Europe is a beacon for Arab and Muslim immigrants, who flock to the freedom, comfort and convenience available in Western nations. There is no corresponding emigration from Europe to the Islamic world. Immigrants seek a better life, which is abundantly available, particularly in light of Europe's generous welfare benefits. But Europe does not assimilate its Muslim immigrants and does not wish to. Norway refers to its Muslim population as the "colorful community" and prides itself on keeping its "colorful" members separate from mainstream Norwegian society (in the name of multiculturalism, of course). But if a Muslim were to attempt to become an ordinary Norwegian (or Swede or Swiss or Frenchman), he would be met with rigid resistance. Multicultural cant thus covers a multitude of ethnocentric sins.
Many Muslim immigrants, Bawer argues, resist absorption as well, regarding Western society as fundamentally corrupt and unworthy. They want to live in Europe and reap the benefit of the civilization Christianity, rationalism and enlightenment have created -- but they despise it and hope to destroy it.
Into this boiling cauldron (recall the October 2005 riots in France) insert demography. Muslim families have multiple children, and European families are failing to have babies at even replacement levels. Historian Bernard Lewis has predicted that Europe will be majority Muslim by the end of this century "at the very latest." In Stockholm, Muslim teenagers can be seen wearing a T-shirt that says "2030 -- then we take over."
The heart of Bawer's book is not to replow familiar demographic ground, but to probe the political, moral and psychological aspects of Europe's response to this existential threat. The depressing answer, all too often, is that they capitulate. Bawer recounts how Amsterdam police, responding to a complaint by Muslims, dismantled a street mural erected on the site of van Gogh's murder that said "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Some leftist academics in Norway have suggested establishing sharia courts for Muslim citizens. Britain's Channel 4 canceled a documentary about abuse of girls in the Muslim community because the police cautioned that it might "increase community tension."
That self-censorship was exactly what the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was attempting to expose with its cartoons. That impulse -- to assert the value of free speech despite threats and violence -- is the best evidence to surface in quite some time that there is some life spirit left in sagging old Europe.