Hoover Institution Press today announced the publication of Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad, by Hoover senior fellow Russell A. Berman. In his analysis of Europe’s ambivalence toward jihadist terror and the spread of aggressive Islamism, Berman focuses on the European responses—or lack thereof—to this profound threat to modern democracy.
“Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad is a luminous book of exacting analysis and thorough knowledge,” said Fouad Ajami, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. “Europe’s choices in the face of radical Islamism are laid out with deep intellectual and moral clarity. West European societies are faced with a taxing choice as Islamists challenge their cultural and political order, and Russell Berman sketches this great struggle in a brilliant and knowing book.”
In Freedom or Terror, Berman examines how Europe has become an incubator for terrorism, as a product of the culture war between the promises of modernity and jihadist ideology. He analyzes the range of European responses, from appeasement and apologetics to forceful counterterrorism strategies. He provides particularly detailed accounts of developments in England, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark and of the failures of European policy in Bosnia. Berman argues that European countries must draw immigrant youth into mainstream culture and offer positive pathways to integration. Otherwise, extremist networks will continue to succeed in recruiting terrorists, thus promising a violent future.
Russell A. Berman, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is also the Walter A. Hass Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.
For more information on Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad, visit hooverpress.org or the book’s Facebook fan page. For more information on the Hoover Institution, visit hoover.org or find us on Facebook (keyword: Hoover Institution).
