Es verdad que no soy la mayor fan de los ensayos, pero los he leído más interesantes, quizá es que a mí personalmente no me interesaba mucho el tema en sí y por eso no he llegado a conectar con él

I believe in freedom of speech. Tom Cruise has the right to sound like an idiotic jerk, and I have the right to refuse to see anything he's in. My local paper can publish those cartoons, and people can protest outside the paper's building and write strongly worded letters. The KKK can march in Grey's Ferry, and the mayor can say, "go ahead, but we don't have enough cops, just so you know."

And if everyone isn't happy all the time, at least we're taking turns being miserable.

The right to speak your mind is a very important right.

Therefore, when someone gets killed for saying something, no matter how hateful or stupid (think of how many stupid things Hollywood people say) or gets threatened or the paper/publisher gets firebombed, I get angry. Yes, I can understand how those cartoons are hurtful; yes, if you feel its necessary march, protest, and boycott. But why are you killing that guy who had nothing to do it? Why firebomb the newspaper? And no rape or death threats. And leave children out of it.

When Theo Van Gogh was murdered, it made the news even over here. I had vaguely heard of both Van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I followed the case in a haphazard way, interested in how the Netherlands I had visited twice before would change after the murder. Eventually, I read Ali's work. I picked this book up for much the same reason, and it was one sale.

Buruma seems to be moved by much the same question of change, and he is far more knowledgable than I because he was raised in the Netherlands. The intent behind this book seems to be a desire to examine the culture and society both before and after the murder. To look at causes and effects. At times, Buruma seems to dance close to the line of blaming Ali and Van Gogh, especially when discussing the film Submission which is seen as the spark. But to see this book this way is too facile an assumpation. Buruma might disagree with Ali on some, if not all, of her points, but he seems to respect her immensely.

Buruma, at times, seems a bit conflicted in a thesis for the book. It is more than a cultural war, he seems in part to argue that in some ways it is a cultural vaccum. He links in some ways Van Gogh's murder to Pym's murder (Pym was a Dutch politican who was murdered. He seems to be a mix of both what Americans would consider Conservative and Liberal. At one point, Buruma describes him as a giant walking penis). Feeliing conflicted seems to be a good thing. If anything, Buruma seems to feel that the problems are caused by a "welfare state" that for good or bad intentions, sections off a part of its society. He seems to interview anyone who is connected to the question and reveals some intersting ideas - perhaps American society is better suited for immigrants, Dutch schools are not required to treat national history. The best part of his book is the last section, where the people he seems to interview offer the best analysis. These include the Dutch historian Geert Mak and Ahmed Alaulteb, a politican and a Muslim.

I'm not quite sure if I believe in the link to the guilt over World War II (Cohen's speech in the last section is very interesting), but the comparsion to football (soccer) fans is apt, considering what recently happened at a game - a fan ran on to the field, punched a player, and then took on the rest of the team. (Here, we have streakers who get tasered. Unless it's Basketball, in which case the team goes into the stands).

Buruma's book is a thought provoking and good analysis.

So just how liberal are the Dutch? It’s funny that as much as they seem to like to look with condescension on how Americans treat black or (more precisely) Latino folks (not unjustified) they are deaf, dumb, and blind to any similarity to how “they” (as a nation) have treated their Moroccan and (to a lesser extent) Turkish citizens and residents.
In the 1950s and 60s, the Dutch recruited Moroccans and Turks to come and work in their favorites and shops. They were “guest workers” and they weren’t being invited to become full citizens of the country. The problem was that they had children, and these children WERE Dutch citizens.
They were Dutch citizens typically with far more “religion” than what was (and is) typical for the Dutch, and that has been a problem. The Dutch are proud of their secular state - some might say they are rudely outspokenly proud of that (but that would be a misperception in that the Dutch are that way about everything - they think that to not be what any other culture would think of a rude, they’re not being true to their values).
Buruma explores all of this in this fascinating book about the causes and effects of the murder of Theo Van Gogh, a pretty despicable “journalist” (but more of just a “shock” commentator who took the Dutch “I have to say what I mean regardless of how uncomfortable it might make anyone from any other country or culture” to appalling levels).
Mixed in to this story is Buruma’s own commentary on how the Dutch have decided (in the wake of this murder and other similar incidents) that the liberality that they were so proud of likely went too far. What are the limits? How to you balance a liberal society with religious freedom and tolerance of those with belief (and enforce tolerance among those with beliefs for the wider state that does not have it).

Interessant journalistiek boek over de strijd van Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Pim Fortuyn en het extreme islamisme. Het schetst een verontrustend beeld van de explosieve toestand van problemen rond integratie in Nederland.
Minpunt: bijwijlen is het te veel een lukrake opeenstapeling van interviewcitaten van elkaar tegensprekende figuren uit allerlei hoeken. Het thema wordt zo uitvoerig van alle kanten belicht en genuanceerd dat de problematiek soms schimmig wordt, ondergesneeuwd raakt onder de karrevracht van mekaar doodslaande argumenten.

