Magic Statistics

Armed Islamists threatened several Christian families in the Dora district of Baghdad last weekend, giving them 24 hours to convert to Islam, leave the area, or be killed.  Six families fled their homes.  No one was injured.

Six Christian families from the Mualimien neighborhood of Baghdad’s Dora district have relocated to a church elsewhere in the city, said a Baghdad source who requested that the families’ location and identity remain anonymous.

Armed Sunnis told the families on Saturday (April 14) that an amir (independent Muslim prince or ruler) had issued a fatwa or judgment based on Islamic law against Dora’s Christians, the source said.

“They called the Christians infidels and told them, ‘If you don’t convert to Islam or leave your homes in 24 hours, we will kill you,’” the source told Compass after speaking with a member of the church helping the displaced Christians.
. . .
According to Ainkawa.com, an Arabic-language Christian website that first reported the news on Saturday evening (April 14), the extremists prevented fleeing Christian families from taking any personal belongings with them.

This is the latest phase in a Muslim extremist campaign against Christianity in Dora.  In recent months, Christians have been warned that churches that do not remove their crosses will be burned.  Christians have also been told not to wear crosses or “make any religious gesture”.

Local Muslims consider the property of Christians forced to flee their homes available for the taking.

Previous related posts:

• Iraqi Muslims tax Christian “subjects”
• Iraqi Christians flee to Kurdistan
• Last Christmas in Iraq?

Al Gore’s star must be fading fast.  Even the Globe and Mail scoffs at his next speaking engagement in Toronto.

Al Gore event to be spared inconvenient gadflies

He's everywhere! He's everywhere! The $1-billion-plus labour fund VenGrowth Asset Management Inc. is bringing the ubiquitous Al Gore to Toronto on April 28 for an evening at the Hummingbird Centre.

By invitation only, the former American vice-president will give VenGrowth's guests a taste of his environmental eloquence. Also participating in the Saturday night event are law firms Aird & Berlis, Bennett Jones, Blakes, Osler and Torys — notice how the cool way to label your law firm now is with only one name — plus five bank/brokerages.

Some members of the media have also been invited. But to be accepted, they must first agree not to report on the event. Furthermore, media must also refrain from asking questions during the public Q&A session afterwards. The restrictions are evidently part of Mr. Gore's contract with VenGrowth.

What’s the big secret?  He used to want publicity for his mission crusade jihad campaign against global warming climate change.

Previous related posts:

• “Forgive me, Al Gore, for I have sinned”
• Your carbon footprint can make you crazy
• Heed the Goracle
• The Gore Effect

Two officials of the Muslim Canadian Congress argue in today’s Globe and Mail that the hijab, or head scarf, originated as a useful piece of clothing in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, not as a requirement of Islamic teaching.  Only recently have some Muslims begun to claim that it epitomises female piety.  In reality, however, it has nothing to do with Islamic morality.

There is not a single reference in the Koran that obliges Muslim women to cover their hair or their face. The only verse that comes close to such a dress code (Sura 24, "The Light," verse 31) directs believing women to let their head coverings obscure their bosoms.

Yet, in the past few decades, Islamists and orthodox Muslims have made the covering of a woman's head the cornerstone of Muslim identity. The head cover been pushed as a symbol of piety and only the Egyptian and Saudi version of the head cover — the hijab — is considered worthy of respect. Coverings that originate in South Asia, the sari or the dupatta, have been relegated as less authentic under Islam.
. . .
Islamists have turned the hijab into the central pillar of Islam. They consider Muslim women who do not cover their heads — the vast majority — as sinners or lesser Muslims. They should come out and debate the issue rather than using young Muslim girls as shields to pursue a political agenda.

This line of reasoning implies that the hijab is not a religious symbol of any kind and, therefore, is entitled to no special protection under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The column was written by Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fetah, president and founder, respectively, of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

Previous related posts:

• Bavaria and Antwerp restrict wearing of headscarves; Egypt restricts face veils
• Avoid raising resentment among Islamists, or else
• Islamist teacher living in Canada illegally

Dr Riyadh Lafta, field manager of the disputed Lancet study of Iraqi deaths, may not be able to deliver a public lecture in Canada after all.  The original plan called for Dr Lafta to speak at the University of Washington, Seattle, but US officials refused to grant him a visa.  Then Plan B was arranged: Canada issued a visa so he could speak at Simon Fraser University’s downtown Vancouver campus, with a video feed to UW.  But now Plan B appears headed into the toilet as well.

Most flights from the Middle East, Dr Lafta’s point of origin, to North America land in London, and authorities there have refused him permission to set foot on British soil.

Riyadh Lafta — best known for a controversial study in the respected [sic] medical journal The Lancet that estimated Iraq's war dead at more than half a million — said in an e-mail to his U.S. research colleagues that he had two choices: Fly to England without the transit visa, or turn around and go home.

"[British consular officials] refuse to give us a transit visa just to change airplanes," Dr. Lafta wrote from Amman to colleagues at the University of Washington, and to B.C.'s Simon Fraser University, where he planned to give a talk on Friday.

"I am sorry you are disappointed, but what can I do?"

University officials were working hard to bring him to Canada through France or Switzerland, but while flights could be arranged, officials have not heard from those countries about whether they would grant him a visa.

Kinda makes one wonder what the man has done to get his name on the verboten list.  Neither the US nor the UK has released their reasons for refusing him entry.  It may have something to do with his fourteen years working in Saddam Hussein’s health ministry.

Another co-author of the Lancet study, Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been asked to speak if Dr Lafta can’t make it.  So, there may still be an opportunity to ask questions about the study’s methodology.

Previous related posts:

• Lancet study’s field manager to visit Vancouver
• Lancet study "has no scientific standing"
• Lancet authors slow to provide answers
• Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable