Stats

Every blogger has access to  all kinds of interesting information about who is reading our blogs.  The stats page never gives personal names, of course, but it does tell us what countries and even what cities our readers are from. It shows demographics such as age groups, and how many people are repeat visitors  and how many are there for the first time.  I have no idea how they gather all this information, and I really don’t care. Usually, all I look at is the daily numbers.

This week, though,  something rather unusual happened. On Wednesday, I had about twice the normal numbers of visits; then on Thursday, there were 194 hits, all from Qatar, along with the rest of the people who visited  my blog that day. They hadn’t all visited the same post.  There are hundreds of posts now, after four years of almost-daily writing.

But–Qatar?  Really?

It’s a little peninsula connected to Saudi Arabia and surrounded by the Arabian Gulf.  I’ve read quite a bit about Qatar, and found that it is mostly comprised of Sunni Muslims, and Islam is the official religion, and Islam is the basis of jurisprudence in Qatar. When I asked my computer about the Christian population of Qatar, this is what I learned:

The Christian community in Qatar is a diverse mix of European, North and South American, Asian, Middle Eastern and African expatriates. They form around 13.8% of the total population (2010). … missionary groups operate openly in the country. There are no local Christians in Qatar; all Christians are foreign expatriates.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know why I had all that traffic from Qatar,  but I do find it curious. Did a Christian  from a Christian community stumble across my blog and share it with his friends?  Or did a Muslim stumble across it and find it interesting enough to share it with others?

I mean, if you were in my place, wouldn’t YOU like to know?