An Iraqi woman and former sex slave kidnapped by Islamic State (IS) militants a decade ago was freed from Gaza following a complicated operation months in the making that involved the United States as well as Iraq and Israel.
The Iraqi parliament is proposing changes to the country’s family and marriage laws, which would reportedly give more power to Muslim clerics on family and marriage matters and would even open the doors to legalize marriage for children as young as nine years old, with women’s right activists and organizations saying the proposals would “legalize child rape.”
A court in Iraq sentenced one of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s wives to death after she was charged with being allegedly complicit in crimes committed by the Islamic State against Yazidi women, Iraq’s judiciary announced on July 10th.
The criminal court in Baghdad imposed a death sentence on the wife of terrorist criminal Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for collaborating with ISIS and imprisoning Yezidi women in her home. pic.twitter.com/usnl3DnW5l
Iraq’s Parliament recently postponed a plan to vote on a proposed bill passed on April 15th that would make same-sex acts punishable by death as the country’s prime minister is set to meet with US President Joe Biden over plans to increase investment in the Middle Eastern country.
Media outlets and social media platforms operating in Iraq may no longer be able to use the word “homosexuality” in the future, as the Arab country plans to penalize the use of this term and instead recommends using the phrase “sexual deviance.”
After two separate incidents of Quran burning in Sweden and Denmark this July, emotions run extremely high in Iraq, where the Swedish embassy was torched down by protesters along with an attempt to storm the Danish diplomatic mission in the country’s capital Baghdad.
Video footage shows the Swedish embassy in Iraq on fire after hundreds of people stormed the complex in a protest against the planned burning of a Quran in Sweden pic.twitter.com/PAkccnCIz6
The Kurdistan region of Iraq was shocked upon learning about the murder of a Kurdish artist in a town in one of its provinces over allegations that he criticized Islam and was an atheist.
Wirya’s killing went viral on social media, where they accused the Islamic parties and Salafists in the Kurdistan Region for inciting the killer to commit the crime. https://t.co/3Ap7sxzXie
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.
A young Iraqi YouTube star was murdered by her father on January 31st, sparking outrage in a country where women are often targeted by their male relatives in family disputes.
A 23-year old transwoman from Iraq was killed by her brother on what authorities and advocacy groups are calling a case of honor killing. Doski Azad, a transwoman who came out to her family and left home over five years ago, worked as a makeup artist in Dohuk city center, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
