PrintMay 4, 2007
Pim Fortuyn's death
Bruce Bawer is an expatriate American who has now lived in Europe for years. Last year he wrote one of the most insightful and well-written books on 2006, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, regarding the increasingly dominant and deleterious role that Islam is assuming in European society and politics.
Bawer today takes note in the New York Sun of one upcoming anniversary this Sunday: the murder of a Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, who recognized the perils ahead. He also writes of a Europe that has failed to learn the lessons from Fortuyn and that is again relapsing into the appeasement mode when it comes to facing Islamic extremism. Holland has been recognized as one of the most liberal societies in Europe, yet today Amsterdam's mayor has called for, ""accommodation with the Muslims," including toleration "of orthodox Muslims who consciously discriminate against their women."
Bawer looks ahead and sees the continued emigration of the young and ambitious from Holland. Will the last one leaving please turn off the lights?
