Indian police storm main library of New Delhi's Jamia Millia University on Sunday, firing teargas at students barricaded inside. Footage shot inside the library shows people scrambling over desks and climbing through smashed windows to escape
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Women protect unarmed man from police beating in India student protests – video
Women form human shield around man in New Delhi and shout 'go back, go back' as officers attempt to beat him with sticks. Protests have erupted across India against law to fast-track citizenship for everyone except Muslim asylum seekers
Continue reading...India protests: students condemn ‘barbaric’ police
Anger grows across country at new law which denies citizenship to Muslim migrants
Students in Delhi have condemned their “barbaric” treatment at the hands of police who stormed a peaceful protest against the new citizenship bill over the weekend, injuring dozens.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, students who were caught up in Sunday’s protest at Delhi’s predominately Muslim Jamia Millia Islamia University – which turned violent after police descended on the campus firing teargas and rubber bullets and beating demonstrators with batons – said it had turned into a “battlefield”.
Continue reading...India citizenship law: shock at crackdown may unite Modi opponents
Protests are most significant show of dissent in nearly six years of Modi in power
Student protests are not unusual in India. Nor is police violence. But the scenes of officers entering one of Delhi’s Muslim-majority universities, teargassing the library and beating demonstrators and bystanders have shocked a country thought to have become inured to both.
Fuelled by the apparent police brutality, protests against a controversial law to fast-track citizenship for everyone but Muslim asylum seekers were spreading on Monday to other major universities and cities across the country, in what is becoming the most significant show of dissent in the nearly six years since Narendra Modi took office.
Continue reading...Violent clashes continue in India over new citizenship bill
Protests spread to Delhi as BJP government accused of making Muslims second-class citizens
Violent clashes erupted in Delhi amid allegations a new citizenship bill discriminates against Muslims and undermines the secular foundations of India, with protests over the legislation spreading to other regions and prompting Japan’s prime minister to cancel a visit to the country.
Thousands took to the streets of Assam’s capital Guwahati for the third day, following the death of two protesters who were caught in police fire on Thursday. The north-eastern state has been the epicentre of the protests against the citizenship amendment bill (CAB).
Continue reading...Indian citizenship law discriminatory to Muslims passed
Bill will allow refugees from nearby states to become Indian but not if they are Muslims
Indian lawmakers have approved legislation granting citizenship to migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – but not if they are Muslim. Critics of the government said the legislation undermines the country’s secular constitution, as protests against the law intensified in some parts of the country.
The citizenship amendment bill seeks to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled the three countries before 2015.
Continue reading...Over a dozen killed in Baghdad when gunmen open fire on protesters
Attack follows mass stabbings in Tahrir Square, a focus of the anti-government movement
At least 14 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded when gunmen in cars opened fire on a protest camp in Baghdad, sending people running for cover in nearby mosques. Three of the victims were police officers.
The attacks on Friday came a day after a string of suspicious stabbing incidents left at least 13 wounded in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the centre of Iraq’s leaderless protest movement.
Continue reading...India: Muslim Sanskrit professor forced to flee by Hindu students
Feroz Khan in hiding after nationalist group protested he ‘cannot teach us our religion’
A Muslim scholar of Sanskrit has gone into hiding after protests from some rightwing Hindu students claiming that, as a Muslim, he cannot teach Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of Hinduism.
Feroz Khan, 29, was the unanimous choice of a selection committee at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi for the post of assistant professor of Sanskrit literature. The committee members were impressed with his erudition, which stems from a childhood passion for the language that continued into further education.
Continue reading...Ayodhya: India’s top court gives Hindus site claimed by Muslims
Supreme court says site where mosque was torn down in 1992 should become Hindu temple
The Indian supreme court has ruled that India’s most hotly contested piece of religious land rightfully belongs to Hindus, and has granted permission for a temple to be built on the site in Ayodhya.
The five supreme court judges based their unanimous and historic judgment on Hindus’ claim that the site is the birthplace of the god Ram.
Continue reading...India tense before ruling on holy site claimed by Muslims and Hindus
Supreme court due to decide fate of Ayodhya, where mosque was torn down by Hindu hardliners in 1992
India’s supreme court is expected to make a historic ruling on Saturday over the highly disputed religious site of Ayodhya, which is claimed by Hindus and Muslims.
The site has been one of the country’s most controversial religious grounds since the Babri mosque, which had been standing since the 16th century, was reduced to rubble by Hindu fundamentalists during a 1992 riot in which more than 2,000 people died.
Continue reading...‘Fear factor is broken’: protesters demand removal of Iraqi government
Crowds of dissenters in central Baghdad want Iranian influence banished from Iraqi politics
The biggest protest movement in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein has pressed its demand for the removal of the elected government, staring down an embattled political elite and the widespread influence of Iran.
Friday’s rallies of tens of thousands came a day after supporters of Iraq’s embattled leader, Adil Abdul Mahdi, believed they had won the backing of one of two powerful figures that threatened his premiership, a development that appeared to stabilise his position on Thursday.
