Religious Hate:

• In ancient times, war-making desert civilizations in the Middle East used theatrically desecrate their enemies' holy places to demonstrate the superiority of their local deities. Sigh:

  Emboldened by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Hamas yesterday announced its plan to turn a synagogue in Netzarim into a museum that would display weapons employed by the terrorist group's members against Israeli civilians.

  Converting a Jewish synagogue into a museum to weapons used in a genocidal war against Jews. Charming.

• The Arab News is grossly anti-Semitic.

• A Jewish terrorist has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to bomb a California mosque and a Lebanese-American congressman's office. He pleaded for leniency, but the sentencing judge noted that he had fluked no less than five polygraphs during the investigation. Now, polygraphs are voluntary - if you know you're guilty, wouldn't you figure out that you can't beat the lie test after, say, the fourth try?

• Nothing like celebrating anti-Semitic terrorism by taking humiliating pictures of terrified hostages to show your commitment to a ceasefire:

  Hamas released on Tuesday graphic pictures of Sasson Nuriel taken after his abduction but before he was murdered. The photograph was published after Hamas terrorists claimed responsibility for kidnapping and killing Nuriel, the 51-year-old Jerusalem man who was found dead Monday... "This was not an abduction [for ransom] or a military operation. They came across a Jew whose only fault was being a Jew," Ezra said on Army Radio.

  The only thing that Hamas hates more than Jews are gay Jews. And dancing.
  The United States is demanding that Israel accept Hamas as a legitimate political party.

• Britain's Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks is speaking out against the massive wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across Britain.

• Labeling homosexuals "intrinsically disordered", the Vatican has begun a witch-hunt to root out gay priests.

• Honor killings have reached Denmark:

  A Pakistani man's alleged shooting of his younger sister in a so-called 'honour killing' over the weekend has led members of the Pakistani community to discuss ways of halting the practice... 'We will try to find imams and other prominent people to get a discussion about this cultural phenomenon, which is not a religious practice in any way,' said Nazir.

  We're not so sure that the categorical statement "in any way" is the soundest argumentative stance. Honor killing certainly seems to be a religious practice in some way.

• Muslim fanatics are celebrating Ramadan with bombings in Bali and beheadings in Thailand.

• Iran's hard-line Islamist government, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hates gay people.

Idiotarian Seethings:

• What an idiot:

  A GOP state senator from Shelby County claims Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on part of America known for its "gambling, sin and wickedness." State Sen. Hank Erwin of Montevallo, a former conservative talk-radio host and now a media consultant, wrote the column after a tour of hurricane-damaged Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, and Bayou La Batre on the Alabama coast.

  Al Qaeda, incidentally, has been making the exact same argument. We actually saw Sen. Erwin making the rounds on the talkies trying to defend himself for echoing Al Qaeda. His answer to "you're spreading Al Qaeda propaganda" was - scout's honor - that he is trying to save the United State while Al Qaeda is trying to destroy it. Which might be true, but it still amounts to something less than an answer.

• Ridiculous, hysterical analogies are the sign of an unserious mind. Cross-reference Rep. Charles Rangel and the Congressional Black Caucus:

  Comparing President Bush to the Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner whose resistance to the civil rights movement became synonymous with Southern racism, Rep. Charles Rangel said yesterday of the president: "George Bush is our Bull Connor." Mr. Rangel’s metaphoric linkage of Mr. Bush to the late Theophilus "Bull" Connor... met with wild applause and cheering at a Congressional Black Caucus town hall meeting, part of the organization’s 35th Annual Legislative Conference.

  Bull Conner viciously opposed equal opportunities for minorities and released attack dogs on civil rights activists like Martin Luther King. President Bush has appointed the first female African American Secretary of State, and has of course released attack dogs on nobody. So there's at least an extent to which Rep. Rangle's argument fails to advance the discussion about wealth disparities as a function of racial inequalities in the United States. Moderate Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have largely failed to condemn Rep. Rangel's rhetorical excess.

• Although the mainstream Democratic party has given up on "Bush = Hitler" analogies in favor of "Bush = Bull Conner", their liberal base is something of am old dog:

  Later, a young activist with a shaved-head and a severely under-achieving beard... from a group called FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) rejuvenates the sleepy crowd with a call to revolution: "The enemies aren’t immigrants. We need to ELIMINATE all borders. The enemy is FASCISM. The enemy is IMPERIALISM. The REAL enemies are in the WHITE HOUSE!"

