Murder in amsterdam... is it really about the limits of tolerance?

For all allochtonen that care about politics, the last book of Ian Buruma is a must. And probably for dutchies too!

Buruma, as any other expat, follows the developments in his country. No surprise that he finds them shocking. How comes that the hypertolerant Netherlands has become a country that denies her glories as multicultural paradise, in such an extreme way to get politicians killed? Or ejected, in a political power play, from the country? That question, predating most of the book, is very relevant. Here in NL we might think that the integration and immigration debate is gone from the politics (as election programs have it), but in europe the issue is alive and kicking, so it will be alive, and kicking in NL for quite a while.

My concern is hat actually the book is not so much about “the limits of tolerance”, as its subtitle has it , but rather about the ways in which the world has a direct, and powerful, influence in NL politics. Two of the most poignant analysis of Buruma are about Mohammed B and about Irsi Ali. He spend great prose thinking about these two characters of our ongoing multicultural drama.

And if you think about it, both characters are telling us that the world matters right here and right now. Take Irsi Ali. The very bogus asilum seeker, (as she describes herself, and not for her faking a name) seems to have imported her political concerns into dutch politics. Her war does not seem to be the emancipation of (muslim) women. Buruma vividly describes a chat that keep Ali busy for a little while with muslim women, and her haughty dismissal of them. The war of Ali is rather bigger, about the way islam threatens her own view of the enlightenment. If you don't believe it, just take a look at her current job.

Or think about Mohammed B. Surely he -rather dramatically- illustrate the process of alienation that our underclass of economical and social outsiders can (or is) going through.. But the alienation of Bouyeri is well connected with the broader world. Buruma clearly illustrates the naivety of some thinkers that hope for the solution of the palestina, or iraqui questions, so that the islam question might disappear as well. That is not the case. But, perhaps more relevant for european politics... would Bouyeri has gone that far, without internet videos of beheading in the middle east? Would the anger of the young muslim, living excluded in europe today, drive him to a terrorist cell, if Al Qaida would not be the PR success that it is?

So in my view, Buruma's book belongs better to the row of books that today attack, or praise, globalization. Luckily the writer is smart enough not to have subtitled it “the world is indeed flat” as Friedman did with his. But Buruma is not talking about what we call tolerance... he is talking about the tolerance of our societies to the politics beyond the damns. Quite a exciting issue, and if not convinced, think about the PvdA and her turks. But ok, that might be the issue for another column.