After a group of women’s rights associations in Morocco united and launched a campaign called “It's Time to Change the Law" to fight for equal rights, Islamic clerics and conservative social media influencers also banded together to oppose this campaign.
On May 2, 2023, several women’s rights activists and organizations unveiled the campaign to call for changes in Morocco’s laws, notably its Family Code and Family Law, to align with the country’s constitution and international obligations regarding women’s rights.
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.
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 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.
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.
As Iran’s government continues to crack down on dissent against its mandatory hijab laws and enforce them more strictly, the policy created an unintended negative economic consequence: Massive unemployment among tens of thousands of Iranians.
The considerable loss of jobs comes as the Islamic Republic closed down at least 2,000 businesses in March alone after women refused to comply with its mandatory hijab rules, resulting in tens of thousands losing their jobs.
Almost a year after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under the custody of Iran’s morality police after not wearing her hijab correctly, another woman lost her life after a fight over a forced hijab dispute last April 23rd.
The Islamic Republic has recently unveiled new plans to further impose its strict mandatory hijab laws despite massive backlash from Iranian women after the death of Mahsa Amini last September 2022, promising to further crackdown on dissent against the rule.
Some of these proposed policies include setting up hijab enforcement groups in the stations of the Tehran metro, which would ban any woman not wearing a headscarf from entering and effectively ban them from going to work or school.
An Italian woman given the moniker “The Saint” mysteriously left a lakeside town near Rome after a private investigator opened a judicial investigation against her after claiming that the Virgin Mary statue she brought shed tears of blood.
‘The Saint’ leaves Italian town after case opened into statue’s ‘tears of blood’ https://t.co/L43YZZaXOi
