Unbowed Bawer

Some excerpts from what Bruce Bawer, who has written this book While Europe Slept about how Europe's establishment kowtows to Islamists who revile the free, tolerant societies in which they live, has been blogging:-

January 26, 2007: Europe's Stockholm Syndrome

...Western Europe's cultural elite has long been suffering from a malady that can’t easily be distinguished from Stockholm syndrome. Just look, after all, at the way that elite deals with Europe’s Muslims – especially the imams, gang members, and sundry “Islamic Councils” and “Muslim Associations.” You can’t help being reminded of an abuse victim who – for some psychological reason that outsiders can't understand – not only fails to flee or to fight back when given the chance but actually defends and praises his abuser.

It’s no exaggeration to use the word “abuse.” A wildly disproportionate percentage of Western Europe’s Muslims are living on state support – and committing brutal crimes against the taxpayers who fund it. “Moderate” imams (as shown on Channel 4's recent “Undercover Mosque” exposé) call regularly for the murder of Jews and gays and for Muslim conquest of Europe. Meanwhile the “councils” and “associations” (also supposedly moderate) repeatedly declare their “understanding” for everybody from Theo van Gogh's murderer to the July 2005 London bombers.

Europe is being held captive. Yet just as Shawn Hornbeck, who had a cell phone and computer, was in theory perfectly free to flee his captor or contact his parents, European officials have a clear route out of this nightmare. They have armies. They have police. They have prisons. They’re in a position to deport planeloads of people every day. They could start rescuing Europe tomorrow. Yet how have they responded to the gangsters who are holding it hostage? In precisely the same way Shawn Hornbeck apparently did: like prisoners under lock and key. They’ve been incredibly docile, compliant, submissive.

Europe’s media, for example, when confronted with events or statements that vividly illuminate the goals of Muslim leaders and agitators, either don't report on them or edit out key facts. (Few media accounts of the fall 2005 Paris riots, for example, mentioned the participants' cries of “Allahu akbar,” which made their religious motive clear.) Though a 2006 Telegraph poll found that 40% of British Muslims want Britain to become a sharia state, politicians still respond to every new riot, rape, honor killing, or foiled terrorist plot by reassuring the public that the overwhelming majority of European Muslims are law-abiding, peace-loving supporters of democracy. No British official so much as commented on “Undercover Mosque” – yet days after it was broadcast, in a colossal denial of the reality it exposed, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced a jaw-dropping plan to share anti-terrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders.

January 29, 2007: I've just read that when the nominees for the NBCC awards were announced at a party the other night, the author who was selected to recite the names of the criticism finalists took the opportunity to call my book (which is one of the finalists) "racist."

As I and many others have pointed out a few million times, radical Islam is not a race. (Is Ayaan Hirsi Ali a racist? Is Irshad Manji? Is Chahdortt Djavann?) But it's easy – and, in some circles, highly effective – to fling the "R" word instead of trying to respond to irrefutable facts and arguments.

One of the most disgraceful developments of our time is that many Western authors and intellectuals who pride themselves on being liberals have effectively aligned themselves with an outrageously illiberal movement that rejects equal rights for women, that believes gays and Jews should be executed, that supports the coldblooded murder of one's own children in the name of honor, etc., etc. These authors and intellectuals respond to every criticism of that chilling fundamentalist code – however cogent and correct the criticism may be – by hurling the "R" word.

I will not be cowed by such disgraceful, duplicitous rhetoric. Civilized, tolerant, pluralist values are at stake – values that affect freedom-loving individuals of all races.

and

“One of the most disgraceful developments of our time is that many Western authors and intellectuals who pride themselves on being liberals have effectively aligned themselves with an outrageously illiberal movement that rejects equal rights for women, that believes gays and Jews should be executed, that supports the coldblooded murder of one’s own children in the name of honor, etc., etc.,”