Join Books.org — it's free

General & Miscellaneous Islam, Public Opinion - Ethnic & Religious, Public Opinion - United States, Islam in the U. S., Islam in Europe
Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom by Bruce Bawer — book cover

Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom

by Bruce Bawer
Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Log in to track your reading progress.

Overview

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD
 
In his controversial and critically acclaimed While Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer outlined the danger that Islamic immigration posed to traditional European values. In this provocative follow-up, he takes up the West’s recent trend of silence and appeasement in the face of cultural intimidation by radical Islam.
 
From an examination of coverage of the shocking murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh to the widespread denunciation of the Danish editors who published editorial cartoons mocking Mohammed, Bawer shows how radical Islam has cowed Western media, politicians, intellectuals, and religious leaders into believing that we must give up the right of free expression to peacefully coexist with the Muslim world. Fearless and excoriating, Surrender is an unapologetic and uncompromising defense of free speech that will stir conservatives and liberals alike.

Synopsis

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD
 
In his controversial and critically acclaimed While Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer outlined the danger that Islamic immigration posed to traditional European values. In this provocative follow-up, he takes up the West’s recent trend of silence and appeasement in the face of cultural intimidation by radical Islam.
 
From an examination of coverage of the shocking murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh to the widespread denunciation of the Danish editors who published editorial cartoons mocking Mohammed, Bawer shows how radical Islam has cowed Western media, politicians, intellectuals, and religious leaders into believing that we must give up the right of free expression to peacefully coexist with the Muslim world. Fearless and excoriating, Surrender is an unapologetic and uncompromising defense of free speech that will stir conservatives and liberals alike.

The New York Times - Stephen Pollard

Surrender is, at times, hard going. In part that is because of the level of detail Bawer offers in support of his argument. But Surrender is hard going in another respect as well. Bawer is unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying.

About the Author, Bruce Bawer

Bruce Bawer’s book While Europe Slept was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of A Place at the Table, Stealing Jesus, and several books of literary criticism, including Diminishing Fictions and The Aspect of Eternity. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post Book World, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, Wilson Quarterly, City Journal, and many other periodicals.
 
Visit the author's website at www.brucebawer.com.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Stephen Pollard

Surrender is, at times, hard going. In part that is because of the level of detail Bawer offers in support of his argument. But Surrender is hard going in another respect as well. Bawer is unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Bawer (While Europe Slept) argues that, in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, critics of radical Islam are being silenced by left-leaning academics, politicians and journalists. He argues that self-censorship has become widespread in the Western press, referring to outcry following the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's 2005 publication of cartoon depictions of the prophet Muhammad, when many international news outlets debated whether the paper had the right to print them in the first place-an attack on freedom of the press coming from within its own ranks. While Bawer does an admirable job of rooting out hypocritical statements made by pundits and politicians, readers might wince at his pronounced anti-Muslim bias-he claims that Muslim immigrants to the West are in a war to snuff out free speech and equal rights. Bawer's thought-provoking arguments are overshadowed by his shrill condemnations and a cranky attack on those who paint him as a polarizing figure. The book would have been helped had the author remembered his own statement, made early in the book: "Free speech doesn't mean immunity from criticism." (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

Clash of civilizations? You bet-it's Western civilization versus the multiculturalist abettors of al-Qaeda and the ayatollahs. Literary critic and cultural commentator Bawer (While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, 2006, etc.) opens with the well-known story of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie's book that earned its author a death sentence courtesy of the Iranian mullahs. Rather than rise up to present a united front against censorship, many Western lit-biz types-from chain bookstores to Germaine Greer-opined that Rushie had it coming, a sentiment that plays out, by Bawer's account, every time a newspaper editor censors a cartoon or column that might conceivably offend some fundamentalist Muslim anywhere on Earth. Bawer has a field day deriding the multiculturalists-academics, mostly-who would sooner consign their own culture to the flames than defend it against its many enemies abroad. "Multiculturalism," Bawer writes, "means exalting non-Western groups, treating their collective values (however illiberal) as sacrosanct, and either choosing not to notice their lack of freedom or pretending there's no such thing as freedom . . . " The author's work has drifted toward the right over the years, but his argument is often well-reasoned and to the point. It is beyond question that the imams would not brook cultural criticism of this or any other ilk in the unlikely event that they came to power in Washington, D.C., or London. Still, Bawer's argument occasionally takes silly turns, as when he condemns the Dixie Chicks for "telling their critics to shut up" via the documentary Shut Up and Sing, and the State Department for doing away with the useless term"Islamo-fascism."Merits discussion, despite its shrill moments and its tendency to paint all Muslims with an enemy-of-democracy brush.

Book Details

Published
May 1, 2010
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pages
352
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780767928373

More by Bruce Bawer

Similar books