I found it an interesting read, however, Ian Buruma, in attempting to present his story fairly, made it somehow flat. I’ll give an example of what I mean. P258. “He (a Muslim) would certainly welcome it if everyone shared his faith (Islam), but then so would most Christians.” There was a lot of this, balancing out of the comments. It lacks commitment and makes for a duller read. It is as if the author does not want to take a stand, must be politically correct, be perceived as a fair thinker. He is afraid to step out of this mould. But then perhaps he is right to be nervous. People have died giving a strong opinion.

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?<BR>Copyright 2006 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

A good sociological analysis of the conditions surrounding the murder of Theo van Gogh. It provides great insight into Dutch society at the turn of the millennium.

The author writes of the murder of Theo Van Gogh a controversial filmmaker, personality in Amsterdam. Theo Van Gogh angered a lot of people, by his remarks and the making of the film Submission with Ayaan Hirsi Ali which would be his downfall. The author writes how the murder has affected the politics and everyday life of people living in Amsterdam.

I read this book for my book club and 3 out of 4 of us could not get through it, including me. It was a bit preachy and all over the place. Very hard to follow and we just could not get into it.

My headline is not original. It's a quote from another review below. I used it because it is so apt.

Buruma's writing flows. It's like having coffee with him as he recounts his experiences with Theo and describes Theo's life, TV show and art. He explains the earlier, but separate, murder of Pim Fortuyn. The flamboyant libertarian/conservative Fortuyn, killed by an animal rights activist, credits the Enlightenment with his ability as a gay man to be elected to public office. He saw the intolerance of Muslim culture as a threat to the fulfillment of civil rights that Dutch society has finally evolved to provide.

Most provocative are Buruma's interviews. He meets with Ayaan Hersi Ali and (something like) her Dutch foster family. He talks with a psychiatrist, friends of Theo, Theo's mother, young Moroccan women who work in a shelter for Muslim women, welfare workers, teachers... and many others representing a wide range of opinion.

Buruma explains how WWII and its myths and legends hang over the Netherlands of today. Buruma cites the influence of this recent past on the immigration policy and the climate of tolerance. The book takes us to the last "home" of Anne Frank and into "dish cities". The question posed by the subtitle, how to be tolerant of an intolerant society is debated on many levels.

I highly recommend this book.

I could barely put this book down. One morning in 2004, the great-grand-nephew of Vincent Van Gogh was killed as he bicycled on his way to work. Theo Van Gogh was a controversial public figure and filmmaker. He’d recently completed a film with another controversial figure Ayaan Hirsi Ali, about women and Islam. A Muslim Dutch citizen shot and stabbed Van Gogh. He also stuffed a letter into Van Gogh’s body threatening Hirsi Ali as well.
“Islam may soon become the majority religion in countries whose churches have been turned more and more into tourist sites, apartment houses, theatres, and places of entertainment. The French scholar Olivier Roy is right: Islam is now a European religion.”
The above quote struck me as so true. When I was in Europe four years ago, I was shocked to see a church in my old hometown that had turned into a mosque.
The author addresses the challenges of a historically liberal and tolerant culture.

A whistle stop tour of Dutch politics from the Second World War until the mid 2000s. Written like a crime novel, gripping.

A good book, and an almost very good book. IB grew up Dutch, and he returned there after the murder of the controversial playwright Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-born Muslim extremist of Moroccan descent. IB uses this story as a way to explore dilemmas of identity, liberalism, tolerance, and religion in Dutch society. The book is about 20 years old now, but it still speaks to modern issues in Dutch and European society, especially after Geert Wilders' recent electoral victory.

IB gives the reader a good sense of how Dutch politics works: it has long been an odd mix of stodgy mercantile burgher-ism and cosmopolitan openness and tolerance, a country that punched above its weight in terms of economic and intellectual power. Its political system relied on poldars, or religious communities (and sometimes ethnic or vocational ones) that acted as blocs in politics, complements the left-right political parties. This made postwar Dutch politics rather boring, consensus-based, and technocratic. But one problem it couldn't solve was identity. As the Dutch birth rate declined and more immigrants arrived, particularly from Muslim countries, Dutch people increasingly questioned who they were and whether the new arrivals were compatible with their version of liberal modernity. There was an early, naive expectation that these immigrants were temporary, which delayed consideration of how to accommodate or assimilate these groups.

Enter Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, who were sort of leftist turned somewhat right because of reactions to Islamic extremism (both were eventually murdered, although PF by an animal rights extremist). Both were outlandish, offensive figures who believed that many Muslim immigrants (and Islam in general) represented a threat to the liberal, Enlightenment-based culture of the Netherlands. Fortuyn was gay, and he reflects a trend among many gay Europeans toward a sort of defensive liberal nativism; the belief that the only way to preserve a liberal, tolerant culture is to exclude certain groups. PF became a major figure and probably could have become prime minister had he not been assassinated. TVG became a sort of shock jock filmmaker who would say pretty much anything (including horribly anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments) for both attention and to assert the Dutch culture of openness.

IB tries to explore the limits of tolerance and the cultural clash going on in places like the Netherlands without making it seems like a clash of civilizations with monolithic blocs. There are certain things that cannot be tolerated, and an inherent contradiction between extremist religion and tolerant liberal societies. But that doesn't mean the pushback from European societies is entirely pure; as IB shows it is mixed in with racism and nativism. Figures like TVG obviously don't deserve to be killed, but they are part of the problem because they go needlessly out of their way to insult Muslims and Arabs, pushing them into the hands of the extremists. These societies face a quandary: they need to develop a sense of national identity that can satisfy "native" people's sense of a Dutch or French or Polish history and identity which is also open enough to provide space for newcomers who are needed to prevent a major demographic catastrophe. This book is a good guide for thinking about these problems.

My only real problem with the book is that it is occasionally a little too reporter-y; I would have liked more of an argument. IB does a good job letting Dutch people of various backgrounds speak, but I am also genuinely interested in his editorial comments as well. There was some of that, but not a ton.

This book provides a lot of context for "Infidel," the bestseller by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In fact, that's a lot of what this book is: context for the religious rift that's working its way through Western Europe. The book poses many good questions about just how far the West is willing to take its tolerance, and also how far Muslims are willing to assimilate. I would have liked to see more analysis from Buruma. When he chimes in, he's quite astute and perceptive; there's just not enough of him in this book for me.

Excellent. A very informative book by Mr. Burama, I learned a lot about the political and social situation in Holland.

The author interviews a bunch of his activist/journalist friends about the social problems with immigration, multiculturalism and "political Islam" in the Netherlands and Europe writ large. It's actually a book about liberalism and the arguments for or against. Parts of it were fascinating to me, but I felt like I was slogging thru much of the book. It just doesn't flow very well or something. It's very anecdotal with not much extra guidance beyond the absolute basics, so you can't always guage the reliability of some of these people. And admittedly, some of it was a review of stuff I read in grad school. The most disappointing part of the book is that he spends such a long time building up the arguments for, against, and everything in between vis-a-vis European iberalism/tolerance; you get to the last few pages and there's no real conclusion. No grand finale. He praises Van Gogh et. al for having strong convictions, and then he himself appears at the finale to have succombed to the same fear and knee-jerk political correctness he complained of throughout. I wish he would have drawn some conclusions, even if they were ambivalent, or at least stated what he believed. But it does make you think and question what you know, and I like that in a book.