Hate Crime Alert!

Modern ethics make playing childish jokes against Muslims a hate crime. For example, this story:

Jerome Heath hadn't even heard of a hate crime in Clarksville in the seven years he's lived here.

That changed Friday.

That day, just two hours before the Islamic Center of Clarksville held its 1 p.m. prayer service, called Jummah, a Quran was found vandalized on the front steps.

The front of the Quran, Islam's holy book, read "Mohammad pedophile." An expletive was written inside, smeared under two strips of bacon, according to a Clarksville police report. The report labeled the incident a hate crime.

Bacon is offensive to Muslims because they are forbidden from eating pork.

Now this isn't big or clever. The best way to deal with the Islamic jihad ideology is to contest it sensibly and logically, and point out the aspects of Islam which give rise to violence and other uncivilised behaviours. So whoever did this is an indefensible moron. However, under no criteria does it constitute a "crime".

Plus, as Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes, when someone writes "Death to Israel" on the wall of a synagogue it only gets labeled as a possible hate crime:

A synagogue on Chicago's North Side may have been the target of a hate crime after vandals spray-painted derogatory messages on the building early Saturday, police said.