Holland wrestles with immigration.

• Author: Siegal, Nina
• Position: Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance - Infidel - Book review

Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma Penguin Press. 288 pages. $24.95.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press. 368 pages. $26.

On November 2, 2004, Dutch filmmaker and public provocateur Theo van Gogh was gunned down on his bicycle in Amsterdam. His killer, the Muslim extremist Mohammed Bouyeri, calmly followed Van Gogh to where he'd fallen on the tram tracks, and, ignoring his pleas to "talk about this," cut Van Gogh's throat with a machete and planted the knife in his chest. Bouyeri then scribbled a note on a piece of paper and, using a smaller knife he'd pulled from his bag, pinned it to Van Gogh's body.

The murder, which shocked Europe and reverberated throughout the world, is described, more or less this way, in the introduction to two new nonfiction books that question the limits of laissez-faire multiculturalism in the Netherlands, a country that has prided itself on its religious, social, and political tolerance.

Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance seeks to explore the roots of the tragedy by considering the immigration question in contemporary Holland. The autobiogra phy of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel, tackles the same subject from a personal perspective. Hirsi All, a former Dutch parliamentarian, helped Van Gogh make the controversial film about Islam (Submission) that led to his death. All herself was the target of the letter Bouyeri stabbed into Van Gogh's chest. Hirsi Ali, Bouyeri wrote, would be next.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Dutch crisis that followed Van Gogh's murder--mass demonstrations, burned mosques, Hirsi Ali forced into hiding--both books are useful primers. Each one also sets out the terms of the current debate in Holland over what is perceived by many as a Muslim invasion. Within ten years, according to Buruma, more than half of Amsterdam's population will be of foreign origin, the majority of them Muslim. Both books ask: What, if anything, should the Dutch government do to deal with these newcomers, many of whom fail to integrate well with mainstream Dutch society, and some of whom actively promote physical violence against unbelievers, or infidels, like Van Gogh and Hirsi Mi?

Such a question might at first seem naive or offensive to Americans--I certainly felt that way when I arrived in Amsterdam in September and heard people debating how to "manage the Muslims" here. But having lived for several months in this progressive country, where violence is anything but a cultural norm, I can understand better how the public slaughter of Van Gogh--who saw

himself as no more threatening than the "village idiot"--could send ripples of reactionary terror through the populace. After reading these two books, particularly Hirsi Ali's passionate memoir, I'm less sure about the role Western democracies...