Religious Hate:

• Saudi Arabia Desecrates Hundreds of Bibles Annually

  When it was revealed last week that a copy of the Koran had allegedly been desecrated by American military personnel at Guantanomo Bay, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval of such activities. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington articulated "great concern and urged Washington to conduct a quick investigation". The Saudi government has also recommended to the American government to install "deterring measures" so that an incident such as this would not be repeated. The Saudi government would not comment on their policy of desecrating bibles that had been seized from foreign nationals.

• Three hundred demonstrators at the U.S. embassy in London protested the "alleged Quran desecration", and opined as to a proportionate response:

  Shouting, "Down, down USA; down, down USA," the protesters called for the killing of Americans, the death of the U.S. president, the death of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the bombing of Britain, and the annihilation of the U.S. capital: "Nuke, nuke Washington; Nuke, nuke Washington! Bomb, bomb the Pentagon."

  From the Evening Standard:

  Demonstrators in Grosvenor Square, some with their faces covered with scarves, waved placards which included the message: "Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow."

  (They also report that the Muslim Council for Britain organized the protest, but MCB denies it). CNN's Walter Rogers reported the protest concluded by a prayer. More pictures and links at LGF.

• Shaima Rezayee was host of "Hop", a popular television show in Afghanistan featuring music videos from the U.S. and India and Turkey. She was admired my many young women and earned the wrath of conservative clerics because she adopted western ideas, dressed in Western-style clothes, drank alcohol and had male friends. She was shot in the head in her own home in Kabul, a possible honor killing conducted by her brothers. Reporters Without Borders said she was the first journalist to be killed in Afghanistan since the end of the war. Another "Hop" host is holed up in the television station, afraid to go home after having received numerous death threats and a beating. Female TV host's killing sends chill through Kabul

• Saudi columnist Hussein Shubakshi wonders why the Saudi's hate the Jews. Maybe he missed the show portraying the Jews of Medina in the time of Muhammad:

  Kinana: No one denies this, uncle. Hating prophets and setting traps for them is one of our traits – we, the Israelites .

  Huyay: No one should complain to us about this! We are the slayers of prophets, and we live off their blood! We live for destroying them! Once they are dead, we finish off their followers .

  There's much more like this. The show was produced in Jordan and aired on Saudi Iqra TV in February of this year.

• CAIR is giving away free Qurans in response to the botched Newsweek Quran flushing story. Problem is that the commentaries in the edition which CAIR is distributing contain sufficient anti-Semitic commentary that they've been removed from LA schools:

  Looking under "Jews" in the index of the book, one finds: "became apes and swine," "cursed," "enmity of," "greedy of life," "slew prophets," "took usury," "unbelief and blasphemy of," "work iniquity," and "write the Book with their own hands."...

  According to Joe Kaufman, funding came from a familiar figure:

  This initiative was funded in part by a donation of $500,000 from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. This is the same individual that ex-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected a $10 million donation for disaster relief from, after bin Talal suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the September 11th attacks.

  Joe Kaufman writes for Frontpage and also this promising looking site - check it out.

• Also from Joe Kaufman's site, one more story on bad tsunami theology; a case of great Muslim and Christian minds thinking alike. Joe's article covers the views of one Maulana Shafayat Mohammed, imam of the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines, Florida – but his comments are mild compared to those of Pastor Fred Phelps, of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas:

  Filthy Swedes went to Thailand — world epicenter of child sex traffic — to rape and sodomize little Thai boys and girls... We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis. [emphasis mine]

  This is one kind of interfaith harmony we can do without.

• Via Dhimmi Watch, a note on an interesting study of influences on suicide bombers from the University of Michigan:

  "Private religious devotion to Islam, measured by frequency of prayer, was unrelated to the odds of a Palestinian Muslim supporting the use of suicide bombing," [researcher Jeremy] Ginges said.

  "In contrast, communal religious devotion, measured by the frequency of Mosque attendance, was a good predictor of support for suicide terrorism, even after controlling for a wide variety of factors, including frequency of prayer, age, economic situation, gender, refugee status, and attitudes about the peace process and the formation of a Palestinian state based on Muslim law, the Shari'a." [emphasis mine]

  I disagree with Robert Spencer's take here, in that he chose to emphasize the researcher's own clumsy summary. I think the hypothesis that suicide bombing has more to do with socialization than private faith is intuitive, and the data shouldn't be dismissed.

Idiotarian Seethings:

• Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan has declared that "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time." One can acknowledge and condemn the pattern of incidents at Gitmo and elsewhere, but Khan's statement reeks of a pernicious moral equivalence.

• JK: AI's blind spots are apparent to at least one of their own activists, as well as the globe's premier authority on real Gulags, Anne Appelbaum, who has been extremely critical of Gitmo practices herself. The title says it all: Amnesty on the verge of discrediting itself altogether.

• Michael Totten's comments are serious, while Glen Wishard's comments are more amusing, but no less earnest.

• Interestingly, Amnesty International actually continues to defend its statements.

• As for urging foreign governments to seize and prosecute our elected officials, did Amnesty International ever urge the French to arrest Arafat for failing to hold a "genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation" of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades? Just asking.

• JK: Here on Winds of Change.NET, Armed Liberal, and Joe Katzman, and Trent Telenko all wondered out loud about Amnesty International long before this happened. Perhaps we were just ahead of the curve.

• Noted Italian author Oriana Fallaci is facing prosecution for the crime of "defaming Islam" with her latest book, The Force of Reason. Volokh has links to translations of the 18 offending excerpts and the relevant religious hatespeech statutes by Chris Newman. Some of the excerpts are undeniably toxic and offensive: Chris notes the book's title is a stretch:

  As you can see, Oriana doesn't really live up to her claim that this time around she is appealing solely to the power of reason and putting aside her rage and pride.

