For Dutch, anger battles with tolerance

And so it begins, after the murder of Theo van Gogh, exactly as some had feared. The International Herald-Tribune says that frustration between secularists native-born Dutch and immigrant Muslims has been building for some time. September 11, and the murders first of Pim Fortuyn and now Theo van Gogh has released "nice people" from the usual stricture against saying something insulting of another person's beliefs. So now those "tolerant" Dutch are launching physical attacks against Muslim institutions (if not individuals) of a type not even seen in America today.

Sporadic vigilantism won't serve, however. The Dutch need to revisit the whole notion of allowing in their country the adherents of a political movement in religious dress, especially when said movement exhorts its followers to kill to spread it. So should we. But the people attacking the Muslim schools and mosques and so on are taking the law into their own hands. Scripture (Romans 13:1-7) forbids this. If someone needs to be deported, deport him--or them. But even Nixon warned that if you hate your enemy bad enough, you will become him. I would never advise that, and neither would Jesus.