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About a year-and-a-half ago, having dinner at a restaurant in Rome, Bruce Bawer got a sharp reminder of the danger of his work.

His dinner companion was Italian politician and writer Fiamma Nirenstein, and the armed guards that accompany her everywhere she goes were seated at the next table. Those guards are necessary because of her outspokenness on the dangers of Islam's clash with the West. Bawer, himself a writer, is critical of both Islam and what he sees as the West's capitulation to it.

"When we went to dinner the guards were there at another table, and of course this situation caused me to reflect on the danger that I face myself because of my writing," Bawer, the author of the new book "Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom," told The Jewish State via email. "But nothing happened to me in Rome -- and meanwhile, while I was away at this conference, my partner back in Oslo was accosted by two Muslims at a bus stop just because they could tell he was gay. In short, the risk is there, whether you're speaking up or just minding your own business. So better to speak up than not."

Bawer has written on this topic before, with "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within". His new book is focused on the West's self-censorship so as not to incur the wrath of its growing Muslim population. The most striking change in the situation since his last book, he said, is the force with which the problem has come to the United States.

"As for America -- well, my main mistake when I wrote ["While Europe Slept"] was that I thought America was more immune to these problems than it in fact is turning out to be," Bawer said.

Bawer is openly gay, which makes him part of a group consistently targeted by Europe's Muslim population. The situation continues to deteriorate, he said.

"Things have gone steadily from bad to worse," Bawer said. "For example, as I foresaw more than a decade ago, Amsterdam has turned from a place where gay people could feel safe and free to a place where they feel hunted. I live in Oslo, the sleepiest of European capitals, and this January there were street riots by Muslim youths that made the downtown area look like Sarajevo or Beirut at their worst."

Bawer's writing takes aim at the mainstream media's political correctness, and he seeks to expose mounting examples of the media's suppression of negative stories on Islam, even -- or especially -- when the public's security is at stake. One such example in the book is that of Annie Jacobsen.

Jacobsen wrote a story for WomensWallStreet.com about a terrifying experience she had flying from Detroit to Los Angeles in June 2004. Fourteen Middle Eastern men were congregating in small groups during the flight, making group trips to the bathroom, and seemed to be signaling one another. Several passengers were alarmed, as were air marshals on board. Upon landing, the men were questioned and claimed to be a Syrian rock band and their Lebanese promoter. Their story didn't check out, but to Jacobsen's surprise, she was the one targeted by online news readers and practically mocked by news organs like the New York Times.

"To an extraordinary extent, people in authority have proven hopeless in this regard," Bawer said of the reaction. "They are terrified of being seen as 'racists' or 'Islamophobes' and will torment and try to destroy the reputations of brave people like Annie Jacobsen rather than take on the real bad guys. This is why I wrote this book: ordinary citizens need to know what is going on, stand up for themselves and their rights, and make their voices heard."

But it wasn't only the media's treatment of Jacobsen that raises red flags for Bawer; there's a cultural shift in the American public's tolerance of the spreading of values inimical to their own that Bawer encounters. For example, he noted, opponents of gay marriage are considered fair game for attack -- as long as they're not Muslim.

"They criticize Western opponents of gay marriage because in their view it is OK to criticize illiberalism in the West," Bawer said. "But it is not OK to criticize far more extreme illiberalism in the non-Western world, particularly the Islamic world, because one is supposed to respect other cultures, however outrageously illiberal they may be. This mentality is called multiculturalism, and it is dangerous because it compels its adherents to look at even the most abhorrent non-Western cultures through rose-colored glasses and prioritizes the supposed 'rights' of those cultures over the rights of individuals living in those cultures."

Bawer said that when he first began writing about Islam, he rarely used sweeping terms, opting instead for more specific words and phrases like "fundamentalist Islam" or "Islamists." But, he said, he has come to realize that most Muslims do in fact subscribe to a fundamentalist Islam, and that secular Muslims are both rare and ostracized by most of their co-religionists.

"It is impossible to know how many of these 'moderate Muslims' -- for want of a better term -- there are, and the problem is that as long as they continue to remain silent, they might as well not be there," Bawer said. "One way to help them is for politicians, academics, and journalists to stop celebrating and palling around with Islamists like Tariq Ramadan -- and welcoming them into their ranks! -- and to start giving real, visible support to members of Muslim communities who believe in freedom, equality, and democratic reform."

Bawer also has some pieces of advice for Western countries to combat what is often referred to as the "soft jihad" -- and one is to follow Denmark.

"Denmark is the one country in Europe that has introduced effective policies in this regard, namely by placing serious restrictions on forced/arranged marriages," Bawer said. "Such marriages are the main means by which Muslims gain residency in the West -- and are also the main means by which sexual equality is prevented from gaining a toehold in European Muslim communities and by which any real hope of long-term integration and acceptance of democratic and pluralist norms is defeated."

Bawer also suggested increasing immigration from non-Muslim Asian countries who can balance out some of the heavy Muslim immigration and who bring more desire to preserve and enjoy Western freedoms.

He added that the West should especially welcome immigration from any group commonly oppressed in Muslim countries, such as Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, gays, and other groups. He also warned that native European populations are reproducing at a pace far below "replacement rate," while Muslim immigrants continue to have large families. If trends continue, he said, within a couple of generations Europe will have several Muslim-majority countries.

Bawer, who recommends reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye'or, Claire Berlinksy, and Robert Spencer on the subject, also counseled against the common folly of projecting our cultural relativism onto Muslims.

"The main mistake is thinking that if you go out of your way to praise Islam, exaggerate its cultural and other contributions, and cover up all the bad stuff, Muslim leaders will accept this as a friendly gesture and will respond in kind," Bawer said. "On the contrary, they are much more likely to see such rhetoric as a sign of weakness and to exploit that weakness. They are not relativists, compromisers, multiculturalists; they are true believers who see themselves as engaged in a struggle for the soul of the world on behalf of the only true religion."

"Surrender" is available from Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon.com and other major booksellers.