The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles canceled a lecture it was going to host by Pam Geller (who is Jewish) just hours before it was supposed to be delivered Sunday morning. The Western Region Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), was sponsoring Geller’s speech, “Islamic Jew Hatred as the Root

Cause of Failure to Achieve Peace.”

The ZOA is a Jewish advocacy organization that claims more than 30,000 members and bills itself as the oldest pro-Israel group in America, involving itself in educating people about the “truth of the ongoing and relentless Arab war against Israel” and fighting things like “Arab propaganda” on campuses. ( continue to full post… )

Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., were once again targeted for their beliefs on Friday when a group of protesters calling themselves the “Bible Believers” confronted celebrants at the city’s annual Arab International Festival with a pig’s head on a spike and signs decrying Islam as a false religion, the Detroit Free Press reports.

In addition to the pig’s head – presumably intended to offend observant Muslims, who do not eat pork – Bible Believers reportedly carried signs calling Islam “a religion of blood and murder” and describing the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a “liar,” “false prophet,” “murderer” and “child molesting pervert.” ( continue to full post… )

As the trial of Muslim-hating Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik enters its third week, a U.S.-based website has published a new essay by a blogger whose work was cited frequently by the man who murdered 77 of his countrymen last July.

In an article posted today on FrontPage, Norwegian blogger “Fjordman” – whose work was mentioned so often in Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto that some bloggers speculated they were the same person – showered praise on Robert Spencer, an American anti-Muslim pundit and hate group leader who Breivik thinks deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Fjordman’s particular interest is Spencer’s latest work, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins, which according to its Amazon page is a “sober but unflinching look at one of the world’s major religions” and includes “many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons” – military conquest among them. ( continue to full post… )

The National Rifle Association (NRA) — the powerful gun lobby that has called federal law enforcement agents “jack-booted thugs,” accused President Obama of having secret plans to strip away Americans’ guns, and been the main force behind the incredibly dangerous “Stand Your Ground” laws being used to justify the killing of Trayvon Martin — is once again flaunting its political extremism.

This Sunday in St. Louis, the NRA plans to host retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, a radical Islamophobe who has said there should be “no mosques in America,” as keynote speaker of a prayer breakfast at its annual conference. Boykin has asserted that “Islam is evil” and “a totalitarian way of life” that “should not be protected under the First Amendment,” among other things. This January, after controversy arose over statements like these, Boykin withdrew from a speech he had been invited to make at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. ( continue to full post… )

The weekend death in California of a 32-year-old Iraqi immigrant – a mother of five children — is drawing worldwide attention as the latest possible U.S. hate crime killing.

Shaima Alawadi died Saturday after she was taken off life support, three days after being found unconscious and brutally beaten in her family home in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego, authorities said.

The victim’s 17-year-old daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told San Diego’s KUSI-TV that her mother was beaten on the head with a tire iron and a threatening note was found nearby saying, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” ( continue to full post… )

Federal authorities in New York today unsealed an indictment accusing a 40-year-old man dubbed the “Frappucino firebomber” with hate crimes for New Year’s Day Molotov-cocktail attacks on a mosque and a Hindu temple in Queens.

Ray Lazier Lengend, also known as Suraj Poonai, told police he intended to kill “as many Muslims and Arabs as possible” by throwing firebombs inside the places of worship, the New York Daily News reported shortly after the suspect’s Jan. 3 arrest. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: This post was written for Hatewatch by Jim Cavanaugh, the recently retired Special Agent in Charge of the Nashville, Tenn., office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It’s a response to a story today about a sheriff in Tennessee planning training by an anti-Muslim bigot.

Today’s Nashville Tennessean reports that Rutherford County, Tenn., Sheriff Robert Arnold has scheduled training for law enforcement officers that degrades Islam and spreads hatred. The training reportedly is to be put on by a former FBI agent named John Guandolo from the Washington, D.C., area and held at a Murfreesboro, Tenn., church. The Tennessean says that Guandolo has previously stated in training that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”

That statement alone is so anti-American on its face that no law enforcement executive should ever engage a trainer who would utter it, period. It is so clearly in violation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that it strains any semblance of reality. Muslim Americans, it says, are people without constitutional protection, people who I suppose are to be regarded as less than other Americans. ( continue to full post… )

The American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was dealt a blow last year when several organizations withdrew over the inclusion of a gay conservative group, GOProud, on its roster of sponsors. Having officially banished all gays who so much as make a peep about their rights, however, the annual right-wing shindig is back in business and conservative as all get-out, featuring representatives of a dizzying array of anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-abortion and anti-Muslim organizations, including hate group leaders like Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of American (SIOA) and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC).

No guest better illustrates CPAC’s refreshed commitment to hard-line conservatism than Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE, a race-baiting hate group that warns against the pollution of America by non-whites, Catholics, and Spanish-speaking immigrants. Brimelow, an unabashed white nationalist who argues that white Americans should demand U.S. immigration law be changed to allow in mostly whites, today participated in a CPAC panel on “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity.” ( continue to full post… )

A mosque under construction near Washington, D.C., was extensively damaged by vandals last weekend, but a regional imam said today there’s no indication yet that the vandalism was a hate crime.

“It seems at this point that the vandalism was done by intoxicated individuals,” regional imam Yahya Luqman said of the damage done last weekend at the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Mosque in Chantilly, about 10 miles west of Fairfax, Va.

While some may be quick to assume the vandalism was a hate crime targeting Muslims, the imam said he and the community he represents aren’t jumping to that conclusion. “That’s something the Fairfax County Police are investigating,” Luqman told Hatewatch. “Until they catch the suspects, we won’t know what the motive may have been.” ( continue to full post… )

Anti-Muslim zealot Pam Geller announced this week the formation of a new international organization, Stop the Islamization of Nations (SION), for which she will serve as executive director. This “new global force” will merge the work of the two major anti-Muslim groups in the U.S. and Europe – Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), run by Geller and co-founded by another anti-Muslim fanatic, Robert Spencer, and Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE), run by Anders Gravers out of Denmark. Spencer will serve as SION’s vice president. ( continue to full post… )