Religious Hate:

• JK: Van Gogh's murder is making statements at trial, noting that he murdered the film-maker in cold blood in the name of his religion and clearly stating that he'd do it again if he had the chance. Andrew Sullivan offers a couple of quotes, plus some trenchant analysis. Commander Salamander offers more quotes still - and they just get more chilling.

• JK: Peaktalk, meanwhile, offers a range of posts. A recap of the crime, the disturbing items found in Bouyeri's dwelling, and a psychiatirc report lead the way. He then follows with some coverage of Bouyeri's trial, and the even more disturbing consequence in the Netherlands, where the net effect has been to successfully silence Van Gogh's film about Women in Islam. Submission, indeed.

• An Islamic Jihad member blew himself up outside a mall in Netanya killing four women, two of them teenage girls.

• In the aftermath of the London bombings, police are on high alert for hate crimes:
  

  On Sunday, two white men threw petrol into the letterbox of the Shajala Mosque in Birkenhead, northern England, and ignited it. The assistant imam, Boshir Ullah was trapped inside in his upstairs bedroom as the fire blazed on the landing outside. Fire crews pulled him to safety from an upstairs window and extinguished the blaze, the Independent newspaper reported.
  
  The previous day, when members of the town's predominantly Bangladeshi Muslim community went to the mosque, they were greeted by individuals shouting: "Paki, Paki." Also on Sunday, in Nottingham, a 48-year-old man from Pakistan died after what police are treating as, a racially motivated attack.
  
  On Saturday, windows were smashed at the Mazhirul Ulooms mosques in Mile End, in London's East End, and a firebomb attack was carried out on a mosque in Wellington, Shropshire, in the Midlands.

• A Muslim woman in Florida has filed suit against her employer after being told she wouldn't be allowed to wear her headscarf to work.

• Hindu extremists attacked a Christian gathering in Rajasthan, forcing the participants out and seriously wounding one person. The attackers belonged to Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), both extremist Hindu paramilitary groups.

• Four mosques were vandalized in New Zealand last Sunday, in what appears to be retaliation for the London bombings.

• A church in Virginia was set on fire and anti-gay graffiti was spray-painted on the walls of the building.

  The vandalism contained anti-gay messages and a declaration that United Church of Christ members were sinners. The graffiti's message appeared to be a reference to the national church's decision last week to endorse gay and lesbian marriages, Shultz said.

Hateful Seethings:

• The head of the London Center for Islamic History said that there are no such things as civilians in Islam and that with the London bombings, Al-Qaeda "rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud."

• A prominent Muslim leader (who's also the imam of the Islamic Center in Manhattan and has been called "the face of the next generation of Muslims in America") gave a series of interviews on Egyptian television proclaiming that a lot of Americans believe 9/11 was fabricated to enable the Forging of a "New World Order", zionists control the U.S. government and Jews control the media thus preventing Muslims from "spreading our ideas." But regardless of these obstacles that the mean zionists throw at everyone, someday we'll see a Muslim White House, inshallah.

• American students in Australia have been facing verbal abuse and hostility prompting some of them to quit their university studies abroad.

• JK: On June 16/05, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund annual conference took place in Chicago. The official convention program lists Toyota as a sponsor of an "Education Luncheon" at which The Nation of Islam's leader Louis Farrakhan spoke. Farrakhan is a noted proponent of ethnic hatred and anti-Semitism, and Toyota is listed as a "Platinum" sponsor of the conference, a designation reportedly costing $100,000. NLPC's Peter Flaherty writes: "It is more than objectionable that Toyota, a foreign company, would subsidize racial animosity in this country."

• In Poland, a member of parliament has openly called for a “zero tolerance policy” towards gays:

  “We can’t let them show their faces in public and go on telling how abnormal they are,” said Wierzejski who is a member of the Independence/Democracy Group of the Parliament..

  Polish Gays Plead to Europe for Help in Combating Hate - Action Requested After Outburst by Polish MEP

Race and Culture:

• On Holocaust Remembrance Day, two Dutch DJs promoted a dance party with this flash movie. They later said it was a joke and they were sorry. One of the "creators of the movie" commented on the Discarded Lies thread, explaining that it was just a "sick sense of humour" and they were not racist. When advised to make reparations for the harm they caused to the Jewish community, he said that would be "even sicker."

• Anti-immigrant sentiments and racism are increasing in Portugal along with an increase in neo-Nazi activities.

  “Immigration and crime almost always go together,” said Mario Machado of the far-right National Front, adding he was “proud to be white” and urging the government to expel Portuguese citizens of African origin or ancestry. Machado was among the organisers of a demonstration which brought several hundred skinheads to the streets of Lisbon recently, prompting a worried President Jorge Sampaio to show solidarity with African residents.

• The offices of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine were spray painted with swastikas and nazi symbols were scratched on the doors and walls, in the latest incident of increasing antisemitism in the Ukraine. And in Moscow, Neo-Nazis stormed a Jewish shop screaming “Beat the kikes, save Russia!”. The district where the attack took place is the site of a major synagogue and has experienced previous waves of attacks on Jews.

• The French like us just a little less than we like them but Reuters points out that anti-Europeanism flourishes on U.S. right. I don't think this is as serious as the anti-Americanism that has been flourishing in Europe for a few decades.

• A Bulgarian fascist party that won parliamentary representation, is attacking Jews on its website:

  A list containing the names of 1 500 Bulgarian Jews was published on the Web page of the coalition Attack, announced the Macedonian agency Makfax. The article reads that Jews are “dangerous race infected with plaque, which deserves eradicating since the very day of birth”.

• While $3 billion in aid has been promised to the Palestinians, official PA text books cite the ´Protocols´ as a historical document, they don't recognise Israel as a sovereign state and Islam and Muslims are presented as superior to all other religions.

• Japan racism 'deep and profound'

  An independent investigator for the UN says racism in Japan is deep and profound, and the government does not recognise the depth of the problem.

• National Alliance is using racist video games to recruit teenagers.

  The player in Ethnic Cleansing isn't killing just anyone -- he's killing all non-whites.
  ...
  "The whole intent of making this video game was to make a racially provocative video game and if it does help promote the separation of the races, then it's been positive and that's what we want," said Shawn Walker, chairman of National Alliance.

A Hopeful Note:

• In the United States and Canada, mosques confine women behind a curtain or in another room during prayers, the majority of worshipers are men and a third of mosques do not permit women on governing boards. But change may be in the air: American Muslim groups urge mosque rights for women

• A recent Pew survey measuring attitudes in Muslim countries found that support for bin Laden and suicide attacks has declined. In addition, a majority of the people surveyed in Morocco and Pakistan and almost half of the ones surveyed in Indonesia and Turkey, said that Islamic extremism poses a great threat to their country.

• Also on the good news front, some Kuwaitis are openly talking back to Islamist preachers when they preach anti-American hate in the mosque.

• While the official PA television continues to spread hate, Israeli and independent Palestinian television stations are simultaneously broadcasting The Shape of the Future, a documentary exploring possible solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.