Magic Statistics

So far this year, the list of items that offend, or are alleged to offend, Muslims includes cartoons, soccer balls, ice cream cone swirls, pictures of pigs, Christmas, Holocaust Day, and St George's Cross. Now it's "Jewish cookies", even though the name is the only thing Jewish about them. Most of them aren't even kosher!

A group of Danish Muslims refuse to eat traditional "Jewish" cookies because they feel offended by the name.
. . .
Jewish cookies, which are made with cinnamon and hazelnuts and actually have nothing particularly Jewish about them, are very popular in Denmark during the pre-Christmas period.

Denmark’s chief rabbi, Bent Lexner, said that he did not see any problem in a name change. There is nothing Jewish in it and I wouldn’t mind another name, but I think that it would be better to educate Muslims to respect the culture of the majority in Denmark, if they want the majority to respect their culture.

Most of Denmark’s "Jewish" cookies are not kosher and they are therefore not consumed by a large part of the Jewish population.

If anyone has cause to be offended, it's Jews. Calling a non-kosher food item "Jewish" is, at best, disingenuous. But Rabbi Lexner is the only one here exhibiting discernible brain function.

Is there anything they're not offended by, other than dhimmitude?

via Dhimmi Watch.

The Canadian government, in an uncommon display of good sense, has denied Abdurahman Khadr's application for a passport. His lawyer Clayton Ruby claims that's unconstitutional.

The idea that you can withdraw a passport, which is a constitutionally protected right to travel, . . . without authority, in secret, never writing down what the law is and just say to a Canadian, 'You don't get a passport,' is inconsistent with our constitution.

Actually, of course, there is no such right. The constitution doesn’t apply here at all. Mr Khadr's alleged "right" to travel ends at an international frontier where the authorities of the bordering nation have absolute discretion to allow or deny Mr Khadr's request for entry.

Seems to me there's a lot of dubious asserting of non-existent rights going on these days.

Many Christians believe that the date of Christmas originated from a Roman pagan winter solstice festival, and that the church incorporated the date, along with some pagan practices, into the new celebration of Christ's birth. There are good reasons to think this belief mistaken. For one thing, Roman pagans had no winter solstice festivals at the time of Christ. They didn't have one until the third century AD.

Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, "The Birth of the Unconquered Sun", on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian's new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ.

What is more, the way the early Christians went about setting the date for Christmas strongly suggests that they believed human life begins at conception. Gene Edward Veith has the details.

via The Pearcey Report.

The irony is a bonus. PajamasMedia has the story:

Widespread power outages struck Zimbabwe on Tuesday, blacking out much of President Robert Mugabe's state of the nation address in which he promised to address the country's chronic electricity shortages.

via little green footballs.