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    The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
    Unavailable
    The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
    Unavailable
    The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
    Ebook491 pages9 hours

    The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

    By Douglas Murray

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    About this ebook

    THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
    A WATERSTONES POLITICS PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR, 2018

    The Strange Death of Europe     is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society.

    This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them.

    Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent's death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilisation, would do this to themselves?

    He ends with two visions of Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 4, 2017
    ISBN9781472942258
    Unavailable
    The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
    Author

    Douglas Murray

    Douglas Murray is an associate editor of The Spectator. His latest publication, The Madness of Crowds, was a bestseller and a book of the year for The Times and The Sunday Times. His previous book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, was published by Bloomsbury in May 2017. It spent almost twenty weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list and was a number one bestseller in nonfiction.

    Read more from Douglas Murray

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    Reviews for The Strange Death of Europe

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    • 4/5
      A must read book
    • 5/5
      Absolutely brilliant! One of the best books on the roots and the current status quo of the refugee crisis in Europe. Must read for anyone interested in that hot-debated topic!
    • 5/5
      Very informative and a bit frightening to see how many of the behaviors are being replicated in America [ie calling anyone who has concerns about large scale immigration a racist, demonizing an entire side of the political spectrum].

      The truth is, to keep the fruits of a heritage, you cannot throw out the foundation of that heritage, because voids want to be filled and will be filled with something.
    • 5/5
      One of the publishing successes of 2017 has been Douglas Murray’s examination of the changes we see occurring all around us. There are two reasons for this – Murray is a considered, thoughtful writer with a much greater degree of empathy than he is given credit for. The second is the terrible events at the Manchester Arena on the 22 May. Murray’s explanation of how we reached the stage where our children are being blown up at pop concerts, was surprisingly commissioned by and shown on the BBC. That eloquence, and dismay at the mistakes the political class has made, characterises this book. It has several overlapping themes. Central is Europe’s contemporary lack of confidence in itself, its history, its beliefs and practice. This has conjoined with an era of large scale immigration, often of people with little or no intention of becoming anything like the citizens of the nations they have moved to. Murray roots his work in a sound statistical basis, and the position that historically governments have tended to both lie to their populations about immigration, usually by underestimating demographic change, and then subsequently to do little to address concerns. Instead curious games are played out. Examples vary from the serious – that so few illegal migrants are ever deported - to the surreal. Consider the Office for National Statistics listing Mohammed and Muhammad separately in their annual lists of children’s names until “this was immaterial because the name in all its variants had indeed become the most popular boy’s name in England and Wales. At which point the official line changed to ‘And so what?” (p.313)Murray explains how academic sleight of hand has been necessary to provide an evidence base that immigration is inherently an economic good, despite the awkward reality that an insurance based welfare system open to all, is unlikely to prosper if significant numbers of people can take out who are yet to pay in. The chameleon like nature of political leaders emerges repeatedly – in one decade it is racist to expect migrants to speak the language of their host country, in another it becomes essential. Sometimes assimilation is promoted, at other times the retention of migrant cultures, with concessions to practices, like sharia law, which appear incompatible with existing structures and rights. Confused? Everybody is. That immigration may undermine, not strengthen liberal values was something Britain had warning of first, via the Rushdie affair in 1989, an event Murray considers “a crash course in the rules of Islam” (p.131). If so, the response of successive British governments has become distinctly un-British – to play down freedom of speech and the rights of the individual, and to increasingly assert the group rights of multi-culturalism. Those worst affected by this are often minority communities themselves “ordinary Muslims suddenly had a branch of religious representation inserted between them and their political representatives” (p.132) often via groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, dominated by the British end of Pakistan’s main clerical party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. As Murray concludes “No one had prepared for the possibility that those arriving might only not become integrated but might bring many social and religious views with them” (p.152).If this book were simply a critique of blunders made, it would risk polemic. Murray avoids this, in part through his considered style, in part through interviews with those coming to places like Lampedusa, a transit island between north Africa and Sicily, and Lesbos, one of the Greek Islands closest to Turkey. Most want to go to Germany, although Sweden and the UK are also popular destinations. In 2015 “around 400,000 migrants moved through Hungary’s territory alone. Fewer than twenty of them stopped to claim asylum in Hungary” (p. 81). Whilst empathetic about the conditions many are fleeing, Murray is never naïve. He reminds us that the father of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose dead body washed up on the Turkish coast, dominating newspaper headlines in September 2015, took the regrettable decision to leave behind a paid job in a safe country, Turkey, to try to sail for a new life in Europe. Whilst his death provoked emotional political outpourings in Europe and North America, in Muslim majority countries there was little or no interest. Western guilt, absorbed from the top down in our societies, be it about colonialism, race or the holocaust, ensured entirely different responses.What to do about all this? Even if we wanted to solve the problems of Eritrea, to take just one source of mass migration, where