If I look for humanity in a jihadist, why not in a ‘Nazi’?
This article was written by Saman Amini, columnist and published on 22 November 2025 in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw.
Following the far-right uprising on the Malieveld (a big square) in The Hague at the end of September, I said on the radio: “behind the anger of those angry white men lies pain, and behind that lies a need. If I look for humanity in a jihadist, why not in someone labelled a ‘Nazi’?”
My statement ended up on social media. In the comments, I read a message from ‘Jim’, who had been demonstrating at the Malieveld. He wrote, about me: ‘It’s funny that an asylum seeker can show more understanding for our pain than the left-wing elite’.
This happened right in the middle of the creative process for my show ‘Everything is Perspective’. So I reached out to him. “Hey mate, if you’d like to share with me where your pain lies in this society, I’d love to speak to you sometime.” We spoke on the phone for an hour, and have kept in touch ever since.
Grandmother robbed by youths with a migrant background
Jim spoke with a Limburg (province in the south of Holland) street accent, fierce but not hateful. I heard the trauma in his story: a grandmother who had been robbed by youths with a migrant background; a throat nearly slit in prison, by someone with an Islamic background.
“Rob Jetten (Dutch politician) says all sorts of things about that 7 per cent of the housing market. That’s really all there is to it when it comes to refugees. But I have issues with Islamisation. We just want to keep the Netherlands as it is; I’ve only got one home, you see, mate?”
In that ‘I’ve only got one home’, I heard a genuine sense of despair.
As a displaced child of refugee parents, I bear the scar of uprooting. The loss of your homeland is perhaps the most underestimated form of grief. It moved me, because I recognised myself in it.
Loss instinctively triggers a defensive response
You can live in the same house, on the same street, go to the same supermarket, and yet feel that your place has left you. For Jim, it’s not just about migration or culture, but about detachment. That loss instinctively triggers a defensive response. It’s not so much hatred, but grief without ritual. There is no funeral for the feeling that your home is disappearing.
This was valuable information for me, which I’m incorporating into my performance. I’ve invited Jim to come to the premiere in March.
For a long time, I thought that opposites would inevitably drift further apart, until it would end in an explosion, a Third World War, a civil war. But perhaps the antidote is: forcing yourself to see humanity in the other, precisely when you fundamentally disagree. Because, if you let that go, aren’t you secretly accepting all that explosion?
Jim sent me a message recently: ‘We differ a bit on just about everything, Saman, but I just can’t stay angry with you’.
I’m grateful for the connection with Jim. A lad who was branded a Nazi all over The Hague. Jim said: “There were eight thousand of us there and they lump us all together because of a few bad apples”. To which I joked: “Now you know how I feel, you bastard”.
We both burst out laughing. The conversation continues.