Magic Statistics

The City Council of Buffalo, New York, included some intemperate language in a resolution last week condemning the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo for announcing that nine churches will be closed and merged into other parishes.

Some Buffalo lawmakers are distancing themselves from an accusation made in a Common Council resolution that the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo’s plan to close several city parishes appears to have “the whiff of ethnic cleansing.”

Some of the same lawmakers who voted for parts of the harshly worded bill Wednesday said Friday they will demand changes when the resolution is revisited in July.

Was their change of mind motivated by harsh criticism from local media, Buffalo Bishop Edward Kmiec, the Catholic League, and many others?

Be that as it may, Council president David Franczyk isn’t taking back one syllable.

Buffalo Common Council President David Franczyk had said the closing plan had the "whiff of ethnic cleansing," and on Sunday said he stood by those remarks.

Franczyk said the diocese is eliminating, eradicating forever ethnic, immigrant parishes. "What I believe they're doing is a policy to assimilate all these parishes to wash out, I don't think they're anti-ethnic, but I think they want to wash out the ethnic character of these parishes and end up with pretty much assimilated type structure focused well outside the city of Buffalo."

Bishop Kmiec says the closures are necessitated by declining numbers of parishioners and a shortage of priests.

Catholic League president Bill Donahue called the resolution “one of the most egregious examples of Catholic bashing ever to be voiced by a government entity in the U.S.” and threatened to file suit against the City.  Sounds like he'd have an excellent case.

If nothing else, doesn’t the council resolution violate the separation of church and state enshrined in the American Constitution?

According to a report in The Star, predators and rapists in Toronto schools are targeting Muslim girls because those girls are believed less likely to report assaults to the authorities.

Cultural beliefs may spur sex attacks, official says
. . .
In several cases, the students were harassed or assaulted because, as recent immigrants from the Muslim world, they were assumed to be from conservative families – where, for cultural reasons, sexual abuse can be considered shameful for the victim, say those familiar with the alleged incidents.

The reporter and several people interviewed assert that cultural background, not “religion”, is the crux of the problem.

Others with community contacts said cultural beliefs were being exploited in these attacks.

Nasreen Karim, an assistant manager at the Muslim Welfare Home in Whitby, said sexual assaults are embarrassing for immigrants from Pakistan and India because of their cultural ethos, not their religion.

A Toronto police detective takes the same view.

Police are now looking into whether Muslim girls are being singled out, said Det. Peter Duncan.

"I don't think it's based on the specifics of the religion," Duncan said. "I think it's simply because they're different. They're in smaller numbers. And they're perhaps more vulnerable."

One interviewee rightly points out that women of various religious and cultural backgrounds do not want to report sexual harassment or violence.  Still, I find it odd that the Star feels it necessary to repeat four times the claim that Islamic beliefs are not a factor.  I’m getting that old feeling that I’m being smacked upside the head with a 2-by-4.  “It’s not the religion, stupid, it’s the culture!”

I have some questions.  Canada receives many immigrants from India and Pakistan, not all of whom are Muslim.  Yet, the story gives no hint that Sikh or Hindu girls from immigrant families are targets of sexual assault.  Why is that?

Also, Islamic countries are notorious for lashing or condemning to death women whose only “crime” is being raped or defending themselves against sexual assault.  Does that have anything to do with problematic cultural beliefs?

h/t: Religion News Blog

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Christians and Muslims in a village south of Faisalabad have reached an agreement under which Muslim leaders apologised for a mob attack two weeks ago on organisers of an evangelism meeting.

A compromise has been brokered between Christian and Muslim residents of 248 RB, a village in the Pakistan province of Punjab, some 20 miles from Faisalabad city, following the violence of June 17th.

The Muslim residents of the village had attacked the Christian residents on both June 16 and 17 in a bid to stop them from staging an evangelistic convention that was slated for June 17.

A Muslim mob comprising of some 41 men had launched attack on Christians leaving 8 of them, including two women, injured. The incident sparked fear among the Christian residents forcing them to flee the village to places of safety.
. . .
Faizur Rehman, a Muslim man who was thought to be behind the June 17 violence tendered apology to the Christians . . .
. . .
“We apologize for disruption. We will not create any problems in future. If Muslims come up with any case with an intention to implicate the Christians it would be considered as fake”, [local Christian] Farhad [Sarosh] quoted the affidavit as saying.

Local Muslims have also promised to help prepare for an evangelistic convention to be held in lieu of last month’s disrupted event.

If this works out as promised, it will be nothing short of a miracle, in my view.

Previous related post: Stop praying to Jesus: You’re hurting our feelings

Pakistani Muslims are so very sensitive.

It is dangerous to say that Christ is the son of God because this declaration “hurts the feelings of many Pakistani Muslims” who “do not want to hear such things, even in Christian Churches”. This warning was delivered by some residents of Punjab to local Christian congregations who “should immediately stop their prayers to the supposed son of God”.

A Christian from Faisalabad, Punjab’s largest city, points out that submission to the demand would implicitly deny the faith and lead to the Christian community’s destruction. Maybe that's the idea. 

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