  You'll have to click through to see the visual Nazi comparison, but as to the verbal content we think it's sufficient to cite Marxist intellectual, Lacanian philosopher, and overall genius Slavoj Zizek:

  If this demand is meant to be taken more seriously than a celebratory formal declaration in typical United Nations Style, then it would mean the abolition of state borders; under present conditions, such a step would trigger an invasion of cheap labor from India, China and Africa into the United States and Western Europe, which would result in a populist revolt against immigrants... of such violent proportions that figures like Haider would seem models of multicultural tolerance.

  In these serious times, there are few things more important than serious people engaging in serious debate. Not helpful: resentful little boys who give their pathetic clubs bombastic names in a desperate attempt to compensate for the humiliation they suffered on the elementary school playground and in the high school locker room.

• Perhaps Senator Clinton has simply been too busy meeting with Cindy Sheehan to properly evaluate Rep. Rangel's statements. Possible topics covered in their discussion: the shadowy neo-Conservative conspiracy that took the United States to war, the military Occupation of New Orleans, and exhibitionism of all sorts.. If her meeting with Sen. Clinton was too short to discuss this diverse set of concerns, we trust that Ms. Sheehan's subsequent meeting with Sen. McCain served as a forum for a full airing of her grievances.

• We don't care what moonbat activists say, letting Hamas destroy Israel will in no way dampen the enthusiasm of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Not that people who scream "End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti" are necessarily interested in dampening said enthusiasm - at some point, the thought demands attention; that, quite the opposite of being anti-war, these wide-eyed zealots are fervently rooting for the other side. Lest you consider that judgment unwarranted, check out what Powerline is calling the year's potentially most awesome bit of blogging.

Race and Culture:

• We've been struggling all week regarding where and how to post Bill Bennett's remark linking increased black abortion with a decreased crime rate - was his statement symptomatic of deep seated cultural racism, or are his critics guilty of typical politicized overreaction? As we are not confident in our meager ability to soundly adjudicate this issue, we direct you to prominent liberal bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Brad DeLong - two of the most serious Leftists on the blogosphere and two of the least impressed with the latest round of attacks on Bennett.

• Was Joel Henry Hinrichs - the student who blew himself up outside the football stadium at the University of Oklahoma - a convert to Islam who was trying to commit mass murder? Powerline certainly thinks so but the Jawa Report has conflicting reports.

• After the Islamist violence of 7/7, all across Britain "free expression" is out and "tolerance" is in. Except "tolerance for free expression". That's out. From museums...

  The Tate Britain museum has made an unprecedented decision to pull a work of religious art from an exhibition over fears that it might offend Muslims... "We believe the particular circumstances we find ourselves in post-7 July make it difficult for this work to be viewed as the artist had intended..."...
  "Tate Britain have shown cowardice over this," Mr. Latham told the Observer newspaper.

  ... to workplaces:

  Novelty pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office - in case they offend Muslim staff. Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet... Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: "It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs."

  Art and Winnie the Pooh. That's what's pissing off Islamists now.

• If we could actually wrap our minds around the increasingly silly attempts to score political and cultural points with faux outrage related to Katrina horror stories, we'd have Mickey Kaus's job:

  Hurricane Parties: It's getting a bit confusing, what with the press revisionism and all. Let me make sure I've got the competing party lines down correctly-
  Liberal position: Racist neglect caused poor New Orleans residents to suffer from the unspeakable things that only a racist would assume actually happened!
  Conservative position: A fatherless underclass culture caused poor New Orleans residents to do the unspeakable things the anti-Bush MSM falsely reported they did!

A Hopeful Note:

• MEMRI continues its series on pro-reform cartoons in the Arab and Muslim press.

• The Arab News publishes an editorial by Amir Taheri expressing confidence in the existence of widespread pro-American sentiment in the Arab world.

• There is a growing movement among Western Muslim women to demand equal rights:

  As part of a global faith community that is diverse and evolving, Abdul-Ghafur and other American Muslims are organizing, writing and speaking on contentious issues they say Islam hasn't adequately dealt with - such as inequalities between men and women, the right to faithfully dissent and reinterpreting the sacred text of Islam, the Quran.