Magic Statistics

An editorial in the Daily Champion of Lagos speaks against forcible conversions, such as that imposed on Christian teenager Victor Udo Esen by local Muslims.  He was kidnapped last November, and his parents only discovered what had happened to him in February.  A Muslim mob prevented his mother from taking him back home.

This account has been corroborated by Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Sokoto state which also gave similar instances of forceful conversion of Christians to Islam by Muslim fundamentalists. We find children's abductions and forceful conversion to Islam in Sokoto very strange. Abduction is criminal and forceful conversion of any person to any religion is unconstitutional, and therefore unlawful.

Section 38 (1) of the country's constitution states: "Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

The newspaper calls for the police to free Victor and other similar victims.

Although I agree with the editorial, I think this rather naïve:

No religion is propagated by force. It is simply immoral, illegal and unconstitutional to do so.

Recent experience shows that many Muslims take a different view.

h/t: Christianity Today Weblog

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• Muslim pupils kill Christian teacher in Nigeria
• Nigerian Christian children kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam
• Egyptian Christian girls kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam

That’s the cover story of the current issue of Der Spiegel.  Unfortunately, the story itself is behind a subscriber wall, and it’s written in German.

If anyone finds an English translation, let me know.

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Following a closed-door vote, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has decided to stop monitoring rights violations in two countries with contemptible records of oppression and maltreatment of their citizens: Iran and Uzbekistan.

Council president Luis Alfonso de Alba said the 47-member council has decided "not to continue the examination of the situation" in the two countries, but gave no further details.

Diplomats said the recommendation to drop the probe was headed by Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, whilst Argentina and France wanted to pursue it.

The HRC has made appalling decisions in the past but this one is so outrageous that human rights organisations have made it an issue.

Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the International Helsinki Federation For Human Rights, says the March 26 decision was "disastrous" and makes it clear that so far, the council has failed in its stated mission.

"What ought to be said is that this is a signal to countries that they have nothing to worry about from the Human Rights Council if they abuse their own citizens," Rhodes says.

Zimbabwe played a leading role in this decision, even though it is not even a member of the HRC. It was a member of the defunct Human Rights Commission, and was allowed to continue in the same role “temporarily”.

This despicable decision confirms the utter moral bankruptcy of the UN’s HRC.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, who blandly delivered the HRC’s decision without explanation, is the same man who earlier this week denounced the impertinence of UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer for boldly telling the truth about the Human Rights Council to its face.  Watch the video:

Previous related posts:

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• UN Human Rights Council blocked from considering Darfur
• Christian converts arrested in Iran
• UN Human Rights Council votes against identifying rights-abusing nations

A young woman was shot dead in Gaza in broad daylight last week.  She is one of eight this month.  Sharia law has arrived in Gaza.

Just inside a narrow entrance [of a fence near the beach] lay the crumpled body of a small woman, wearing a green Islamic gown and a full black veil. Her blood seeped into the puddles of sandy water around her head. Mohammed didn't bother with an ambulance. He need not have bothered with the police.

The dead woman was Dalal al-Behtete, a young woman from a struggling family in central Gaza. Seven other women have met the same violent and lonely fate across Gaza during a 10-day stretch this month. According to their assassins, their deaths gave them honour that their conduct in life had not. All the women had been accused of immoral behaviour. Some had been labelled prostitutes; others were branded for fraternising with men outside their immediate families.

So-called honour killings have been carried out here in the past, but even in this ramshackle, anarchistic and fractured society, women have never before been hunted down so blatantly.

Islamic gangs boasting of ties to al-Qaeda have begun a vigilante campaign to enforce strict rules of public morality.  Since late last year, internet cafes, music stores, and pharmacies have been attacked and proprietors assaulted.

