Two churches put on fire in Holland. Øyvind Strømmen translates from the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws:

Two churches in the province of Utrecht was the target of arson Mondag night. Unknown people put fire to the protestant Triumfatorkerk in the Utrecht district Kanaleneiland and in a building belonging to the pentecostal Immanuel-church in Amersfoort.

In both cases a window was smashed and flamamble material thrown inside, in Amersfoort Molotov cocktails. The fires were soon under control.

Earlier Monday the Islamic school Tarieq Ibnoe Ziyad in Eindhoven was attacked. The primary school was considerably damaged and windows in nearby building were shattered. None were hurt. [...] The police, judicial authorities and the mayor of Eindhoven Alexander Sakkers believe that the attack is a direct result of the murder of Theo van Gogh. There is, however, no certainty.

The church in Utrecht was also targetted by arsonists in 2001 and the Islamic primary school have been attacked several times. Last year youth threw a firebomb at the building and in 1989 a fire was started.

Bad, very bad. There's the possibility that this is actually done by non-Moslems trying to keep ethnic tensions high, but I doubt that.

You have to really work at it to get the _Dutch_ of all people to actively dislike you to the point where they break their own cultural taboos against violence.

If you're an unpopular minority, hitting back in kind is seldom worth it and usually brings about worse reactions down the road. I'm strongly on the side of those Moslems in the Netherlands who are willing and able to say "Ik ben en Nederlander" (or however you say it in Dutch). But those who don't want a Dutch identity might be happier elsewhere.

If I'm not mistaken, it's "Ik ben een Nederlander" (maybe there's someone Dutch out there that can correct us both?), so everybody would understand you, Michael.

Actually, there's been one case of false threaths. A leading Lijst Pim Fortuyn (anti-immigrant party)-figure has been arrested for giving false statement. According to the police he sent death threats to himself and another member of the party and signed with the name of an Islamic group.

While it's absolutely not unthinkable, I do not think that the attacks on churces are done by anti-Islamists. As far as I know, though, none has been arrested for these attacks as of yet.

Øyvind

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