Dutch by upbringing, Buruma manages to pick up on nuances and historical threads that other writers might easily overlook. He maintains that the argument over immigration cannot be understood without seeing the long shadow of World War II and Anne Frank. Questions of national identity, race and tolerance bear heavy freight. “Never again, said the well-meaning defenders of the multicultural ideal, must Holland betray a religious minority,” Buruma writes.
That minority seethes. In particular, the offspring of poor, often illiterate Berbers from Morocco have fared poorly in the Netherlands, and Buruma, with great finesse, explores the sense of displacement and cultural alienation of Muhammad Bouyeri, van Gogh's killer, and other young Muslim men drawn to Islamic fundamentalism. For the products of rigid tribal societies, Dutch freedom has often proved to be oppressive, and here Buruma suggests that Islam might not be the main point.
“More important,” he writes, it “was the question of authority, of face, in a household where the father could give little guidance, and in a society from which a young Moroccan male might find it easier to receive subsidies than respect.”
Fortuyn had a simple solution. Foreigners who did not subscribe to Dutch values should leave. Enlightenment absolutists like Hirsi Ali and van Gogh turned apoplectic at any efforts to appease or accommodate Muslims on, say, gay rights or women's rights, and they were not alone in their fears.
“I find it terrible that we should be offering social welfare or subsidies to people who refuse to shake hands with a woman,” a left-wing feminist tells Buruma. Two murders have left the citizens of two cultures, living in the same country, staring at each other across a gulf and wondering how to move forward. Buruma is not sure, and at the end he disappears in a puff of rhetorical smoke. With the battle lines drawn, he expresses the fond hope that reason and moderation will prevail on both sides. The sentiment falls sweetly on ears tuned to that particular frequency. The question is how to transmit it to a fanatic on a bicycle.
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