would we begin? The response of the EU was to give six billion Euros to Turkey to prevent its use as a transit point for migrants, thus ensuring Europe’s taxpayers (you and me) pay for the crisis. A chapter on terrorism, violence and sexual assaults by migrants is entitled ‘Learning to Live With It’, the view of terrorism forever associated with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. A theme Murray returns to time after time is the deceit, we might at times say self-deceit, of our ruling elites. Mrs Merkel for example, was able to declare multi-culturalism a failure in Germany in 2010, then to decide it could work in 2015. Perhaps we need to hold these leaders to account a little more?A deeper, philosophical question, is the issue of what replaces Christianity in our post-Christian societies? What provides us with a foundation and the moorings needed in times of stormy weather? Here Murray suggests the countries of eastern Europe may have a better basis from which to survive, than those in the west. They at least, seem set to avoid the wave of jihadist attacks that has so shaken France, Belgium, Germany and Britain. As for here, even our architecture seems to be in decline “In London the great building to commemorate the turn of the millennium wasn’t even a structure built to last, but a vast empty tent” (p.263).There are omissions. Margaret Thatcher, who believed Islam could be used as a bulwark against Communism and was consequently indulgent of some of its most extreme manifestations, is not mentioned once. Murray’s own flirtation with a secular god that failed, neo-Conservatism, is similarly overlooked. In discussing the greatest living French novelist, Michel Houellebecq and his work Submission, Murray misses perhaps the obvious comparison – just as Solzhenitsyn chronicled the disasters of the Soviet era, so Houellebecq’s fiction chronicles the disasters of an increasingly Islamised France. There are few better than Murray though in placing these events in their political, historical and philosophical contexts. If this is a book that ends pessimistically, it is because we have much to be worried about.
    • 3/5
      Good overview of the refugee crisis years & terror wave. Good review of the naiveté of the political class & failed predictions. Falls short in being descriptive over proscriptive; anyone interested enough to pick up the book likely knew most of what's in it already.
    • 4/5
      Those of us brought up in Birmingham are no strangers to immigration; we went to school with Asian kids, and it was the most natural thing in the world. They - or their parents - had come to Britain to be British, and we all grew up absorbing the same ambient values and hardly noticed that there was any difference between us. The most disturbing change that Douglas Murray documents is how immigrants’ desire for integration with the resident culture has turned into a movement to make Britain – or France, or Italy, or Sweden – conform with the values of the immigrant cultures. That this has been facilitated by politicians, police, social services and even religious leaders makes it even more insidious. This is how the phenomena of child brides, female genital mutilation, and organized sexual exploitation of minors have all become virtually unchallenged features of the British social landscape.Murray explodes the myth of the value of diversity, as an absolute overriding objective, or that immigration was necessary from a demographic point of view, to shore up the aging and numerically declining native European populations. He deplores how Europeans have been cowed, first by the violent acts against them by some immigrants, and secondly by the fear of being branded as fascists – and now prosecuted as Islamaphobes - if they express concerns about the religious culture that has nurtured and often supports these criminal acts. Politicians, police and the press not only ignore these concerns, but rush to defend Moslems as “victims too” of these crimes. Any expression of concern by the public is blamed on “the rise of the right” and quickly condemned. Murray exposes the gap between what people think and what they are led to believe they should think: ‘What does a political class and the media do when they discover that the views they have tried to make beyond the political pale are in fact the views of the majority of the public?’ Murray attributes the failure of Europe to defend its native cultures and values to two factors: a loss of belief in its national “narratives” and the precipitous decline in attachment to religion. Belief in national values – nationalism - has become synonymous with the “far right”, and Europe, he says, is perpetually in an apologetic mode, bending over backwards to atone for colonialism and its imposition of European culture on other parts of the world. It cannot be admitted that that culture – its roots in the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, the injection, via their incorporation into Christianity, of Judaic values of social justice and interpersonal responsibility, and its secularisation as “natural law” by the European Enlightenment – has a unique value. How can Europeans defend European culture and civilization when they now largely reject the validity of the source of the Judeo- Christian values from which they were derived? It is therefore not surprising that a culture reflecting Moslem religious and social values is on the ascendant. These values are energetically defended by the “blasphemy police” from any of the kind of “higher” criticism and rationalism that have undermined beliefs in European religion over the last two hundred years. The author lists a series of policies that might even now make the situation more manageable. Keeping refugees in the vicinity of the country from which they are fleeing avoids the challenges of relocation in a very foreign culture, and would facilitate their return home when conditions permit. Adopting the Australian practice of processing asylum claims outside of Australia, as an immigrant once arrived, is almost always an immigrant that remains – whatever the outcome of the process. These are just examples of a range of policies and change of attitudes towards immigration and immigrants that Murray is not optimistic that the political class will adopt or encourage. He believes that politicians will continue to “ensure that Europe is the only place in the world that belongs to the world”, and he fears the consequences. He worries that people - loving the Europe that was, and not wanting to let politicians change it into a different place - may increasingly take matters into their own hands, or that a real far-right wing party may come to power in one or more European countries. This is not a comfortable book to read – which is probably the best reason for doing so.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is a hard book, relentlessly unforgiving and unflinching. The author spares no one—Europeans and Muslims, politicians and people, and fairly enough--but in doing so leaves you feeling bereft of hope at times.

