Things Worth Remembering: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the ‘Strange Death’ of Europe

 Thursday’s mob in Amsterdam, which viciously attacked Israeli soccer fans, is a reminder of how little has changed in two decades—and what must be done.

Twenty years ago, as the world was focusing on an election in America, something happened in Amsterdam that, in many ways, was even more important.

On November 2, 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the city center, in the morning, while bicycling to work. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, then 26, explained in a note stabbed into van Gogh’s stomach that van Gogh’s film Submission was guilty of “blasphemy”—it criticized Islam’s treatment of women—and he threatened that van Gogh’s colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Jews, and other nonbelievers would meet a similar end.

Van Gogh’s murder came two years after that of gay right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn—shot to death nine days before a general election, which the party he led looked likely to win. His killer, Volkert van der Graaf, said he killed Fortuyn, who had called Islam “backward” and supported ending immigration, as a favor to the Netherlands’ Muslim community.

Up until then, the country had been relatively peaceful. But the murders, coming in such quick succession, and so barbarous in their nature, shocked the Dutch to their core.

On Thursday evening, just two days after another American election, scenes of Jews being ambushed and beaten on the streets of Amsterdam started popping up on our social-media feeds—most legacy media took their time before reporting on the violence. 

It was a reminder that, despite the early warning signs, the Dutch have done less than nothing to sort out their problems.

In fact, as I described in my 2017 book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, they have actually turned on the people who identified those problems—principally, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 

I remember the atmosphere back then, and the way Dutch politicians and other elites seemed to blame the likes of Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali for the issues they were trying to bring attention to. There was this implication that, if they had just kept their heads down and not been so provocative—if they hadn’t been so intolerant as to suggest that Islam and liberalism might be incompatible—things would have been different. For them and for the country.

The murders, and the reactions to them, were an early sign of Europeans’ mounting cognitive dissonance—their refusal to acknowledge troubling facts about their Muslim neighbors that undermined their core beliefs about inclusivity and multiculturalism.

It got nastier. Hirsi Ali, then serving in the Netherlands’ parliament, was forced to surround herself with bodyguards. So were her fellow parliamentarian Geert Wilders and the Iranian-born, ex-Muslim academic Afshin Ellian, among others. 

There was something unsustainable about the situation. As one security official said to me at the time, “We can’t have half the country having to protect the other half.”

In 2010, the former Dutch politician Frits Bolkestein reacted to a set of antisemitic attacks in the country by saying that, regrettably, it might be time for Dutch Jews to leave the Netherlands. “I see no future for recognizable Jews,” Bolkestein said. Only Wilders had the courage to state the obvious. “Jews shouldn’t emigrate,” Wilders declared. “Antisemitic Moroccans should.”

In fact, one of the only people who did emigrate was Hirsi Ali—prompted by an idiotic investigation spearheaded by Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk.

Years before, Hirsi Ali had fled her native Somalia to escape an arranged marriage, and apparently there were some inconsistent details on her immigration paperwork. It was an utterly specious, politically motivated inquiry targeting a woman whom progressives had, by then, convicted of wrongthink. Hirsi Ali had been a model citizen who had worked hard, learned Dutch, graduated from university, and been elected to the parliament—all within a decade of having arrived. She had put her faith and trust in the liberal values that the Netherlands, like many European countries, embodied.

But liberal values require strong leaders to defend them. And Verdonk and other Dutch officials were weak. Instead of being provided with adequate protection, Hirsi Ali was forced to jump from one safe house to another, with neighbors complaining that she drew the unwanted attention of Islamic extremists. (As I wrote in the Dutch press at the time, it was interesting that, once again, the Dutch were informing on the girl next door.) Ultimately, Verdonk informed Hirsi Ali that she planned to revoke her citizenship.

There was a sigh of relief among some in the Dutch elite. The woman who had warned that there were people in Dutch society who refused to assimilate, who threatened the country’s way of life, had kicked up a lot of controversy. Now, she was gone. No Hirsi Ali, no controversy.

Except that, as the appalling scenes this week show, just because you get rid of the person who identifies the problem does not mean you solve it. In fact, by shooting the messenger, confusing the firefighter and the fire, you simply put off the big problems for another day, making them that much harder to solve.

As I watched the scenes this week, I had this on my mind above all else: The Netherlands has had almost a quarter of a century to debate liberal democracy, its immigration policy, and the limits of that policy. And, in all of that time, things have only gotten worse—as they have in Britain and France and all across Western Europe. The Muslim communities in these countries have kept growing, and young Muslims have become even more alienated from the societies they were expected to assimilate into. (How else is one to interpret the explosion of antisemitic and anti-Western demonstrations in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel?) Nor have the authorities in these countries imposed any punishments on outsiders for not integrating. Dutch society—European society—looks unbelievably weak.

It is a tragedy. A tragedy for the Dutch people. A tragedy for Europe. And yet another warning—shockwaves of much bigger earthquakes to come. 

Hirsi Ali got on with her life, and went on to greater things. But the society that could not absorb that immigrant—and actually spat her out—has certainly not gone onto greater things. It has become a place where a Jew-hunt in the center of Amsterdam is able to happen, and there is next to nothing the authorities will do to stop it from happening. Nothing will change. And no one will learn. This is what happens when you not only ignore your prophets, but expel them.

As she departed her adoptive country, Hirsi Ali issued a statement that the Netherlands, now faced with a mob it seems unable to control, would be wise to revisit.

“It is difficult to live with so many threats on your life and such a level of police protection,” Hirsi Ali said. “It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live. All that is difficult, but not impossible. It has become impossible since last night”—since, that is, she had been informed that Verdonk intended to strip her of her Dutch citizenship.

“I am ending my membership of parliament,” she went on. “I will leave the Netherlands. Sad and relieved, I will pack my bags again. I will go on.”

Hirsi Ali added: “The questions for our society remain. The future of Islam in our country; the subjugation of women in Islamic culture; the integration of the many Muslims in the West: It is self-deceit to imagine that these issues will disappear.”

“I will continue to ask uncomfortable questions, despite the obvious resistance that they elicit. I feel that I should help other people to live in freedom, as many people have helped me.”

And then, a line that will resonate across the ages: “Only clear thinking and strong action can lead to real change and free many people within our society from the mental cage of submission.”

To listen to Douglas reflect on Ayaan’s speech, click here:

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