Murder in Amsterdam

The Boston Globe has a book review today of “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance” by Ian Baruma. The reviewer (Bruce Bawer) doesn’t look approvingly upon Baruma’s interpretation of events and writes “time and again he seems to invite us to empathize with apologists for jihad.” Here’s the concluding two paragraphs:

Buruma's prescription for his homeland? Dismayingly, he supports Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen's call for an “accommodation with the Muslims," including toleration “of orthodox Muslims who consciously discriminate against their women." The Netherlands, Cohen argues, should accept ``opinions and habits even if we do not share them, or even approve of them." Including forced marriage? Wife-beating? Cohen, says Buruma, “deserves the benefit of the doubt." What doubt? What Cohen is proposing is the denial of fundamental rights to Muslim women and children.

“Attacking religion,” Buruma contends, is not the answer to Europe's problems. In fact , frank criticism of Islam is as vital now as frank criticism of Christianity was to the Enlightenment. “Perhaps Western civilization, with the Amsterdam red-light district as its fetid symbol, does have something to answer for,” he suggests. No: What the West needs now is not this dismaying readiness to compromise liberty, but van Gogh's and Hirsi Ali's staunch refusal to sell out anyone's rights to pacify puritanical patriarchs.

It’s often said, half in jest, that Holland will be the first European nation under Sharia. Europeans need to answer this simple question: will the nation-state accommodate the Muslims or will the Muslims adapt to Europe’s liberal social order? There is no middle ground.