It seems daily that one hears of islamic leaders issuing a death decree against someone or another deemed to offend the religion or something. All that the police seem to do is offer guard to the more prominent fatwa recipients. But why stop there?

For example, one swede has police protection from local muslims who say they want to kill the man. Salman Rushdie has been hiding for decades since his book Satanic Verses was deemed blasphemous. A dutch filmmaker was murdered after such a fatwa. Many other murders have occurred under instruction from preachers of the religion of peace.

But why doesn’t the police agencies go after these preachers directly? There are laws against the mob, against conspiracy, against murder-for-hire. Given that many of these preachers are audacious enough to even be recorded giving these murder instructions in mosque, why not charge them with the serious crimes they are committing? Free speech considerations are obviously trumped here.