Saha Rijab had never heard of the Army of Islam until she was dragged by her hair and tossed into a car by masked men with assault rifles hours before Dalal was murdered. From her hospital bed in central Gaza, she agrees to tell Inquirer of the ordeal that has left her legs riddled with bullets and nearly led her to become the eighth victim of Gazan women's most terrifying month.
. . .
"I was 20m away from my home, then their car moved and another one arrived; the cars started moving closer to me. They opened the door. They were masked and they were running after me, the driver and two others. I was a few metres away from a clothes shop, but they reached me and put their hands on me. They dragged me by the hair and clothes and pushed me inside the car. They blindfolded me and they tied my hands.

"When I took the blindfold off I was in a street full of taxis. They said: 'Where are you going?' And I said: 'I am going to my street, I swear to God.' They said: 'You know God and you dress like this?' I said: 'I know God better than you.' They said: 'Are you Fatah or Hamas?' I said: 'I am Fatah', and they replied: 'We spit on Fatah."'

Then they announced their allegiance as followers of the Army of Islam and told Saha she should dress liberally only for her husband.

She was thrown from the car and shot three times in the knee and lower leg.

The police can do nothing about such crimes.  They have no budget, no equipment, and no resources to take on the Hamas executive force, members of which are believed to be behind the Army of Islam.

Hamas denies that al-Qaeda has a presence in Gaza.

h/t: Judeoscope

Previous related post: New dress code for women in Gaza

A medical study has found that repeated listening to recordings of beating hearts improves doctors' ability to recognise and diagnose heart conditions.  So, Temple University School of Medicine and Hospital, where lead researcher Michael Barrett, M.D., is on faculty, has begun posting heart recordings online as MP3 files for medical students to download and study using their iPods.

Patients rely on their physicians to recognize signs of trouble, yet for common heart murmurs, that ability is only fair at best. Fortunately, the solution is simple: listening repeatedly. In fact, intensive repetition — listening at least 400 times to each heart sound — significantly improved the stethoscope abilities of doctors, according to a study presented today at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting.
. . .
During a single 90-minute session, 149 general internists listened 400 times to five common heart murmurs including aortic stenosis, aortic regurgitation, mitral stenosis, mitral regurgitation and innocent systolic murmur. Previous studies have found the average rate of correct heart sound identification in physicians is 40 percent. After the session, the average improved to 80 percent.

That’s a lotta strange terms.  Here’s another: “cardiac ausculation”, which non-medical specialists know as “listening to the heart”.

Doubling the frequency of correct recognition from 40 to 80 percent is impressive, but that implies that the average doctor still misdiagnoses one time out of five.

The article says that Temple’s heart sounds have been released on CD.  Now there’s a recording to make your heart go pitter-patter.

h/t: Macworld UK

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Zimbabwe's official media watchdog, the Media and Information Commission (MIC), interrogated the producer of Zimpraise, a new gospel music album, because the album's cover illustration was seen as propaganda for the leading opposition party.

The picture on the sleeve of the CD shows the open palms of people "praising God". The open palm is the official symbol for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Perhaps the government would prefer that Christians praise the Lord by raising clenched fists.

Geoffrey Chaparadza of International Tarch-Icon Film and Television Productions, the funders of the project, told Standardplus last week that the MIC summoned him after news reached their office that he had released an MDC album.

"I was actually surprised when I received the call to be asked whether I was now producing music albums for the opposition party. They might have had calls from people who confused the design on the sleeve for something to do with the MDC," said Chaparadza.

"I visited the MIC and gave them the album, to clear up things with them, and explain to them what my intentions are. It is by mere coincidence that when people raise their hands in praise they may be said to be showing the MDC sign."

One would hope the confusion was cleared up, but later developments may portend further problems.

But on Friday, the MIC denied ever calling Chaparadza or discussing the project with him.
. . .
Chaparadza told Standardplus that leading music distributor, Spinalong, had initially agreed to distribute the album, but in a sudden about-face the company called to inform them they could no longer distribute the album.

According to Chaparadza, they said he should change the picture on the sleeve if he still wanted Spinalong to distribute the project.

That reminds me of a line from "For What It's Worth", the classic 1960s song by Buffalo Springfield: "Paranoia strikes deep".

h/t: kubatanablogs and Global Voices Online

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