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Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance

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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.)

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.

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.

When one thinks of The Netherlands/Holland (n.b. I never know what the difference is, does anyone?), what's the typical stereotype which comes to mind? "Coffee shops" dotting nearly every Amsterdam and Rotterdam street corner which sell all manner of recreational drugs and drug paraphernalia, the practice of euthanasia, unbridled gay and lesbian marriage, savoury cheese, the tallest race in Europe, canals that meander through this multiple-bridged city...anything else?

Well, in his latest book of investigative journalism, MURDER IN AMSTERDAM, author Ian Buruma deconstructs the rapidly vanishing and cushy notion that "being Dutch" is all about wooden clogs and windmills.

Following two ghastly celebrity assasinations in the early 21st-century, the first of caustic gay politician Pim Fortuyn, followed soon thereafter by the murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (of "Submission Part I" infamy), Buruma aims his writerly crosshairs smack dab upon the emergence of a new kind of Dutch subculture--radical Islam in the Low Countries, specifically Muslim-Dutch fundamentalism.

While Fortuyn's murder was not, rather, committed by a member of Holland's growing Islamic citizenry, the majority of Buruma's book does deal with the souring relations between native Netherlanders (what Buruma calls the upstanding Calvinist "regenten," in the vernacular) and the newcomers or immigrants whom these "regenten" find in their midst.

The book is a tour-de-force of Holland's population centres where Islamic and non-Islamic migrants and refugees have made their permanent home, the sons and daughters of the one-time "guest labourers" who toiled in Holland's 1960s post-war heavy industry. It deals with the sometimes bipolar existence these various citizens--who hail from many different countries: Turkey, Morrocco, Algeria, and Suriname--and what they experience as part of their working and living days-to-day.

It would seem, Buruma indicates, in the case of its Muslim newcomers, that Holland--and Western Europe, more generally--hasn't comfortably accepted the obvious reality that Islam is now a fully integrated and legitimate "European" religion. Islam is here to stay, Buruma reiterates. Dutch people, he claims, still treat the Muslims present in their midst--in some cases, those who have been there over several decades--as "barbaric" newcomers. It's a state of affairs which seems to exacerbate the disconnect that many, for example, Moroccan or Turkish Hollanders experience.

As Buruma shows with his meticulous research, the phenomenon drives many of these young sons and daughters of the "non-Dutch" Dutchmen into the camps of extreme ideologues, those with manipulative agendas who twist their subjects' already warped sense of communal belongingness into something at once more macabre and demonic.

Dining once too often at the table of hatred and fear, Mohammed Bouyeri, Van Gogh's erstwhile killer, was a protoypical example of a young Muslim-Dutch man who fed once too often on an appretite of poisonous extremist rhetoric. Bouyeri's case is similar to the fate of tens of today's young Moroccan-Dutch, Buruma shows, the children of parents who were never fully accepted and integrated into their surroundings and society, who were never tolerated by their fellow Dutch citizens as fully-functioning members of their community.

Buruma tells us that The Netherlands is no longer that safe and innocent place it once used to be.

The addition of a new--some might say, foreign--element into the societal mix has caused "native" Dutch people to turn inwardly into themselves, shielding themselves and their families from the need to interact with those who didn't quite fit into their narrow-minded conception of religious propriety and culture, resulting in a deadly and vicious circle (as we've clearly seen).

In response, newcomers don't interact with locals, and an environment of dangerous mistrust and suspicion festers.

What I enjoyed most about this read was the in-depth interviews the author conducted with several famous Dutch sociologists, criminologists, and demographers. Reading the lines (and between the lines), one gains a clearer perspective on the conditions extant in today's European Union Holland, perhaps also gaining a better understanding of the conditions which combined to produce a killer such as Bouyeri, or "Mohammed B." as he's known in Holland.

The book was packed with lots to digest, frankly.

Buruma dwells excessively on Holland's WWII past, and makes copious (some would say, excessive) mention of the country's prior relationship with its one-time sprawling Jewish population as a way to either justify, compare, or simplify the "whys" surrounding the behaviour of its burgeoning Muslim populations. This is a radical overemphasis, in this reviewer's opinion, and totally uncalled for and shocking in light of the disproportionate numbers Holland's Jewish population plays in today's Dutch makeup.

While the country's past is revealing in certain specific instances, the book seems to possess an irking refrain which does less to elucidate upon the complex case of Holland's present-day Muslims, than frustrate.

