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Immigration, Islam, and the West
Doubleday
August 2009
On Sale: July 28, 2009
432 pages ISBN: 0385518269 EAN: 9780385518260 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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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