Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
15 - Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
Summary
On 2 November 2004, at about 8.45 am, one ‘angry Muslim’ called Mohammed Bouyeri killed film director and journalist Theo van Gogh in the Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam. On Van Gogh's body, Bouyeri left a five-page written message that has become known as the ‘Open Letter to Hirshi Ali’. The letter, written almost two months before the murder, predicted the death of Hirsi Ali (b. 1969), at the time a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party (vvd). She was also the auctor intellectualis of the short film Submission (2004), directed by Van Gogh. The ‘Open Letter to Hirshi Ali’ is an intriguing source for ‘Muslim antisemitism’ in the early twenty-first century. Like Bouyeri's numerous other writings, the letter is eclectic and idiosyncratic, a mix of religious and secular references to ideas from both the political left and right. The letter referred to the Quran, to earlier writings by Quran scholars and to internet texts by American antisemites. It was both an explanation and a prediction, a declaration of war and a profession of faith all rolled into one. In this chapter, the three themes of the letter – the multicultural society, the Jewish conspiracy and Muslim eschatology – will be used to describe a historical process through which Muslim antisemitism, via a political mobilisation of enduring anti-Jewish representations, became connected with the identity politics and the self of young immigrants in the Netherlands (as introduced in chapter 14). Especially male adolescents experienced their hyphenated identity (Moroccan-Dutch) as a stigma. Global Islamism offered an escape route. By emphasising the Muslim identity, the hyphenated identity was dissolved. Our point of departure here is that the changing function and meaning of concepts such as ‘Muslims’ and ‘Islam’ should be taken into account in the analysis of expressions of Muslim antisemitism in the early twenty-first century, such as Bouyeri's letter. In general, it is striking how little, until the attacks in Brussels and Paris in 2014 and 2015, the antisemitism of jihadist Muslims has been taken seriously or registered as a crucial ingredient of their ideology.
Bouyeri's antisemitic letter
Bouyeri's letter reproached Hirsi Ali for a number of things – especially for her attacks, as a lapsed Muslim, on Islam.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'Histories of Antisemitism in Postwar Dutch Society, pp. 415 - 444Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016