As a nation, we Americans are a good, fair, compassionate people. Nearly all of our neighbors are that way. But in a country with 325 million residents, it is inevitable there will be a few very rotten apples.

It appears one of them surfaced recently in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Omar Mateen, the domestic terrorist who slaughtered 49 people in a June 12 shooting rampage at a nightclub, was killed by police.

Brutal intolerance of those whose beliefs conflicted with his appears to have driven Mateen. In the aftermath of his atrocity, his community appeared to have rejected such hatred.

But early Sept. 12, a fire broke out at the mosque Mateen once attended. Police said there was strong evidence a man set the fire.

In the context of what happened, the arson seems to have been a hate crime.

Some allegations of hate crimes are spurious. But the Fort Pierce mosque flames clearly were fanned by hatred.

People of good will -and, again, that is almost everyone in America – want no part of such bigotry. Punishing any class of people for the misdeeds of one or a few members of it is wrong.

In fact, those tempted to engage in acts such as the arsonist’s should pause to reflect on what that would mean. Plainly, it would place them in the same category, if to a much different degree, as Mateen: terrorist.