Having said that, I learned heaps.

Buruma reveals plenty of juicy historical bits that could only come off the pen of a sage observer of Holland's present day affairs, from one who is intimately acquainted with his material, as Buruma quite clearly seems to be.

As you'll make your way through, prepare to be shocked. While most of what you'll read from the tongues of some of Amsterdam's more radical Islamic elements isn't anything you haven't heard before, you'll very soon realize (if you haven't already) that an ominous menace is closer at hand than perhaps once believed. Ten bad apples, for example, are tainting an entire society's impression about a particular minority's participation in its collective. Less so about being fair or unfair, this is a travesty.

It goes to show you that a) the Dutch (insert French, Germans, Belgians, Austrians, Spanish, alternately) are clearly **unwilling** to probe deeper than mere surface details in an effort to gain a clearer understanding of "their" various foreigners and b) these same foreigners are unwilling to modify elements of their old country ways and mannerisms to more seamlessly integrate with the relative laissez-faire openness of the West.

Again, these aren't themes we haven't heard bafore. It's just that Buruma draws them out for us in ways which we've perhaps not seen. He supplies these details via more incising corroborating proof, as it were, and I was grateful for that.

Admittedly, I didn't choose this book. It was sent by a lawyer colleague who thought I might gain certain critical insights, considering that I make my present home in Europe. To be sure, radical Islam is not a daily feature of the former Bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and perhaps therefore less of a factor to ponder.

However, once upon a time the Dutch, too, felt that theirs was an unassailable society. The divides which often rended some of their one-time colonial-power neighbours' internal societies would never reach their low-lying shores, many thought. But that misconception has sadly been obliterated over the past twenty years. They've been disabused of that fantasy.

I suppose the lesson for we dwellers of old "mitteleuropa" is: be prepared, be vigilant, be conscious.

That which once seemed impossible, will soon be impossible no more.

--ADM in Prague

Fantastic, to start things off. Buruma's writing, always exceptional, is at its top form. While not a long book, it is very much distilled and disciplined writing. For me, the end result was that it seemed much longer. Or, maybe a more accurate word is "bigger," as it is in may ways a big book. The subject he tackles may be the defining theme of this century, which began with a horrible cataclysm in Manhattan five years ago. The idea of preserving European culture continually resurrects the traumas of the Second World War and Nazi philosophy of racial purity. How does modern Europe preserve itself without appearing to regress to racial aversion which has been so systematically eradicated from European politics, philosophy, arts and letters since 1945? Stay tuned for the answer.

Buruma courageously confronts the issues swirling around the subject of Islamic values, modern European liberalism/socialism, accommodating anti-democratic values in a democracy. Just yesterday, the Netherlands took steps to outlaw the veil in public places, which will ensure more spilled blood for sure. What I admired was Buruma's refusal to let the Dutch off the hook for the part they have played in creating their mess. The passages about modern Dutch politics were engrossing, as I know less than nothing about the subject. The chapter on Pim Fortuyn was a masterpiece, he seems like the archetypal figure in this unfolding drama.

Not that Buruma is suggesting this is a Dutch problem, or that the Dutch are in the wrong. It is a world problem, with no easy answers getting worse daily as our own malevolent leaders insist on dealing with the problem with simplicity and deception, invasion and subjection, distortion and lunacy.

I had traveled to Amsterdam twice before picking up Buruma's book with only a faint understanding of who Theo Van Gogh was or why he was murdered, but this book weaves European history, demographics and an understanding of radical Islam into a cogent explanation of why the Dutch filmmaker was murdered. I was impressed by Buruma's explanation of the motives of T. Van Gogh's assassin, the Moroccan émigré Mohammed Bouyeri, primarily because pernicious rationalizations of poverty, isolation and disillusionment were avoided in favor of focusing on Bouyeri's Muslim faith. Radical Islam, and to a large extent the entire body of `moderate' Islam, is incapable of taking rational criticism even when protestations of, say, the treatment of women are made in good faith. This is no where more clearly exemplified than the hysteria that followed the Danish Mohammed cartoons, which stills lingers as of March 2008, and the anticipatory ire which the Dutch MP Geert Wilders has aroused in the Middle East, namely Iran, upon announcing the release of a film that will be critical of Islam. Take note that Wilder's film has yet to be released, as of early March 2008, although he has already received death threats, and is under 24/7 guard, as the murder of Theo Van Gogh proved was utterly necessary.

