This is what British and American soldiers have died for in Iraq. According to a British newspaper, an Iraqi wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least 6 hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims. “It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” he said. When he finds them, Hamizi, doubtless in a breathless religious ecstacy – and probably a suppressed, sadistic, homo-erotic masturbatory frenzy – arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed. Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is assisting the organisation of a wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline fundamentalists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year. The group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. “Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts,” they say. “We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed.” Very considerate of them – another triumph for the religion of peace. And not a word of protest from our normally vocal New Labour gay activists and the Cherie Blair inspired human rights brigade. Presumably Islamic fundamentalists committing homophobic murder are exempt from their otherwise shrill strictures – can you imagine the bleatings if such crimes were being exposed in Israel ?