      In the West, to a fair extent, we recognize others rights to cultural self-determination. When we don't, it is usually for things that are considered beyond the pale: stoning rape victims, for example. But we rarely turn this consideration on ourselves. To stand up as German or an American and say that you value your culture and want to preserve it is to invite something on a spectrum that runs from mockery to accusations of racism or white supremacy.

      Western Europe, already buckled under its collective guilt over colonialism and the wars of the 20th century, is buckling further under the onslaught of millions of refugees and migrants from substantially different cultures. Having been told these newcomers various would acculturate or leave and neither having turned out to be the case, Europe's natives are despairing, being ignored by their leaders, and, increasingly, giving up hope.

      For the last few decades, opinion polls have consistently shown that Europe's peoples wanted less immigration, not more, let alone the flood that has come in recent years. The phrase 'failure of democracy' comes to mind. The marvels here are not that Marine Le Pen and other right-wingers are so popular, but that Macron and Merkel won their elections, that there has been only one (Br)exit.
       
      On top of being ignored, the people who do speak up are roundly condemned as racists--no room for discussion is made, the discussion is shut down before it begins.
       
      Perhaps even more crucial than Europe's politicians' dismissal of their people's wishes is the wild asymmetry between what is asked of the EU and what is asked of others. By all historical standards, turning away hundreds of thousands of refugees is the norm and indeed, little criticism has been aimed at the countries neighboring Syria for being unwilling to accept refugees--despite them being a much closer cultural and religious fit.
       
      (To be fair, as Europe is discovering, intra-migrant violence, which falls almost entirely along religious and ethnic lines, is rampant and far worse than rates of violence against the host peoples--which are significant in and of themselves. So, perhaps Saudi Arabia is to be envied for its wisdom rather than criticized for heartlessness or selfishness.)
       
      It's a dark tunnel and the light at its end the author shows us is so dimmed by improbability one struggles to take much heart from it.
       
      I'm tempted to criticize this book for its rampant hindsighting. But, I won't and here's why. At the beginning of this process, various critics and doomsayers claimed out that Bad Things would happen and that many of these refugees would not really be refugees (many are in fact economic migrants who lie about their origins in order to be granted asylum), that there would be far more than what the governments were projecting, and that some neighborhoods (and indeed entire cities) would be minority European soon. They were derided, called racist or alarmist or simply ignored.
       
      For the most part, they were wrong. These pessimists' projections fell short of the reality that has come to pass.
       
      This is a hard book, but this is a hard problem and there are no easy solutions or answers.
    • 3/5
      With a title like that I probably can't blame the author for having an agenda but the worst you can say about this book is that it cherry-picks facts... but they are still facts. There are lots of people angry about the book but what are they angry about exactly? Or are they just angry about reality? I don't share the bleak outlook and general fear of change but hey, I'm an immigrant so it's not like I can claim impartiality. I think the first hand experience of the immigration crisis has exposed the author to too much misery and he just can't see any possible futures that don't involve further escalations of current problems.
    • 5/5
      "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam" makes the scariest Stephen King novel imaginable seem like a romance novel in comparison. Douglas Murray's book is a look back to the point when the leaders of Europe (only a few short years ago) decided to commit the collective suicide of their various countries by opening their borders to any and all who wanted to come there.The problem, of course, is that such a move attracted a portion of the world's population that came to Europe with absolutely no intention of ever integrating into the culture into which they were moving themselves and their families. Rather, they decided to use whatever means necessary (including rape and murder) to remake their new countries into a culture as much like the one they were supposedly fleeing as possible. The timing, according to Murray, could not have been worse. Just when so many of Europe's political elite and upper class were losing faith in the worth of their own culture, they were faced with millions of immigrants who wanted to help the European elite destroy that culture.The scariest thing to me, as an American, about what Murray has to say is that he may be predicting the future of the United States. So many of America's politicians and cultural elite on both coasts are ready and willing to open this country's borders, that it may be only a matter of time before someone writes a book titled "The Strange Death of America." The only thing that might save us from going down that path is that America is still a Christian country (at least to all appearances). Murray blames the death of European Christianity for making it so easy for a whole continent to surrender to an invading horde that will dominate the native population by 2050 if nothing soon changes. When you lose faith in your own culture why bother to defend it?

      1 person found this helpful