T. Van Gogh was an implacable iconoclast whose work with the Somali émigré Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the short film `Submission' highlighted the abominable treatment and objectification of women in Islam. In `Submission', a nude female actor is covered in misogynist verses from the Koran. In the liberal democracies of the west, this is freedom of speech, but to Islam, an egregious sin.

Europe is undergoing radical demographic changes today with ever increasing immigration from Muslim nations. I'd recommend Mark Steyn's `America Alone' to place Buruma's book with a larger context.

Like the Dannish Cartoon scandal and the 7/7 attacks, the murder of Dutch filmaker Theo Van Gogh has been a rude reminder for the problem Europe has with an unassimilated part of its Muslim population. The great-grand son and namesake of the famous artist's brother, Van Gogh was a loud mouth moviemaker, a self proclaim court jester who told what he considered to be the truth in loud and vulgar fashion. After directing Submissioon, a provocative film about women in Islam, he had been murdered by Muhammad Bouyeri, the native born sonof Morrocan immigrants.

Ian Buruma, a well travelled Dutch born prominent American journalist, was sent by the New Yorker to cover the developments following Van Gogh's murder. I have previously read Buruma's intriguing and well written study of the emergence of Modern Japan, Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 (Modern Library Chronicles). "A Murder in Amsterdam", the book that follows from Buruma's investigations, is if anything better written and more fascinating. It is not, however, particularly well structued, nor is its argument strongly presented.

Buruma's book is too wide range to lend itself to easy summery; It spans issues as wide apart as the psychological problems of second generation immigrants and the ambigious relationship of Holand with the Holocaust. In the quest for the causes of Mr. Bouyani's murderous drive, Buruma encounters a wide variety of sub questions and historical links. Yet, in the end, Buruma seems to endorse the view of historian Geert Mak "the problem, he maintains, is not Islam or religious as such. It is more sociological. What we are witnessing is nothing new. Just the usual tensins that occur when uprooted rural people start new lives in the metropolis" (p. 239).

I do not intend in the confines of this review to challange this approach, although I admit I find it unsatisfying. Instead, I wish to draw the reader's attentions to some peculiarities in Buruma's account.

Perhaps understandably given Buruma's approach, he says next to nothing about Islam, or about the cultures from which Bouyeri and the immigrants in general come from. Given Buruma's strong inclination to fit every thought of any participant to some pre-existing Dutch school of thought, this is nonetheless peculiar. Buruma refuses to consider what Bouyari himself says about his actions: "I acted out of faith" (p. 189). When others, particularly Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali argue that the trouble is with Islam, Buruma does not engage their arguments. Rather, he (sympathetically) potrays their biographical developments and, irony of ironies, traces their criticism into the Dutch tradition.

For a book exploring the assimilation of Muslims in Europe, the book is remarkably data-free. Statistics about employment, literacy, rates of mixed marriage, and average income should form a large part of explaining the assimilation story. Yet such data is hardly available. This is especially unfortunate because one of the book's most interesting theses is that the European wellfare state might actually damage iummigrants by distorting insentives (p. 203-204). The economist in me finds the idea very attractive; The Liberal in me is repulsed. Eitherway, we need more data to build upon.

Although Buruma interviews and discusses many people inhis book, including the late Mr.Van Gogh and his killer, by far the most facinating character is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Somali born and Muslim raised, Ali is now a feminist and an atheist who believes that 'Islam is the problem'. She dreams of Liberating Western Muslims from their oppressive religion, and show them the beauty of the Enlightment, which "strips away culture and leaves only the human individual" (pp. 167-168).

But Buruma is right in saying that in a quest to actually influence the majority of Muslims, Ali's approach is unproductive. Muslims understandably have no wish to hear messeges that insult and undermine their religion. Although I think she is right in much of what she is saying, her words serve mostly to cater to the prejudice of white conservative Christians. Her most upsetting statement, Submission (the film for which Van Gogh was murdered), is intended and viewed almost entirely by non- Muslims. Unlike her hero Voltaire, Ali aims not at the religious establishment, but for the conservative one.

In a way, I see a mirror image between Ali and those ex-patriot Muslims who wants to potray a positive, up beat version of Islam, Like American scholar Reza Aslan (author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam). They seek to liberalise Islam; She seeks to destroy it. But I think that there is little constituency for either in the Muslim world. Muslims will not lend themselves to Western ideologies, and will start neither a Muslim Reformation (as Aslan wishes) nor a Muslim Enlightment (which Ali longs for). Rather, Aslan and Ali's messages will probably be directed mostly to the Western, Christian audience, and the Muslims will proceed in their own way.

