Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance [Hardcover]

Ian Buruma (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 7, 2006

Ian Buruma returns to his native land to explore the great dilemma of our time through the story of the brutal murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh at the hands of an Islamic extremist.

It was the emblematic crime of our moment: On a cold November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man, Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants, shot and killed the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of Vincent and iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the vocally anti-Islam Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that "blasphemed" Islam. After Bouyeri shot van Gogh, he calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete, as if performing a ritual sacrifice, which in a very real sense he was.

The murder horrified quiet, complacent, prosperous Holland, a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance, and sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native country to try to make sense of it all and to see what larger meaning should and shouldn't be drawn from this story. The result is Buruma's masterpiece: a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a true-crime page-turner and the intellectual resonance we've come to expect from one of the most well-regarded journalists and thinkers of our time. Ian Buruma's entire life has led him to this narrative: In his hands, it is the exemplary tale of our age, the story of what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West and tolerance finds its limits.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Van Gogh, a provocative media personality in the Netherlands, was shot and stabbed on an Amsterdam street in November 2004 by a young radical, the son of Moroccan immigrants, who accused him of blasphemy against Islam. When Buruma (Bad Elements) returned to his homeland in an effort to make sense of the brutal murder, he quickly realized there was more to the story than a terrorist lashing out against Western culture. Exploiting the tensions between native-born Dutch and Muslim immigrants, van Gogh drew attention to himself with deliberately inflammatory political theater that escalated beyond control. Buruma refuses to blame the victim, though, giving equal weight to critics who insist Islam must adapt to European culture rather than the other way around, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch politician who scripted van Gogh's final film, an avant-garde indictment of the religion's treatment of women. There is a strong sense of journalistic immediacy to Buruma's cultural inquiry, and if the result is a slim volume, that's because his dense, thoughtful prose doesn't waste a single word. (Sept. 11)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

The well-traveled Ian Buruma, a Bard College professor, previously published Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2005) and The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (2002), among others. Buruma's account of Theo van Gogh's death was first published in the New Yorker in January 2005. The book, an expanded version of the magazine piece, is timely. Buruma receives much praise for his writing and reporting skills, though several critics comment on the book's lack of structure. Buruma's willingness to examine the story from all angles is his strength, leading in the final analysis to a nuanced understanding of the situation and an evenhanded piece on a seemingly impenetrable issue. The book suffers from this impenetrability as well: Buruma provides a record of the events but few answers to the questions he inevitably raises. But has anyone else managed to answer these questions yet?

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition edition (September 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201080
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201080
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #495,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 83 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good examination of what the "war on terror" is really about September 10, 2006

By J. Adams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Buruma writes very small, but very dense books about serious issues. His "Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies" published a few years ago was almost unreadable in some parts because he tried to say too much in too few words. But this book is really one that puts some "flesh on the bones" of that book by examining a real-life consequence of Islamic radicalism confronting Western societies open system.

I suspect this book will be unwelcome in many circles because it makes a very good case that jihadists come in many forms and sizes, from lunatics like bin Laden to the single acts of murder by an equally crazed Islamist by the name of Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Theo van Gogh on a street in Amsterdam as van Gogh rode his bike to work.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in Holland over many decades, the effect of van Gogh's murder was far greater than that of Pym Fortuyn, who was also killed for being "politically incorrect."

This book does some critical questioning of whether the West will wake up soon enough to understand that the centuries of change in European values have run in the exact opposite direction of millions of immigrant Muslims who seek to return to the "good old days" of Sharia law, even if most of its proponents have never lived under it. The second and third generations of Muslim youth all over Europe, who have alienated themselves from modernity, for a myriad of reasons, are a real threat to the values that the Western "elites" take for granted and are so arrogant that they cannot understand that millions of Muslims think they must be destroyed to save the world for Islam.

Buruma does a good job of explaining how these elites, and their "multicultural" policies of the last few decades have only been sharpening the knives that these new generations of radicals will use to cut the throats of those who defend their "right" to force their women to wear burkas, riot at the drop of a cartoon, kill at the slightest offense to The Prophet.

This book along with Bernard Lewis' many books, Oriana Fallaci's expose of the suicide of the Western elites, are good places to spend some time to realize that we are only a couple of decades into a clash of civilizations that will probably go on for centuries, or until the wildly disparate birth rates of Muslims vs. traditional European Christian and secular populations make places like France and the UK Majority-Muslim countries in a few decades. (France is projected to reach this tipping point in less than two generations.)

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars On Tolerating the Intolerant February 6, 2007

By Izaak VanGaalen

Format:Hardcover

The Netherlands has always had a well-deserved reputation for tolerance, they have been cited by many as being the most liberal country in Europe if not the world. Against this background, Dutch-born author Ian Buruma explores why, in 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death by a certain Mohammed Bouyeri. The ostensible reason was that Bouyeri, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, was deeply insulted by a film made by van Gogh and feminist Somali-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali regarding the mistreatment of women under Islam. On the whole, the non-Muslim Dutch were shocked and outraged, while Muslims simply had vague feelings of "understanding" for Bouyeri.

