The Dutch are first among the people's of the earth to claim that they are tolerant above all others.  It is true that historically, Holland has been a progressive country, culturally and politically, stretching back to the Middle Ages.  That tolerance was born at least in part out of comfort and security.  The modern Dutch state, which tolerates (as this Washington Post editorial points out) prostitution, drug use, euthanasia, and public nudity (all of which I favor by the way) is having trouble accommodating its Muslim minority (now over six percent of the population).  Holland, small and prosperous, is the canary in the European coal mine on the subject of aggressive Islam. 

In reaction to a number of outrages (though nothing nearly on the scale of 9/11 or the atrocities that daily afflict the Israelis) the Dutch have reelected a rightist government which promises laws banning the wearing of burkas and other Islamic garb in public. The Post in the editorial linked above condemns this action, but the fact is it is both justifiable and perhaps inevitable, and anyway is just window dressing.  Banning burkas is not going to arrest the Islamic tide flooding Europe.

It does show that the Dutch and the Europeans in general are not nearly as liberal and tolerant as they like to make out.  Those nations like to lampoon Americans as rubes and cowboys, but now the supposedly most tolerant of the bunch are banning Muslim fashion for "security reasons."  Let's not forget that less that little more than a half-century ago the Germans were running the ovens at full steam, the French were happily and actively collaborating, and that the Dutch shipped off a higher percentage of their Jews to the gas chambers than any other country in Western Europe.  So much for that historic tolerance. 

I personally don't care if the Dutch ban burkas.  I think that it is not a terribly unreasonable action, though it is one that would be difficult to implement in the U.S.  The security rationale is not senseless; terrorists can hide behind the face mask. More than that though, rationalizations aside, the veiling of women in Islam is a form of subjugation that is contrary to principles in the West.  There is no reason that Western societies should not be offended by the practice, and in such circumstances it is justifiable to ban the practice, at least in public forums. 

Ultimately, the West will have to balance its own desire for openness and freedom with Islam's need for the opposite.  In being open to other cultures Western nations are not under an obligation to commit suicide, though it sometimes it appears that Western leftists believe that this is a moral obligation--though not in their lifetimes--at least not in their lifetimes in their particular country.  So it is okay to excoriate Israel for defending itself, and the U.S. too, and the Dutch for imposing a fashion ban in the liberal precincts of the leftist West.  A paper like the Post, which prides itself on it's aggressive reporting and openness can blast a Danish newspaper for printing cartoons featuring Mohammad, the standard politically correct line. 

In this case the Dutch are simply correct.  I really do favor liberal Dutch social policies, and I also see nothing wrong with a nation with Holland's values banning the public display of burkas.  If it is too much for some Muslims they can always move somewhere more accommodating--like Saudi Arabia.