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.
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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15003 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-28
• Released on: 2009-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385518260
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Publishers Weekly
Caldwell frames the issue of Muslim immigration to Europe as a question of whether you can have the same Europe with different people. The author, a columnist for the Financial Times and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, answers this question unequivocally in the negative. He offers a brief demographic analysis of the potential impact of Muslim immigration—estimating that between 20% and 32% of the populations of most European countries will be foreign-born by the middle of the century—and traces the origins of this mass immigration to a postwar labor crisis. He considers the social, political and cultural implications of this sea change, from the banlieue riots and the ban on the veil in French public schools to terrorism across Europe and the question of Turkey's accession to the E.U. Caldwell sees immigration as a particular problem for Europe because he believes Muslim immigrants retain a Muslim identity, which he defines monolithically and unsympathetically, rather than assimilating to their new homelands. This thorough, big-thinking book, which tackles its controversial subject with a conviction that is alternately powerful and narrow-minded, will likely challenge some readers while alienating others. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Claire Berlinski "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" -- an allusion to Burke -- is the latest in a series of pessimistic books, my own included, treating the conflict between a post-Christian Europe and a resurgent Islam. Christopher Caldwell, an editor of the Weekly Standard and contributor to the Financial Times, makes arguments that have been made elsewhere: Mass immigration has changed Europe's demography and is rapidly changing its culture. Many immigrants to Europe have not assimilated; many retain or have developed an Islamic identity antithetical to liberal European values. But Caldwell makes these arguments unusually well, in a book notable for its range, synthesis of the literature, analytical rigor and elegant tone. In 1968, Britain's Shadow Defense Secretary, Enoch Powell, described Britain's immigration policy as "mad, literally mad," and warned of a day when native-born Britons were "strangers in their own country . . . their homes and neighborhoods changed beyond recognition." He invoked the prophecies of the Sybil in the Aeneid: "I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.' " Widely viewed as outrageously racist, this minatory speech destroyed his career. In Caldwell's view, "All British discussion of immigration has been, essentially, an argument over whether Enoch Powell was right." The answer, he says, depends whether we mean right in the moral or factual sense. Caldwell agrees that the language of the speech was inflammatory and malicious, but he argues that Powell's demographic projections and visions of blood were -- factually -- correct. The story, Caldwell observes, has been similar throughout Europe, an assertion he documents with a catalogue of ties between immigrants who do not seem to love their new homes and violence, crime, rioting and terrorism. He does not argue that there is a monolithic Islamic identity or a single set of European values, although it is inevitable that he will be accused of this. He argues rather that there is enough of an Islamic identity, and enough left by way of European values -- attenuated though these may be -- that they are not easily reconciled and, if reconciled at all, will not necessarily be reconciled in Europe's favor. He engages carefully with counter-arguments that there is no cause for alarm, and rejects most of them. He is particularly strong in dispatching the claim that, on balance, immigration is economically necessary and advantageous for Europe. He is also good at exposing absurdities in the rhetoric of Europe's politicians and intellectual elites. For example, in 2006, 43 baggage handlers at Charles de Gaulle airport were stripped of their security clearances. An official involved in the investigation took pains to stress that no one had come under scrutiny because he was a Muslim. Instead, he said, "Someone who goes to Pakistan several times on vacation -- that raises questions for us." "So," Caldwell replies, "in an attempt to exonerate itself from the suspicion of policing Islam, the government admitted to policing (for Pakistanis) visits home to one's family and (for others) tourism." Caldwell is right to note that European politicians have until now been extraordinarily timid in defining the limits of European tolerance. French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently declared that the burqa was "not welcome" in France. It is hard to imagine why the burqa should be any more welcome in France than the slave galley, but the head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, Mohammed Moussaoui, immediately and typically objected to Sarkozy's statement: "To raise the subject like this, via a parliamentary committee, is a way of stigmatizing Islam and the Muslims of France." As Caldwell notes, Sarkozy established this council in the hope of promoting moderation among France's Muslims by giving them a greater formal voice in society. Moussaoui's statement, however, suggests the limits of such strategies. Does Moussaoui believe that the burqa is essential to Islam? If not, why is Sarkozy's position stigmatizing to Muslims? If so, why shouldn't Muslims be stigmatized? And given that France is a parliamentary democracy, where better to debate this question than in a parliamentary committee -- would Moussaoui prefer the matter be resolved on the streets? Caldwell's book raises many such questions. It does not answer them. The strength of this book is not in its original reporting, of which there is little, or the solutions it offers, because there are none. What it offers instead is unusual lucidity and comprehensiveness; a reader unfamiliar with the debate would be, upon finishing it, well informed. One familiar with the debate will be even more depressed.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“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


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Charles Martel- Eat your heart out
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.

An important analysis of Europe's malaise
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."

The Dying Continent
What arguments can still be made in favor of immigration? The supposed benefits of diversity were never articulated and have been shown to be wishful thinking. The economic argument, with the numbert of poor European ghettos in any given country being directly proportionate to the number of nonwhites they've let in, has been thoroughly discredited. Democratic arguments can't be made; whenever the issue has been put to the voters they've always come out on the "wrong" side. The ruling class seems to be hoping that we all simply shut up until natives are so outnumbered that they can't complain any more. These common sense observations have been recorded in several books. The recent Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is the latest.