Theo van Gogh was a classic "dorpsgek" or village idiot. Being of Dutch descent myself, I know the type only too well. As a provocateur, van Gogh was an equal opportunity insultor; he offended Christians, Jews, Muslims and about every other social grouping. In his film "Submission," which angered the Muslim community, there were verses of the Koran projected onto the body of a naked woman. It was a puerile and tedious excercise, the kind of thing that gives art a bad name. If he had been as clever as he thought he would have known there would be consequences - the provocation worked only too well.

Mohammed Bouyeri was rather typical of European-born Muslims; in fact, he had many similarities with the 7/7 and Madrid bombers, and also, for that matter, the 9/ll bombers, particularly Mohammed Atta. He enjoyed the freedoms of Holland while at the same time feeling estranged from the mainstream. Dating, playing soccer, and smoking pot had its attractions, but when he saw that women had the same rights, he retreated to the mosque and started listening to the radical imams.

The situation of Bouyeri is a microcosm of what is happening with Muslims throughout Europe. In Holland Muslims number 1 million out of a population of 16 million, but in cities they comprise as high as 40 percent of the populaton - and this percentage is growing because they have higher birth-rates. How does a liberal democracy assimilate a culture that fundamentally rejects the rights of women, not to mention civil rights in general?

Buruma gives no easy answers, because there are none. Being Dutch and living in the shadow of Anne Frank, Buruma is well aware of minority rights. He feels - like Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen - that the Dutch could do more to accommodate Muslims, for fear of alienating this large minority. For my part, I think they have already taken the multicultural ideal too far and exposed its weaknesses. If all cultures are equal, the minority culture will feel no need to assimilate into the dominant culture and soon enough you have sectarian strife. The ideals of the Enlightenment should be adhered to and Muslims should be more accommodating. The ideal that all human beings have the same rights regardless of race, sex, or religion should be paramount. These rights should be understood as one's relationship to the state not one's relationship to a social group as in the case of Muslims. Civil rights require that religious laws are not above civil laws. It's high time for European Muslims and non-Muslims to relearn these principles.

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Confronting the nature of immigration November 13, 2006

By James Ferguson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I had come back from Amsterdam and was looking for something to read that might make sense of this very cosmopolitan city with its seeming open door to the world. I couldn't have been more satisfied than with Buruma's engaging book that goes far beyond the death of Theo van Gogh in examining the natue of tolerance in this fair city and the greater Dutch Republic. The events which Buruma describes are still fresh, and he writes as if composing a blog on the Internet with a steady stream of thoughts and observations, along with pithy interviews with leading Dutch poltical and cultural figures, who all have something to say on the subject of Theo van Gogh and his killer, Mohammed B.

The author links the death of Pim Fortuyn with that of Van Gogh, in showing how sudden celebrity brings with it repercussions that the Dutch seemed to feel didn't exist in their liberal society. But then Holland has not always been such a liberal-minded country, and Buruma explores some of the historic roots that led to the steady influx of immigrants that have come to dominate cities like Amsterdam, much to the chagrin of the proud Dutch.

The book is an antidote to the smugness of European liberalism that seems to feel that assimilation is natural in a secular democratic society. Events such as the deaths of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn not only wipe the smiles off complacent faces, but send shock waves through the country. Buruma demonstrates how illiberal liberals can be when confounded by the nature of successive waves of immigrants who hold onto their religious beliefs instead of adopting the conventions of the new secular state. Buruma illustrates that for many immigrants religion is all they have to help them face the overwhelming challenges of a new society, and when confronted by the likes of Theo Van Gogh, best known for his unapologetic confrontational style, they not only shout back, but sometimes fire back.

Buruma seems to argue that you can't have it both ways. The ugly backlash against the Muslim community, particularly the Moroccans, that followed the death of Theo Van Gogh, was largely driven by ignorance. Dutch had long held the Moroccan community in contempt, and an event like this seemed to validate their viewpoint. Mohammed, or "Mo" as he was derisively called in the press, became the poster child for the misplaced Moroccan immigrant who couldn't adjust to Dutch Society. The only problem was that "Mo" was as Dutch as many Dutch, having been born in Holland to an immigrant father. He bore more similarity to the alienated youths that shot up Columbine High School in Colorado than he did an unreconstructed immigrant.

Buruma shows that tolerance does indeed have its limits, especially when it really isn't tolerance at all, but rather a resentful acceptance of the immigrant nation Holland has become. In recent years, Social Democrats have suffered at the polls, and upstart political parties like that formed by Pim Fortuyn were able to seize on popular sentiment across the political spectrum. Fortuyn rallied liberals and conservatives alike with his tough talk on immigration, and it was a sad irony that it was Ahsaan Hirsi Ali's own political party that had her nationality revoked by uncovering that she had lied about her surname on her application. It seems that when confronted by homegrown Islamicists, which Ali railed against, Holland doesn't want to take responsibility and this is what Buruma finds sadly disappointing about liberal Dutch society.