With an artful interweaving of the Netherlands’ past thirty years, plus her own experiences as a resident there, and personalized accounts of interactions with prominent Dutch leaders in politics, art, and academia, Esman offers a clear and powerfully evocative account of the process whereby Islamist political agitators, violent Muslim criminals, and Muslim terrorist ideologues are, step by step, bringing about the demise of a Western democracy.

Her book charts the descent of both Dutch society and government into a self-intensifying spiral of increasing submission to Muslim intolerance. Honor killings, genital mutilation, child and forced marriages, violence against homosexuals, the silencing of criticism through intimidation and murder, and a meteoric rise in high-profile incidents of anti-Semitism all combine to transform what was once one of the most stable and tolerant nations in Europe into a dark and inhospitable home for non-Muslim Dutch.

Perhaps as threatening as the events themselves are the responses, or lack thereof, from Dutch leaders. Esman skillfully examines the government’s inept and counterproductive legislation and the refusal of many in positions of leadership in media, academia, and education to deal with these Muslim-inspired, socio-religious dynamics. Muslim threats to Dutch civil liberties and democracy are unquestionably a dire menace, but the way in which Dutch officials dismiss these threats is itself of even greater concern.

She concludes that tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance but appeasement, and appeasement emboldens the aggressor. Thus Holland’s decades-long forbearance with intolerant Islamists has resulted in the growth of a young, radicalized, Muslim population that is pushing the Netherlands into a form of national and cultural suicide.

Esman’s message concerns not just the Netherlands but, as her title suggests, the West as a whole.