Continue reading...In Iraq, religious ‘pleasure marriages’ are a front for child prostitution
BBC investigation exposes Shia clerics in Baghdad advising men on how to abuse girls
I’m walking through the security cordon that leads into Kadhimiyah, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. I’m in a queue, along with dozens of pilgrims who have come from all over the world to pay their respects to the shrine of Imam Kadhim. At the gate, a female security guard pats me down and looks into my handbag, a reminder that the story I’m reporting on here isn’t going to be easy.
As I walk around the market stalls surrounding the shrine, I notice the many “marriage offices” dotted around the mosque, which are licensed to perform Sharia marriages. I’d received tips that some clerics here were performing short-term mutaa [pleasure] marriages, a practice – illegal under Iraqi law – whereby a men can pay for a temporary wife, with the officiating cleric receiving a cut.
Continue reading...French education minister reignites row over Muslim headscarf
Minister says he wants to avoid having mothers in hijab as volunteers on school trips
A fresh political row has erupted over the Muslim headscarf in France after the education minister said he wanted to avoid having mothers in hijab as volunteers on school outings.
Jean-Michel Blanquer criticised the country’s largest parents association for using a picture of a mother in a headscarf on a pamphlet under the words: “Yes I go on school trips, so what? Secularism is about welcoming all parents without exception.”
Continue reading...Indonesian president postpones plans to outlaw extramarital sex
Apparent climbdown follows wave of anger and criticism over draconian draft laws
Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, has ordered his government to postpone the ratification of a deeply controversial criminal code that would outlaw living together outside marriage, extramarital sex and insulting the president.
The apparent climbdown came in a surprise address at the state palace on Friday afternoon, and follows an outpouring of anger and criticism about the draconian draft laws.
Continue reading...Ministers accused of ‘radio silence’ over LGBT school protests
Louise Casey says Birmingham demonstrations have been put in ‘all-too-difficult box’
The former integration tsar, Dame Louise Casey, has accused ministers of “radio silence” over protests against the teaching of LGBT equality at a Birmingham school.
Casey said the government had failed to act on what she described as homophobic demonstrations because it was in the “all-too-difficult box”.
Continue reading...China: A New World Order review – are we conniving with a genocidal dictatorship?
This documentary dared to do what politicians the world over would not, asking tough questions of Xi Jinping’s hardline rule
The drink Mihrigul Tursun’s captors offered her was strangely cloudy. It resembled, she said, water after washing rice. After drinking it, the young mother recalled in China: A New World Order (BBC Two), her period stopped. “It didn’t come back until five months after I left prison. So my period stopped seven months in total. Now it’s back, but it’s abnormal.”
We never learned why Tursun was detained – along with an estimated one million other Uighurs of Xinjiang province, in what the authorities euphemistically call re-education centres – but we heard clearly her claims of being tortured. “They cut off my hair and electrocuted my head,” Tursun said. “I couldn’t stand it any more. I can only say please just kill me.”
Continue reading...Leaked emails show Ukip leader comparing Muslims to Nazis
Richard Braine accused of stoking tensions after also saying there are no ‘moderate Muslims’
Richard Braine, the new Ukip leader, has been accused of whipping up religious tensions and anti-Muslim prejudice after leaked emails showed he argued that people should no more want Muslims to settle in their country than Nazis.
Braine, who won the leadership after a campaign in which he expressed anti-Islam views, also suggested that non-Muslims needed to help Muslims to “cast out their demon” and argued there was no such thing as “moderate Muslims”.
Continue reading...Dutch ‘burqa ban’ rendered largely unworkable on first day
Police and transport companies have signalled unwillingness to enforce face covering ban
The Netherlands’ so-called burqa ban has been rendered largely unworkable on its first day in law after both the police and Dutch transport companies signalled an unwillingness to enforce it.
Under the terms of the Partial Ban on Face-Covering Clothing Act, the wearing of ski masks, full-face helmets, balaclavas, niqabs and burqas is prohibited in public buildings including schools and hospitals and on public transport.
Continue reading...Muslim woman in ‘burkini’ told to leave pool in New Zealand
Auckland council blames confusion about rules on appropriate swimwear for ‘unfortunate’ incident
A council in New Zealand has apologised to a Muslim woman who was told to leave a public pool after wearing a “burkini”.
Auckland council has since apologised to the woman, who was swimming at the West Wave Pool in Henderson.
Continue reading...Trump has made Ilhan Omar the face of his re-election strategy
In Omar, the president has at long last found a face to his stigmatization of Muslims – and so, too, have his allies
The chants of “send her back” reverberated across the rally of thousands on Wednesday as Donald Trump stood at the podium and attacked Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized US citizen who arrived in the country as a teenager after her family fled Somalia.
It was not the first time Trump had sought to vilify Omar, who in November became one of the first two Muslim women elected to the US Congress and has emerged as a key target of the president and Republicans.
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