Gower is a small and quiet city in rural Missouri that made headlines recently when hundreds of pilgrims and devotees flocked to the town after receiving news that an African-American nun’s body was found intact, despite being buried for roughly four years.
To show that it remains keen on enforcing its mandatory Islamic dress code laws, the Islamic Republic of Iran is pushing for a new, stricter hijab bill that will impose harsher punishments against women who are not wearing the religious headscarf and those who encourage them not to wear the hijab.
The new proposal was slammed by activists and Iranians opposing the regime. Hardliners and pro-government supporters also criticized the new bill for being too lenient and saying it doesn’t go far enough.
A young Hindu man from Bangladesh was arrested and convicted for allegedly insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad through a social media post around six years ago.
On May 23rd, a court in the city of Rangpur in northwestern Bangladesh convicted a man named Titu Roy for making derogatory, anti-Islam remarks on Facebook, sentencing him to ten years in prison.
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.
A temple entry issue raged in the village of Melpathi in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where some members of upper-caste Hindus blocked a local temple and even threatened to immolate themselves to stop Dalits from entering.
A female engineer in the Indian state of Gujarat committed suicide after her in-laws allegedly pressured her to perform Sati, an ancient, now illegal practice in Hinduism where a widow sits on top of her deceased husband’s funeral pyre.
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.
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
A new report from a non-profit and non-partisan research center reveals that fewer Americans see religion's importance in their lives than a decade ago, showing how the religious landscape in the United States has changed dramatically.
"The importance of religion in the lives of Americans is on the decline."https://t.co/w7t12q89Sm
