigration in Europe. Now, in Surrender, he reveals that a combination of fear and political correctness has led politicians, intellectuals, religious leaders, and the media—both in the United States and abroad—to appease radical Islam at the cost of our most cherished values: freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And the cost could ultimately be even higher—the imposition of sharia law in places where liberty once reigned.
In Surrender, Bawer writes of a new form of jihad that began with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, a death sentence born of Muslim outrage over a work of literature. It marked the dawn of an era of pressure and intimidation designed to crush the ability of non-Muslims to resist Islamic encroachments on Western freedom. In a sweeping survey of recent history and current events, Bawer traces a pattern of heightened sensitivity to Muslim reactions and a reluctance to look honestly at the human-rights deficiencies of the Muslim world. This pattern can be seen in the widespread denunciation of the Danish cartoons and of the editors who printed them; in the glowing media coverage of the supposedly moderate Muslim icon Tariq Ramadan; in the decision of major newspapers to ignore or soft-pedal terrorist “dry runs” on American airplanes; in the international uproar over a single sentence about Islam in a lecture by Pope Benedict; and in attempts by certain parties to silence criticism of Islam by suing writers who have dared to speak forthrightly about the religion.
Bawer argues that people throughout the Western world—in reaction to such events as the Danish cartoon riots and the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh—are surrendering to fear. And he observes that Muslim extremists have found unexpected allies: non-Muslims who, motivated by the misguided doctrine of multiculturalism, refuse to criticize even the most illiberal aspects of Islamic culture. The resulting accommodation undermines the values of individual liberty and equality on which our nation was founded.

Fearless and excoriating, Surrender is an essential wake-up call for everyone concerned about the preservation of our most fundamental freedoms.