It was very unsettling. What I found most interesting was Buruma's nuanced description of Dutch society from an "insider" viewpoint. He draws a picture of people full of class and religious differences existing way before any of the ex-colonials or Moslem immigrants arrived. The anger between elements of Dutch society, their myths of themselves, their actual histories, were all surprises to me. All of this put in perspective for me the new Moslem Dutch communities and their own generational struggles and their interactions with their fellow citizens. It also in some ways made me appreciate, even with all our critical lapses, the way we are here in the US and our abilities as a society to take in immigrants and be changed by them and have them change in the process.

It's a little shocking to me that the murder of Theo van Gogh was nearly 17 years ago: the world has moved on in many ways from the horrible days of van Gogh's murder and the London bombings, and yet the issues Buruma raises in this thoughtful foray into the mind of not only a murderer, but a country, are still coursing through the Western world.

Buruma - who is Dutch - returned to his homeland after the murder to try not only to discover why Mohammed Bouyeri shot and stabbed van Gogh, but also to see what had happened to The Netherlands, a country that was proud of its multiculturalism and peaceful ways.

In a series of vignettes, interviews, and history lessons, Buruma unpeels the way Dutch history and the traditions of Africa, the Middle East, and Islam came together to create not only van Gogh and Bouyeri, but also the "new" Netherlands that is so unlike the country in which Buruma spent his early years.

The perpetual plight of the immigrant is at the core of this book - a story of generations. The first generation of guest workers come without expectations, without experience, and in the case of many Moroccans in Holland, without literacy. Their expectations - of a better material life - were met. The second generation, who were born Dutch, did not have such a simple life. They were brought up to expect the benefits of citizenship, but that is denied them by the intrinsic and implicit racism and discrimination that occur even when the will is there to transcend such things. They are unable to tap into the underlying culture of the country, the "proper" way to behave, because they have no support from their parents to do so, as those parents are trapped in a limbo between their traditional life and the modern world into which they've moved.

This leads to many second-generation children of migrants to be cut adrift: unable to make the best of themselves, and unable in many ways to make sense of their situation, they are prey to any form of "stability" and "identity" that may come their way - some may choose gangs, some may choose Islamic fascism.

Buruma maps this history out carefully, noting the particular way it panned out in Holland, where a deep-seated guilt over the way the country behaved during World War Two meant that the political class were not only unwilling to face problems to do with religion or race, but also over-reacted when such issues did surface. Buruma writes of the peculiar Dutch Calvinistic attitude - a strident moralism - which in some ways mimics the strident moralism of the Islamic fascists. This Dutch moralism asserts itself vigorously when it comes to free speech, and angry free speech at that. Buruma quotes van Gogh and other Dutch commentators writing frankly vulgar smears, vulgar smears that were published in mainstream newspapers, vulgar smears that would not see the light of day in reputable publications in many other European countries, or other Western democracies.

This willingness to offend so brazenly was an understood part of the Dutch polity, an accepted way of behaving between members of the Dutch political and media class. It was a way of behaving that did not fit with the multicultural society that The Netherlands had become, as it did not take into account the way public discourse must change when society changes. Van Gogh was always a stirrer and from his earliest years loved to shock, but because of his sheltered upbringing did not understand that his activities may have unforeseen consequences.

Ayaan Hersi Ali (who wrote the film that van Gogh directed which lead to his death), although a migrant herself, willingly adopted not only the free speech, but also the anger that Buruma describes as a Dutch trait. Her target, the Islamic faith, was misguided although she spoke much truth when describing the way The Netherlands and other Western countries were allowing a cancer to grow inside them by allowing unfettered immigration and lack of education to create ghettos of marginalised people that were identifiable by their race, colour, or creed. She became a lightning rod for both "progressives", who tarred her with the Nazi brush (a common way of shooting down opponents in The Netherlands), and for traditional Muslims, who could not understand why she was including them within the groups of people that she said must change and throw away their whole lives and become darker copies of the white Dutch.

Buruma glides more lightly over the bewilderment and sense of loss of the older white Dutch, who have seen their country change in so many ways since the War. They, like the Moroccans, Turks and Surinamese, have not been educated about the change, and so too have become lost inside their own country. Unlike frontier societies such as the USA and Australia, there was no history in The Netherlands of new people or groups moving into their country and staking a place, and no willingness from the political powers to do much to assist that transition.

Which brings us to the Islamic fascism that drove Mohammed Bouyeri to murder. I do wonder whether Buruma takes this seriously enough in this book. I think when the West did start to take it seriously was when we started to win the war against it: when we engaged more with Muslim countries and worked together to show it as a flawed ideology that only led to suffering and death and had little to do with the Islam that the vast majority of people follow, it was the beginning of the end for the fascists.

