Culture clash

Mohammad Bouyeri stunned the courtroom in Amsterdam when he said he had murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh “out of conviction.” The Dutch-born son of Moroccan immigrants with a first-class secular education, told the court, “If I ever get free, I would do it again.”

A deep chasm is opening up between the graying societies of Europe and the predominantly young Muslim immigrants. All Europeans, including Muslims, are affected by the clashing expectations of the religion and the state, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the allegiance to their community.

The fertility rate among the 23 million Muslims in the EU is three times that of non-Muslims. Because of its high proportion of older, retired people, EU needs to take in more than 13 million migrants annually, mostly Muslims. As a result, the Muslim population is expected to double by 2015.

Even if those trends are altered, both the European Muslims and non-Muslims will have to practice the tolerance that the assassin Bouyeri proudly scorned. European states will have to honour the Islamic ideal of religion as a way of life. Europe’s Muslims will have to recognise that gender equ-ality, secular law, and the right to believe in any faith are hard-won European achievements that need not threaten a separate Islamic identity. — The Boston Globe