On January 29, the Cairo Economic Court ruled that Marco Gerges, a Coptic Christian, is guilty of multiple charges, including "contempt for Islam,” resulting in a five-year prison sentence.
Rob Standridge, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has introduced a stupefyingly callous, religiously inspired bill to the Oklahoma senate. Known as the Students' Religious Belief Protection Act, the bill seeks to penalize educators who oppose students' "closely held religious beliefs."
On Tuesday, February 1, Mubarak Bala appeared for the first time after his arrest at the High Court of the state of Kano in Nigeria, almost two years after his arrest. Kano is the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria and was arrested on April 25, 2020.
On January 25, the French National Assembly officially passed a new law that bans conversion therapy. The law was passed with an overwhelming 142 votes to 0.
On January 19, a 17-year old girl died after consuming an insecticide in a suicide attempt in Thanjavur, a district in the Tamil Nadu state of India. According to local news outlets, Lavanya, a grade 12 student at Sacred Heart Higher Secondary School, committed suicide due to an alleged forced conversion to Christianity.
In a video posted on Twitter on January 16, Barry Rosen, a former U.S. Diplomat among the 52 Americans held hostage during the U.S. Embassy attack in Tehran in 1979, announced his plans to go on a hunger strike. The hunger strike coincides with the 41 year anniversary of Rosen’s release after 444 days in Iranian custody.
On December 23, 2021, in an annual news conference held in Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said disrespecting the Prophet Mohammed is not freedom of expression. Insults against the Prophet Muhammad are a "violation of religious freedom and the violation of the sacred feelings of people who profess Islam."
On December 21, 2021, several videos surfaced showing several prominent Indian figures, including a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, calling for citizens to attack Muslims. The calls for violence originate at two separate events in Delhi and Haridwar on December 17 and 19.
On December 18, with tensions already high within the Sikh community of the Indian state of Punjab, the second post-sacrilege lynching took place in so many days. A man in the Kapurthala district was supposedly seen “disrespecting” the Nishan Sahib (the Sikh flag) by locals. Harkamalpreet Singh, a police officer at the scene, further explained that the man tried to steal the flag.
