Oh yeah…there’s an Earth out there
So I haven’t been doing much on the blog of late, apart from a few articles that emerged either from some quick reads I found at Inside Catholic, or out of various arguments I got into at Gamespot.
That’s life, I suppose; one gets busy with other things, and the blog ends up taking a back seat. Did I mention I’ve been busy with web design again? The University of Alberta Mixed Chorus (of which I am a former member) needed a new website, and since their Advertising Manager is a good friend (and groomsman) of mine…well…
…not that I’m entirely happy with it. In a previous iteration, I had built the Chorus website using this excellent template for the Joomla CMS…but it turns out that said template is only compatible with the now-outdated Joomla 1.0.x, and is in fact almost entirely incompatible with Joomla 1.5.x.
So I’ve had to use a template I’m marginally less-than satisfied with. That, coupled with the fact that GoDaddy.com has discovered a way to make administering a website into an exercise in frustration that is beyond the ability of any human language to describe, has made the process rather frustrating, overall…so much so that I’m even now in the process of setting up a test version of the UAMC website here, at a subdomain of this site, just to see if Mediatemple handles things better.
But I digress. I was talking about Canada.
Turns out, a lot of stuff (most of it bad, admittedly) happens when one stops paying attention! It’s like the country keeps on ticking or something (weird, I know).
Honour Killings in Kingston?
Three Afghan-Canadian girls, along with their father’s first wife, were found murdered near Kingston, Ontario. A highly…predictable…commonality exists in the names of the three suspects in the murder: Mohammed Shafii (the father of the girls), Hamid Mohammed Shafii (the girls’ 18-year old brother) and Tooba Mohammad Yahya (the father’s second/current wife).
Apparently, one of the girls’ aunts is on record as saying that the oldest girl was not right in the head (or some such), and has apparently even asserted that the deaths can be attributed to a suicide pact between the four girls. To be fair, it’s a theory…I’m not sure I’d call it a plausible one.
In the article linked above, Tarek Fatah has nothing kind to say about honour killings or the status of women in many parts of the world where Islam is predominant. By now, it’s the sort of fare one expects to see repeated in cases such as this, just as one expects to hear the various sundry denials that the murders have even the slightest thing to do with the Islamic faith from other agitators. Interestingly, as Fatah points out, the denials in this case actually came out before any major news publication had made the connection between the suspects and their Islamic faith.
Certainly, the crime bears some hallmarks of an honour killing: the victims were all female (either “rebellious” daughters or divorcees), both the father and the brother of the girls are suspects, and…well…there’s the Islam angle as well. The fact that the second wife is also a suspect is something we haven’t seen much of.
I agree with Fr. DeSouza: “…the Kingston killings remind us that there is very little that is truly foreign anymore. The clash between histories, cultures and values is not a battle overseas; it’s as much a part of Canada today as the Rideau Canal.”
All praise and give thanks to multiculturalism!
(Yawn) Another art exhibit that defames Christians…
You’d think these transgressive artistes would have clued in by now that producing yet another art exhibit which demeans some Christian symbol or artifact is so…1990s. Seriously, an exhibit which invites people to deface a Bible? Yeah, because that’s something new.
Funnily, in response to this exhibit, there hasn’t been even one violent incident. No mass protests in Rome or Westminster, no hordes screaming “Death to Britain,” or “Jesus Christ will Crush England!” I mean, how boring is that? Had this display involved a Koran, there’d be blood in the streets in various corners of the world.
Still, in the end, even an exhibit defacing the Koran isn’t particularly daring or bold. I mean, it’s certainly more daring than this exhibit is, in that the artist responsible might actually have to worry about his (or her?) life to some extent. But for maximum transgressiveness and maximum offensiveness, the artist would have been better off to try and present some kind of pro-life message…maybe a dismembered baby at some mid-gestational development point, with a simple banner overhead that reads “Choice?”
My bet is that the museum wouldn’t even have allowed such a piece to be displayed. Now that’s bleeding-edge, transgressive art!
And I see that Khurrum Awan, one of the “infamous” (far too kind a word) Osgoode Hall law students involved in the Mark Steyn/HRC fracas from a while back, is now suing Ezra Levant.
The boy is a sucker for punishment, I guess.
And…the issue of the gay former altar server in the diocese of Peterborough is progressing; the diocese has filed its response to Jim Corcoran’s human rights complaint against them.
Oh, and Binks has gone on vacation for a bit? Coincidence?
Nah.
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