An analysis of Europe's predicament has to start with a look at the numbers. The British politician Enoch Powell rallied against nonwhites settlement in the British Isles back in the 1960s. From a descriptive perspective, there's no question that he was clear-sighted. In 1968, Powell shocked Britons by claiming that by 2002 there could be 4.5 million nonwhites in their country (the 2001 census reported over 4.6 million). He said that between 20 and 25 percent of Birmingham and Inner London could be composed of immigrants and their descendants (the numbers are 29.6 and 34.4 respectively). Caldwell states that if people at the time knew what immigration entailed they would've never stood for it in the first place. But what's done is done.

To the author's credit, for the purposes of his analysis he differentiates between people moving within Europe and those coming from outside it. 37 percent of Luxembourg's inhabitants were born abroad, but the small country is basically a playground for the continent's elites. The book's main focus is Islam. Britain has about 2 million Muslims (2% of the population), Germany 4 million (5%) and France 5 million (8%).

This influx has been widely unpopular. Only 19 percent of Europeans say that their country has benefited from immigration. 57 percent of Europeans say that their country has "too many foreigners" (73 percent in France and 69 percent in Britain). Despite this, there has been no slow down. 1.7 million people arrive in Europe each year. They mostly come as refugees and through family reunification.

The European Union allows freedom to travel between member countries, but each nation gets to set its own immigration laws. That means that in reality migration policy is set by the country with the laxest laws. In 2005, that was Spain. Socialist prime minister José Rodriguez Zapatero announced that illegal aliens would be given amnesty months in advance of carrying it out. Some people traveled from other countries in the EU in order to take advantage. By decree, 700,000 new "Spanish" citizens were created.

By any projection, things are getting worse. Even if immigration were cut off, the higher nonwhite birth rate would mean that their numbers would continue to grow. By 2020, around 14 percent of those living in Denmark will have roots in "authoritarian countries and cultures." By 2050, Britain will have between 7 and 16 million nonwhites, depending on immigration policy. French women have 1.7 children each; foreign born French women 2.8. "By midcentury in most of the major European countries, foreign-origins populations will be between 20 and 32 percent." Compared to America, that's not so bad. Europeans still have time to recover.
What's interesting is the dance that Caldwell does to avoid being called "racist." He acknowledges that it's completely legitimate to want to admit only those that come from a similar culture. He approvingly cites Robert Putnam's work showing diversity destroys civic trust. But as long as it's culture, and not race, we care about, we're ok. Spain has been more open to Latin American immigrants than they have been to Middle Eastern or African ones. They're entitled to do so, and since many of these migrants aren't white, it shows that the motivation for rejecting Arabs and blacks isn't racial. More problematic cases, like the socioeconomic failure of Christian English speaking West Indians, are ignored.

Although Muslims are the cause of most interethnic tension, making laws singling them out isn't politically feasible. So when the French wanted to ban the head scarf in schools, yarmulkes had to go as well. The Dutch made it more difficult to import foreign brides but the law has to apply regardless of whether the wife is Pakistani or Australian. A Swedish minister suggested that all female infants be checked for signs of genital mutilation, a practice only found amongst Somalian refugees.

In Austria, Catholic women have 1.32 children each, Protestants 1.21 and non-affiliated 0.86. Muslims have a birth rate of 2.34. Italy's native population will almost be half of what it is by the middle of the century. No European country save Muslim Albania has replacement fertility. Obviously, it is secularism and women's liberation that has destroyed the West. Islam is filling the void.

Despite that, gender equality seems to be the only value Europeans will unconditionally defend.

"Adapting to European styles of sexuality and gender relations is the only nonnegotiable demand that Europe makes of its immigrants...Europeans may be reluctant to proclaim any preference for their own high culture and cuisine over foreign ones, eager to give way on freedom of speech when it hurts Muslim sensibilities, and willing to tar as extremist or fascist anyone who holds that Islam poses an especial danger of terrorism. Sex is different...It is the one area where Europeans retain both a deep suspicion of Muslim ways and a confidence in their own institutions that is free of self-doubt.

What is more, the suspicion falls directly and uneuphemistically on Islam the religion, and not any epiphenomenon, such as "poverty" or 'segregation' or 'tradition.'"

This is quite amazing. One would think that if the West's system of gender relations was so obviously superior other cultures would be quick to recognize that. In reality, it's the one thing from the West that many people across the globe seem not to want. "Modernization without Westernization" has been a popular slogan from the Middle to the Far East. The most fundamental criticism of the Western matriarchy that one can make is that even if it provided all the happiness in the world, the low birthrates ensure that it can't survive. Only a culture as infantile as Europe's is unable to see that.

The Dutch government has made a video for potential citizens showing homosexual kissing and informing them that women are expected to work. Needless to say, no other "values" are worth mentioning.

While outraged about the way Muslims treat their women, Europeans are forgiving about crimes committed against themselves. In many French prisons Muslims make up 50 to 80 percent of the inmates. Italy's jails are 47 percent foreign-origin. In Sweden, 26 percent of those in jail are citizens of other countries (not including children of immigrants). Only politically incorrect gender practices are blamed on the perpetrators themselves, the rest is excused in the normal liberal way.

By 2050, the US will be on its way to becoming a second world country if not already there. It won't be the world's policeman anymore. France's Muslim population will have doubled from now until then and the ghettos will remain a perpetual powder keg. Across the European continent, it's no longer possible to deny that, just as surly as communism was, diversity has been a colossal failure. In some places at least, voters are starting to act on that realization.

"May you live in interesting times," as the Chinese curse says. For generations, Europeans have worked to make that a reality for the few descendants they're leaving behind. Reflections on the Revolution in Europe will let you know how bad things are, but leaves little room for optimism.