After an incident in a coastal city in southern Lebanon where a woman was allegedly harassed for reportedly wearing an “indecent” bathing suit, activists staged a protest at a beach on May 21st.
Dozens of female protesters defied a ban imposed by the conservative, Sunni Muslim-majority city of Sidon regarding the bathing suit incident. They rallied against it, according to a reporter from Agence-France Presse (AFP).
A mosque currently under construction in the South Korean city of Daegu has been a point of contention between residents and Muslim students of a local university. So much so that residents have put severed pig heads in front of the construction site in protest.
More than a year after a landmark case in Nigeria that saw atheist Mubarak Bala imprisoned for expressing his views on religion, a US congressman took up his case and joined in the calls to free Bala.
Three men in Iran accused of killing three members of the country’s security forces were executed by the Islamic Republic on May 19th, sparking massive protests across the country and drawing condemnation from various governments and human rights organizations.
The Tasnim news agency and the website of Iran’s judiciary confirmed the executions of 30-year-old Majid Kazemi, 36-year-old Saleh Mirhashemi, and 37-year-old Saeed Yaqoubi on the dawn of May 19th at the Dastgerd prison in the city of Isfahan, located in central Iran.
A homeless man in St. Paul, Minnesota, was arrested on May 17th for setting a mosque on fire. He told authorities he burned the building to protest homelessness.
Ya Allah. This is the fourth arson attack on our community in less than a month. My thoughts are with the Muslim community in St. Paul and the whole Twin Cities metro. We are stronger than fear. We will not be terrorized. https://t.co/UgxPc6tYsX
An Iraqi Islamic leader claimed that the Israeli Mossad used a prostitute in the 7th century to kill the first Shia Imam, adding that the Israeli-Jewish intelligence agencies use money and women to achieve their goals.
Several Iraqi Twitter accounts posted a video of Qais Al-Khazali making these claims while speaking in public. Al-Khazali is the leader of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haqq, a radical Iraqi Shia political party and paramilitary group backed by Iran.
Iran continues to strictly enforce its mandatory hijab laws, despite massive pushback from many Iranians. This time, the Islamic Republic released a new rule for drivers, ordering female passengers and drivers to wear hijabs while inside their vehicles or risk impoundment.
Fars News Agency, the state-owned news network connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), released a video explaining this new directive on April 17th as part of a broader campaign to further implement its mandatory dress code amidst increasing pressure and opposition from many Iranians.
Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has struggled to gain recognition from the international community despite aggressively campaigning for it. But this situation may soon change as a top United Nations official discussed the possibility of recognizing the country’s Taliban authorities.
Amina Mohammed, the United Nations deputy secretary-general, said on April 17th that the organization would set up a meeting to talk about granting international recognition to the Taliban, emphasizing the importance of engaging with Afghanistan’s fundamentalist authorities.
With many Iranians pushing back against the mandatory hijab laws implemented by the Islamic Republic, it seems the Islamic Republic will continue pushing women to wear hijabs, even after their death.
The Iranian government forced a family in Kermanshah, west of Iran, to remove the picture of their deceased daughter from her tombstone because she was not wearing a hijab.
A lawsuit was filed against the State Department of the US government for discriminating against a guard when he was allegedly forced to shave his beard to keep his job at the agency.
The case was filed on May 3rd by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on behalf of security guard Devin Brooks against the US State Department and State Secretary Anthony Blinken. The suit stated that the agency “denied permission to maintain a beard longer than ½ inch,” as required by Brook’s Islamic faith.