Which way is that? How different are Muslims in Europe from Muslims abroad, and Muslims in the Netherlands from Muslims in other European countries? How many differences exist in-group and in-between group, and what will the consequences of these differences be? No one can know with any certainty.

But one sentence in Buruma's book strikes me; It is a relatively well assimilated Morrocan Muslim, an acquintence of the late Mr. Van Gogh. Speaking of the murder, he said:

"No Morrocan respects Muhammad Bouyeri. To commit murder during Ramadan - that is totally unacceptable"

This is not a murder mystery. We learn up front about the death of Theo van Gogh, why he was killed by Mohammed Boyeri over a film critical of Islam he made with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book explores the life and thought of these three Dutch persons in great detail. The real topic of the book is given by the last line of the subtitle, what are: "the Limits of Tolerance" in an open, democratic society towards culturally very different immigrants?

The Netherlands has a Muslim minority of about 15 percent, immigrants and descendants of immigrants, who form a separate community which is assimilating to Dutch ways only slowly if at all. Virtually all intend to maintain their adherence to Islam, and Islamic culture. How great differences can a society tolerate? Surely not murder, not killing for religious, political, or family honor reasons. Can a western society tolerate polygamy, permitted by the Koran? Sending children "home" to be religiously educated in a madrasa, and to learn the parents' language to the exclusion of the national language? Forced marriage of young women?

Ian Buruma, a journalist who grew up in the Netherlands, is well placed to explicate many of these issues. In Theo van Gogh he examins a writer who was outspokenly critical of Islam and the multi-cultural ideal. In Hirsi Ali he assesses a woman who has entirely turned away from her birth culture, and in Boyeri the exact opposite, a Dutch born individual who became an Islamist radical. The role of the Islamic immigration community is a major issue in Europe today. The book is well worth reading for examining part of this question through the life of three individuals.

Buruma shows how in the Netherlands, genuine concerns about the behavior of Muslim immigrants often do not get expressed due to concerns about accusations of "Islamophobia." After all, slanders against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s proved to be extremely damaging to European society. But the author shows that in this case, a few simple truths need to be aired, even if they are unflattering to some people. As Buruma explains, Pim Fortuyn did that. He wanted all Dutch to be part of the Dutch community, not as some sort of fascist exclusivists but inclusivists who asked for loyalty towards common goals.

That makes sense. While Jewish willingness to be loyal to Holland was manifest, many Muslims have been showing the opposite attitude.

We also read about Hirsi Ali, who has indicated that we all need a film that casually spoofs Mohammed, much as the film "The Life of Brian" casually spoofed Jesus.

Buruma's style is rather tame, but I think in this book, it is quite effective at raising concern about the effects of Muslim intolerance. He concludes that "what happened in this small corner of northwestern Europe could happen anywhere, as long as young men and women feel that death is their only way home."

I often disagree with Buruma politically, but I recommend this book.

In November of 2004 on a street in Amsterdam, Mohammed Bouyeri, an angry young Muslim man, shot and killed the controversial Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, great grand-nephew of the artist Vincent. Theo van Gogh had recently completed a movie with the Dutch Politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali titled "Submission" which Bouyeri considered an "insult to the Prophet Mohammed". After shooting van Gogh in broad daylight and in the view of several witnesses, Bouyeri took out a knife and cut his victim's throat, then calmly walked away to a nearby park where he was captured by the police. The murder horrified Holland, a country which prides itself on its tolerance of immigrants, and sent shock waves around Europe where many countries have provided haven to Muslim immigrants. The author returned to Holland to investigate the murder and to try to uncover its larger implications. His book is not so much a story of a murder as it is the story of the people of post-war Holland. There was in Holland according to Buruma, a sense of guilt as a result of their dismal record in protecting Dutch Jews from the Nazis during WWII. One consequence has been their liberal immigration policy attempting to "make up" for that, and as a result they have seen a massive influx of Moroccans and Turks and the establishment of a multicultural Christian/Muslim/Kurdish society in Holland. Ian Buruma, already a well respected writer has done a masterful job of investigating and reporting on this major shift in Dutch society. This book ranks with the very best I have ever read, and sounds a warning bell for those who might favor the development of muticulturalism in America.