This book exposes the “trifecta of coercion”—the triple pressures of Muslim orthodoxy’s expectations for individuals, Dutch—and European, in general—expectations for immigrants, and the individual’s day to day challenges which are complicated by his identity as a Muslim immigrant in a non-Muslim culture, or, as the imams call it, “in the house of war.” The trifecta of coercion, a cultural dynamic identified by the book, acts as a pulverizing machine that destroys the individual who happens to be Muslim and reconstitutes him or her as someone who is only a part of a larger, alienated, monolithi ... More

This book exposes the “trifecta of coercion”—the triple pressures of Muslim orthodoxy’s expectations for individuals, Dutch—and European, in general—expectations for immigrants, and the individual’s day to day challenges which are complicated by his identity as a Muslim immigrant in a non-Muslim culture, or, as the imams call it, “in the house of war.” The trifecta of coercion, a cultural dynamic identified by the book, acts as a pulverizing machine that destroys the individual who happens to be Muslim and reconstitutes him or her as someone who is only a part of a larger, alienated, monolithic entity, in this case the so-called “Muslim threat.” These developments are marked by transformative trends and pivotal events along the road to the position of Islam in the Netherlands at the start of the 21st century. These trends and events include the introduction of Muslim guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s; the appointment of, first, uneducated imams and, later, more radical imams to European mosques in the 1990s; the emergence of Abu Jahjah in neighboring Belgium; the rise of Pim Fortuyn; the terrorist attacks on former New Amsterdam on Sept. 11, 2001; Fortuyn’s assassination in May 2002 followed by the celebrity of Hirsi Ali, the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004, and the anti-Muslim immigration campaign of Geert Wilders. The author’s own rich life and its Muslim-influenced, secular European structure underpins every page of a scholarly examination of the very personal realities of Muslim immigration in Europe