  His short and critical review of Fallaci's book is well worth reading. It may be that this prosecution is "fair", as these laws are applied regularly to imprison anti-Catholic "defamers" – if so; Italy has a pretty serious problem with freedom of speech. Or, it could be this prosecution is an unfairly selective, and Fallaci is the victim of illiberal political persecution. The middle ground is no more appealing.

• Fifty two Palestinian teenagers have been arrested so far this year trying to carry out suicide bomb attacks in Israel. However, according to the Palestinian Minister of Information, these incidents "are fabricated from A to Z by the Shin Bet."

• Via Instapundit, Eugene Volokh takes down Rick Santorum on the latest idiotic comparison to Hitler latest idiotic comparison to Hitler. Commenting on Santorum's comparison of the Senate Democrats to der Fuhrer:

  When you link someone to a person who is famous for mass murder, your argument will carry the rhetorical connection to mass murder (or at least to deadly megalomania) even if you purport to be drawing a much more limited analogy. (Compare the Judge Calabresi incident from last year.) I take it this must be the intention, since otherwise why analogize to Hitler, rather than to one of the many other people who have had more than their share of gall? And this, I think, is indeed unfair and in bad taste.

  Indeed. Volokh subsequently notes that Sen. Santorum has since acknowledged his mistake.

• JK: Beautiful Atrocities offers a tongue-in-cheek analysis plus a link roundup to incidents involving varous political figures: "In the Future, Everyone Will Be Hitler for 15 Minutes."

• Blogger Omri Ceren notes a telling admission by a UC Irvine professor in a course description:

  I have no framework for comprehending why a late middle-aged woman [Margaret Hassan] who had spent her life in Iraq as the wife of an Iraqi citizen and whose work was assisting needy Iraqi children would be televised begging for her life and then shot in the head and the murder transmitted on the Internet.

  The course is called "the Social Ecology of Peace". The prof would do well to read Omri's analysis of the gaps in understanding – read the whole thing.

Race and Culture:

• Via Drudge, The Washington Post reports on cross burnings in Durham North Carolina: three separate incidents within about one hour.

  "At this day and time, I thought we'd be beyond that," said Mayor Bill Bell. "People do things for different reasons, and I don't have the slightest idea why anyone would do this."

  Not the slightest? Really?

  Burning a cross without the permission of the property owner is a misdemeanor in North Carolina. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that, under the First Amendment, cross burning could be barred only when done with the intent to intimidate.

  Maybe someone just thought they looked pretty.

• Between October 2003 and May 2004, a team of 10 inspectors including top national education official, Jean-Pierre Obin, visited 61 academic and vocational high schools in France in order to examine how religious expression has become a problem in ethnically segregated neighborhoods. The Obin report, which was not released by the French government, cites forcible conversions to Islam, a deterioration in equality for girls and rampant anti-Semitism.

  In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers. Schools that refuse to tolerate the intolerable have coped much better with the problems described in the report. As a result, Obin calls for a policy of no compromise with Islamist demands.

• Continuing the tradition of regularly scheduled anti-Israel incitement, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority publishes more anti-Semitic cartoons

  The cartoon was drawn by Omayya Joha, a well-known Arab cartoonist, particularly popular among Palestinians for her radical opinions and vehemently anti-Semitic cartoon portrayals of Jews and Israel. Joha's husband was a Hamas terrorist who was killed in a shootout with Israeli forces in 2003. Joha herself, identifies with Hamas beliefs.

• The founder of a private university in Kiev published a letter in the school's weekly newspaper, demanding that Jewish organisations be outlawed and blaming Jews for "genocide" against Ukrainians.

  The letter was addressed to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. It was signed by more than 100 public figures, including three professors and the chairman of the Union of Lecturers in Higher Education. The letter accuses "Bolsheviks mainly of Jewish decent" of organising the "planned genocide" of 10 million Ukrainians.

  Mr Shchekin, well known for his extremist views, is leader of the Conservative Party which is scheduled to take part in the next general elections.

• Young people in Germany are increasingly turning to right-wing extremism. Neo-nazi fashion, music and ideology have become an important part of German youth culture and there's been an increase in the number of crimes and violent acts committed by right-wing extremists. The German Minister of the Interior says this aggressive, neo-Nazi movement is cause "for great concern." Shock Mom and Dad: Become a Neo-Nazi

• Police in Israel have discovered a group of at least 20 neo-Nazis who immigrated to Israel from the Former Soviet Union under the Law of Return. Police are not even sure how to proceed in this case since there's no precedent of Israelis being neo-Nazis and the Ministry of the Interior is considering revoking their citizenship.

A Hopeful Note:

• Khaled Mahameed, an Israeli Arab, has opened a Holocaust museum in Nazareth that's geared towards the Arab population. He believes the prospects for peace would improve if if Arabs knew more about the Nazi genocide against Jews: First Holocaust museum geared to Arabs opens

  "It sounds to me like a tremendous step forward and a positive development," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group that educates on the Holocaust and tracks fugitive Nazis. "There has been an incredibly strong resistance in the Arab world to accept the Holocaust narrative ... and separate it from the conflict in the Middle East conflict."

• Iran has acquitted Christian pastor Hamid Pourmand of apostasy and proselytising - wonderful news since he was facing the death penalty. The judge reportedly stated "I don't know who you are, but the rest-of-the-world does," referring to the international attention focused on this case. However, Mr. Pourmand remains imprisoned on charges that he lied to the military about his religion.