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) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Netherlands may be the Western country most affected by radical Muslim violence, with two major assassinations since 9/11, those of politician Pym Fortuyn, who had called for restrictions on Muslim immigration (Fortuyn's assassin wasn't Muslim, however), and media celebrity Theo Van Gogh, director of a film lambasting the Qur'an on women. Buruma returned to his homeland after Van Gogh's murder to gain understanding from figures in Dutch and Dutch Muslim politics and society who might provide it, including the Somali-born politician who wrote Van Gogh's fatal film, a Muslim prison chaplain, a teacher, a historian, and another Dutch Muslim politician. Their testimony disclosed that the vaunted Dutch multiculturalism is failing second--generation Dutch Muslims, the cohort to which Van Gogh's assassin and ordinary Muslim hooligans belong. There is enough credible blame for the situation to blanket all institutions and social strata in the Netherlands. Buruma sees the problem as primarily denying second-generation Muslims a home in the country in which they were born. An ideal, absorbing companion to Bruce Bawer's excoriating
While Europe Slept (2006).
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