Buruma sees Bouyeri's fundamentalism as more Dutch than Islamic: he quotes from Mohammad's speech at his trial to draw comparisons with what he had gleaned from his "study" with the Dutch Calvanistic tradition of moralism, and finds many similarities. Buruma also quotes other Dutch Muslims who laugh at Bouyeri's hotch-potch of beliefs, gained variously from ancient texts, bogus imams, and internet propaganda.

History since this book was written has shown that it is wiser to take much of what people like Bouyeri say at face value: they believe what they say, and what they say has the power to kill. Buruma has much to say on how young men (and women) like Bouyeri come to be in the position to be seduced by this rubbish, and much of what he says is food for thought for those in power in many Western countries: don't leave your guest workers or immigrants behind, don't let them fester in ghettos. If you are willing to allow them into your country, then you must be willing and able to integrate them into your culture. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they have to leave their old culture behind.

Buruma does have some rays of light in this book - immigrants who have made a success of themsleves despite the hardships, Muslims who can easily reconcile their religion with living in a Western democracy, and some Muslims who are working toward some sort of "enlightenment" within Islam, understanding that - at this point in history - it is only in the West that questioning of their faith can occur.

As with all of Buruma's writing Death in Amsterdam is both thoughtful and thought-provoking: even though a world of history seems to have gone by since the death of Theo van Gogh, there is still much in this book that is of interest.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

Maybe this is my fault, but I expected it to be different. I know kind off why they had to talk about Pim Fortuyn, but I just thought that it was going to be about Theo van Gogh and his killer. If I had known what I know now, I would have liked it better I guess. That is also why I gave it 3 stars and not 2

The book is kind of slow in its first few chapters, which the reader finds out are just setting the scene for the real event. Once the book delves into the social waves that have culminated in this murder and other acts of aggression, both physical and conversational, it shows its true colors: those of a long reportage blended in with one of the first nuances of social commentary.
Its thesis is quite clear and appears continuously throughout the whole text. It is with this clarity and the highly convincing and well-put arguments that this book has become one of the guides to my master's thesis. It also quickly joined my pile of "opinionated-annotations" as it grants food for thought on each and every page after the character and scene have been set.

I don’t know what to think it was okay but I really don’t love political books

I felt like I was missing a decent amount of context for this book, not only due to cultural differences but because of the almost 2 decades of time that has passed since it was written. So it’s not that the book hasn’t aged well, in fact I think it has, it’s more that so many things the author spoke about casually - people mostly - I’m not familiar with and need to do my own research on. Either way, this was a fascinating read.

Konstrukcja złożona z krótkich rozdziałów często kończonych mocna myślą idealna do lektury w środkach komunikacji miejskiej. Treść opowiada o morderstwie Theo van Gogha ale jest szerokim rysem kondycji współczesnego świata rozdartego pomiędzy liberalizmem?... a fanatyzmem?... rewolucja obyczajową ? współczesnego rozdartego świata ale umykającego ideologicznym łatwym podziałom. Oparta na osobistych spotkaniach autora jest intrygująca, choć mam wrażenie nieco chwilami mruga okiem (pisze ze ojciec Theo van Gogha analityk wywiadu ma cechy jak wszyscy dobrzy szpiedzy a skad on zna te cechy ?), jawnie wyraża niechęć nawet (oj nie lubi Paula Scheffera ) a nawet i kantuje Buruma gdy nierówno szuka głębszych motywów i drugiego dna u swoich bohaterów, to tych tam fanatyków spłycając (dzidhad? mały wielki ?) , to tamtym dorabiajac post mortem głębokie motywacje psychologiczne do obrzucania innych w imie wolności błotem, tak to ujmijmy.... Nieeredukolwana dwuznaczność i poplatanie świata. Ale jest ciekawie, aktualnie i na czasie : od syczacych antysemityzmem boisk piłkarskich po miasteczka z coraz wieksza liczba muzułumanskich imigrantów....

Not my usual fare of books to read, I actually picked this up because I thought it was a book of true crime which it is not, though it is one of non-fiction. It opens with murder of avant garde Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was essentially butchered on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004 by a disgruntled second generation Moroccan immigrant to the Netherlands after viewing his anti-Islamic film. The book proceeds to review the history of Dutch politics, from its heyday of religious pervasiveness, Puritanical ideals, Calvinist theories, and through the modern day which appears to be more a country of atheism and tolerance, to a point. The influx of Surinamese, Turkish and Moroccan immigrants to the country and what each of these country's own asylum seekers have brought to this Dutch nation is an interesting discourse. Underlying all this is the concern as to whether a cohabitation of Islamic believers with a secular Netherlands can exist. Many many questions brought to the forefront by this murder, a crime I was unaware had occurred so the book itself was an interesting and enlightening piece of history. As all these occurred twenty years ago, I wonder where things stand today in present Holland. But overall I enjoyed the book though it was a challenge to read, being a bit more academic than I was expecting.