THE rural Dutch town of Uden, a patchwork of landscaped parks and modern suburban housing, seems a paradise of affluent tranquillity until you see the charred remains of Bedir Islamic primary school.

The only things left standing of this former model of state-funded religious education are the blackened brick walls. Inside, all that remains of the 120 sets of children’s chairs are metal frames crumpled by the heat of the inferno, the work of racist arsonists.

A father of Turkish origin, entering the nearby Suleymaniye mosque with his young daughter, asked angrily: “How do you explain it to her? That someone burnt down her school because they hate her?”.

Ismail Taspinar, the school’s director, told The Times: “We are very deeply shocked, angry, frightened. The parents don’t understand it. They feel it is an attack on their community, on their religion, on peace and democracy.”

The tiny Islamic community of Uden, just 1,200 Turks and Moroccans in a town of 40,000, are victims of what Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, calls a “maelstrom of violence”.

In just over a week, a country widely regarded as a paragon of tolerant liberalism has been transformed into a cauldron of religious and ethnic violence.

In reprisals and counter-reprisals, more than 20 mosques, churches, Islamic and Christian schools, and Muslim community centres have been attacked in a wave of petrol bombings and vandalism.

Half a dozen politicians, accused of being “enemies of Islam” have received death threats, and two have gone into police safe houses.

Yesterday, police arrested 39 suspects as they closed down what appeared to be a training camp for Kurdish separatists in the southern village of Liempde. Earlier in the week, the Government sent special forces to arrest an Islamic cell in The Hague. Three officers were hurt during the 15-hour siege as they came under attack from grenades and gunfire.

The Netherlands is in shock, with fear gripping communities and turning neighbour against neighbour. “Hate is spreading across the country like wildfire,” the popular daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad said in a front-page editorial.

The national trauma was sparked by what is now being dubbed the “Dutch September 11” — the ritualist murder and near-beheading in an Amsterdam street of Theo van Gogh, a film-maker and critic of Islam.

It was the second murder of a prominent critic of Islam after the shooting of the anti-immigration populist Pim Fortuyn two years ago. But he was killed by a native Dutch activist, whereas Mr van Gogh was killed in an act of jihad.

“Holy war has come to the Netherlands, ” Jozias van Aartsen, the Dutch parliament’s Speaker, said.

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