42 pages • 1 hour read
Ian BurumaMurder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the Limits of Tolerance
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Enlightenment
Commonly referred to as “The Age of Reason,” The Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the mindset of the European educated elite during the 18th century. Led by thinkers like Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and Denis Diderot, the Enlightenment was a sea of change in the way in which Europeans thought about the world and their relationship to it. No longer willing to take Church dogma as gospel, the Enlightenment pushed reason and the scientific method—the ability to prove a hypothesis through experimentation and observation—to the forefront of intellectual society. Moreover, Enlightenment thinkers believe in principles such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and democracy, rather than accepting the “divine right” of European monarchs to govern over them. The foundational principles of the Enlightenment led to many advancements in science and technology, as well as the democratic revolutions in America (1775 to 1783) and France (1789 to 1799).
Furthermore, many Enlightenment thinkers saw the Catholic Church and Christianity as forces of repression against thought and progress, and they believed that orthodox religion had no place in a “modern” and educated society. Thus, the Enlightenment helped to usher in a new secular mode of thinking in which science replaced the Church and reason replaced God.
Buruma continually references the tradition of the Enlightenment and its principles during Murder in Amsterdam to highlight how Western civilization is fundamentally different from other cultures that have either yet to undergo or accept the tenets of the European Enlightenment—as much of modern Western European liberal democracy is influenced entirely and founded upon the principles first espoused during the Enlightenment. Because of this, many would be opponents of Islam in Europe view it as antithetical to European beliefs because it has yet to undergo its own Enlightenment and many of its values run counter to those presented in the Enlightenment. For some, this is understandable. For others, like Afshin Ellian, it is both painful and unfathomable that a tradition as rich as that of Islam has yet to “produce” (28) its own Voltaire or Nietzsche.
Regenten
Regenten is a Dutch word referring to the social class of Dutch rulers during the 16th to 18th centuries. In Murder in Amsterdam, Buruma introduces the word but shifts its context to refer instead to the modern-day leftist politicians or “members of the ‘left-wing Church’ who looked after their own interests while ignoring the concerns of the common people” (39). For Buruma, this once liberal, open-minded group that had previously stood in opposition to such monoliths as the monarchy and the Catholic Church had given way to a modern inculcation that wreaked of an “ineffable smugness of superior virtue” (49), a patronizing, paternalistic state that seemed to stoically believe it had all the remedies for what ailed the country without ever once taking the chance to listen and observe the ills claimed by its citizenry. It is against the regenten, those impotent in the face of the rising Muslim issue in the Netherlands, who people like Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn attempted to fight.
“Dish Cities”
The term “dish cities” (21) is used to denote areas heavily populated by immigrants where one can see countless satellite dishes attached to apartment complexes. These dishes often serve as a means by which the immigrants can maintain a direct connection to the news, culture, and politics of their native lands. Because of the advancement of modern technologies, they are able to remain culturally and linguistically tied to their homelands, and they do not necessarily need to learn Dutch or engage in Dutch daily life more than necessary. This often leads to the creation of parallel societies, where a group of people reside and work in their adopted country but do not need to assimilate fully because they are able to form a protective cultural bubble within their own community.
Religious Expression
The ideas of religion and religious piety is central to Murder in Amsterdam. Often piety is shown outwardly in the way people dress and the manner in which they choose or do not choose to adorn themselves. For Muslims, religious expression often values modesty, especially for woman, thus the tradition of Muslim women wearing headscarves or covering themselves completely in public. An obvious sign of “otherness” in secular Dutch society is how freedom is religion is expressed and interpreted. The way in which people, especially immigrants, choose to practice and express their religion in public has fostered much debate among Western European politicians and the populace, who are seemingly torn between wanting to allow people to stay true to their faith, and thus maintain the experiment of multi-culturalism, and those who wish for immigrants to assimilate and view such religious expression as antithetical to Dutch values of secularism and equality. This is a debate that also rages within the Muslim immigrant community, particularly among the women as to why or why not they may choose to wear a headscarf that is not required by the social laws of their adopted country.
Irony
Referred to as “such an essential part of the Dutch makeup […] it’s so much part of our tradition” (112) by Theodor Gijs, irony plays a central part in the social commentary done by those like Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn. Defined as a rhetorical device or literary technique where what appears on the surface to be the case actually differs widely from what the real situation is, irony is often used in social satire to point out problems and hypocrisy present within the social fabric of societies and governments. For some, the use of irony in the presentation of subject matter may be seen as offensive and inappropriate because it tends to mock and abuse for the sake of making a point. It was this ironic approach towards Islam that ultimately served to anger much of the Muslim community in the Netherlands in regard to van Gogh, and his film Submission in particular.
