Reflections on the Revolution in Europe ─ Immigration, Islam, and the West

This provocative and unflinching analysis of Europe’s unexpected demographic revolution focuses on the increasingly assertive Muslim populations shaping the continent’s future.
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Europe’s half century of mass immigration has failed to produce an American melting pot and is now faced with a serious problem for which there is no easy solution. Based on extensive reporting and offering trenchant analysis, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is destined to become the classic work on how Muslim immigration permanently reshaped the West.

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.

[author photo]CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL is a columnist for the Financial Times, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard. He lives in Washington, D.C.