Watts going on in Europe?

With 10 days of rioting in France, the following account of its Dutch neighbour provides pithy perspective:

The world changed for Tess Jungblut the day a Muslim extremist murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street not far from her home. "I got so frightened," she says. "When I saw a Muslim-looking man waiting for the bus, I thought, 'He's got a bomb."'

September 11 provoked the entry into politics of Pim Fortuyn, the populist who overturned the restraint of Dutch politics with his wild rhetoric: Islam was a "backward" religion; the Netherlands should be closed to immigrants because it was "full". September 11 also fuelled the rage of Fortuyn's great admirer, Theo van Gogh.

It was 8.30am on November 2 last year and van Gogh had just dropped his 13-year-old boy, Lieuwe, at school. As he rode home, a young bearded man approached, drew a gun and shot him several times. Van Gogh reportedly begged for mercy, asking: "Can't we talk about this?"

But Mohammed Bouyeri, though he had grown up in the Netherlands in a Moroccan family, had no interest in Dutch-style debate. He slit van Gogh's throat from ear to ear, later telling a court that his religion commanded him to cut off the head of anyone who insulted Allah or his prophet. Van Gogh's insult, to Bouyeri, was to make a short film about abuse of women in the name of Allah. Submission, which contained verses of the Koran written on naked female bodies, was written by Ayan Hirsi Ali, a former refugee from Somalia and an MP. Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage, carries her own anger against her old religion. Her meeting with van Gogh was bound to be explosive.

Van Gogh had been a self-appointed public provocateur for years. It was his art form. In the 1990s he had tried to bait Jews. More recently, as a shock columnist for a local paper, he had taunted Muslims, whom he called "goat-f---ers", for their supposed intolerance to women and homosexuals. Childish and sometimes nasty, his raves had a purpose: to shake the Dutch out of what he saw as their politically correct complacency about Islam. In death, van Gogh would get what he wanted.

The challenge Mrs Jungblut faced is now Europe's challenge. The continent has woken up at the start of the 21st century, and especially after September 11, to find 15 million Muslims in its midst. Many are poor and unemployed, many seem not to be integrating even in the third generations, and a tiny few are being drawn to terrorism.

In the Netherlands the population of 16 million includes a million Muslims. While the migrants began arriving at least 40 years ago, mainly from Turkey and Morocco, most Dutch people will tell you that no one talked about it until the last five years. Now it can seem as if they talk about little else.

"We are seeing something completely unique in European history and in the history of Islam," says a Dutch historian, Paul Scheffer. "It is the first time Muslims are living as large minorities in secular, liberal states. It is an open question whether it will be successful or not."

The Assadaaka centre in Zeeburg opened a crisis hour every day for a month in which Muslims and non-Muslims alike could come in and express their fears or rage: "Whatever they said, we just listened," its director, Ahmed El-Mesri, said.

In the days after the murder, the Government hardened its language. The Deputy Prime Minister, Gerrit Zalm, declared "war" on Islamic extremism. The Immigration and Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, accused Muslims of being unable to tolerate criticism and said more recently that the time "of cosy tea-drinking" with Muslim groups was over. She cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who, she said, refused to shake her hand because she was a woman.

The Government didn't just toughen its language. It continued to harden its asylum seeker policy. Having had one of the world's most open policies in the 1990s, since changes in early 2004 the Netherlands is deporting 26,000 asylum seekers.

The Government now makes all immigrants pass a naturalisation test, including proficiency in basic Dutch. Mr Scheffer says the word multiculturalism - which the Government sees as a synonym for the old naive, open-door policy - has virtually been abandoned.

Not all Muslims oppose all these changes. Haci Karacaen is director of Milli Gorus, an organisation of 45 progressive Turkish mosques. He welcomes new restrictions on arranged marriages with a partner from the home country - still the main form of marriage for 75 per cent of Dutch Turks and Moroccans - because he thinks young people must find ways to integrate.

Mr Karacaen thinks that to build a Dutch Islam, mainstream society and Muslims have to change. He cites recent government research showing 25 per cent of employers say they would not hire a Muslim employee: if that is so, he asks, how will Muslims ever integrate?

"I think that Dutch people have to accept that Islam is here and part of the Netherlands now," he says. "But Muslims … have to find new ways to deal with homosexuality, sex and gender equality … And I don't believe that as a well-thinking Muslim you can walk around in a burqa. It doesn't fit in this society."

In Amsterdam on Wednesday, the Dutch commemorated van Gogh's murder with a day of services and debates. Mr Cohen, who was named one of Time magazine's heroes of 2005 for his determination to hold Amsterdam together, spoke at a service for van Gogh at the site where he was killed. Quoting Roosevelt, he said: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."