Video: Hitchens clashes with CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper over Pace Qur’an prosecution — Plus Robert Spencer responds to Hooper

From last night’s Paula Zahn.

This one dragged on for 12 minutes so it’s divided into two parts.

Part one is the main event: arguably the world’s foremost atheist butting heads with CAIR tool extraordinaire Ibrahim Hooper over how, in a world where Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs 24/7 protection and American news bureaus censor their own coverage of the Danish cartoons for fear of stirring up jihad, Hooper can dare suggest that putting a Koran in a toilet is an “act of intimidation.”

As you’ll see, his logic is nonsensical on its own terms: he hones in on the difference between destroying one’s own Qur’ran and destroying someone else’s, but that has no bearing on the intimidation factor, particularly where, as here, the Qur’rans in question didn’t belong to Muslims.

His insistence that Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Cat Stevens, didn’t say what he said about Salman Rushdie is also, of course, a bald-faced lie.

Part One: Hitchens and Hooper go at it

Paula says some folks are afraid to offend Muslims. I’m not. To all Islamofascists, I say,

Fuck you all, fuck you all
The long and the short and the tall
Fuck all the imams and cleric drones
Fuck all the mullahs and their jihad bones
For we’re saying good-bye to you all
As back to the sand you crawl
You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean
So get lost you fiends fuck you all…

Anyway, Dennis Prager makes a cameo to talk about his column today on Islamophobia. Hooper’s rhetorical parry? Dragging a guy into the conversation who’s not there to defend himself.

Tough day for him, incidentally.

Part Two: Dennis Prager retorts

Also, Robert Spencer responded to Hooper at Jihad Watch.

Update Aug 2nd : Also see “Does CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper Suffer from Hydrocephalus?.”