On Wednesday April 21st, a deadly suicide blast took place inside the parking area of Serena Hotel in Quetta, Pakistan. The hotel is part of a five-star chain popular with diplomats and aid agencies and was also hosting the Chinese Ambassador in southwest Pakistan on the day of the blast.
Renowned Algerian author and scholar on Islam, Said Djabelkhir, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for "offending Islam" in three Facebook posts. In January 2020, he drew comparisons between sheep sacrifice for Eid al-Adha and the Berber New Year celebrations or Yennayer, a pagan ritual predating Islam.
On the morning of Tuesday April 20th, the Canadian Province of Quebec announced plans to appeal a ruling which exempted minority teachers and some politicians from wearing religious attire or symbols.
The ruling, that supports much of a 2019 law, does not apply to teachers in Quebec's English-language school boards, as they hold special rights over education under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United on Sunday, April 11th, was censored over a hundred times by Iranian state-run TV broadcasting channels.
France’s move to outlaw wearing the hijab in public places for girls under age 18 was proposed under France’s “Separatist Bill” and approved by Members of Parliament (MP) on February 16th. The French Senate decided in favor of the bill on March 30th.
On March 22nd, a West Yorkshire school teacher showed his students a cartoon image depicting the prophet Muhammad to illustrate a lesson within the school’s curriculum. Within three days, at least 50 demonstrators gathered outside of Batley Grammar School to protest the teacher’s actions.
Several studies in recent decades found that being religious correlates with good health. New studies have challenged the finding that being an atheist correlates with poor health!
Believers who attend church services regularly are less likely to smoke, use drugs or become obese. They may live longer than those who do not attend any religious church services. Some have been led to conclude, according to those findings, that if religion is good for you, then being an atheist must be bad for your health.
Nabeel Masih, a 16-year-old Christian, was accused by Akhtar Ali on September 18, 2016, of committing blasphemy in a Facebook post. Ali claimed the post “defamed and disrespected” the Kaaba in Mecca. Ali also claimed that he and some friends discovered a picture on Masih’s timeline depicting a pig on top of the Kaaba.
As it sought dismissal of the petitions to recognize same-sex marriages within existing laws, the Centre told the Delhi High Court (HC) that marriage in India depends on “age-old customs, rituals, practices, cultural ethos and societal values.” In the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Section 377 that covers homosexuality, the Supreme Court only decriminalized “a particular human behavior,” but it did not legitimize the human conduct in question.
