On July 29, three Jehovah’s Witnesses were sentenced to six years in prison, on top of the two years they served while waiting for their trial. Two of the Jehova’s Witnesses are father and son, Vilen(68) and Arsen(37) Avanesov. Aleksandr Parkov (53), a companion, was also charged. Arsen and Parkov were sentenced to six and a half years, while Vilen was sentenced to six years. By the end of their time, they would have all spent nearly a decade behind bars.
Gerald Darmanin, France’s Interior Minister, in an interview with RTL radio in February 2021, commented on the proposed Anti-Separatism Bill. Darmanin describes the bill as tough but necessary, calling it “an extremely strong secular offensive.” The bill passed the lower house of the French parliament on Friday, July 23, 2021. Darmanin sponsored the bill with the support of his party, La République En Marche.
On June 7, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, a French court convicted 11 out of 13 accused of cyberbullying a teenager over her views against Islam on social media. The 18-year-old started receiving threatening messages after her video criticizing Islam and the Quran posted last year from her social media accounts went viral.
The Vatican had sent a letter to the Italian government to request a change in a new anti-homophobia law to be passed. On June 17th, a "verbal note" by the Vatican's secretary of relation with states, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, was delivered to the Italian embassy, as confirmed by a spokesperson of the Vatican.
On June 5, a funeral procession of an Ahmadi woman in Safdarabad, Punjab, was attacked on its way to the cemetery by a local mob led by right-wing Muslim clerics. The mob opposed the idea of having an Ahmadi person being buried near a Muslim graveyard.
Complete impunity for clerics & mob that attacked funeral of Ahmadi woman in Safdarabad, Sheikhapura, despite FIR.
But punishment for Ahmadis that were attacked.
The Lahore High Court ruled against a Pakistani Christian couple's blasphemy conviction against Islam back in 2014. Shagufta Kausar and her husband Shafqat Emmanuel are finally expected to be freed after fighting a 7-year-long battle against their death sentence when they shouldn't have been convicted at all.
On May 3, 2021, the right-wing pastor and televangelist Andrew Wommack made horrible anti-LGBTQ+ comments on his podcast alongside his guest, anti-LGBTQ+ religious-right activist, Janet Porter. He said that gay people should wear labels on their foreheads as a warning sign because their sexuality could be "hazardous" to health.
