Rights group says execution is first during the fasting month since 2009
Saudi Arabia has executed a man during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which a rights group said on Monday had not occurred in years.
The execution took place on 28 March – five days into the fasting month – in the Medina region, which includes Islam’s second holiest city, the official Saudi Press Agency has reported.
Continue reading...Israeli settler movement is making life harder for Jerusalem’s Palestinians and erasing Christian character of holy city
Even in a city as storied as Jerusalem, some places are holier than others. The Mount of Olives, studded with churches marking events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, home to the most sacred Jewish cemetery in the world and tombs celebrated as those of the Sufi mystic Rabia al-Basri and the medieval scholar Mujir al-Din, is one such place.
Christians believe Jesus spent the last days of his life here, while according to the Hebrew Bible, the mount is where the resurrection will begin; in both Christianity and Islam, it is revered as the site Jesus ascended to heaven. The Mount of Olives’ summit, which gives the clearest view of the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sherif, has served as a pilgrimage destination for all three faiths for millennia.
Continue reading...Sadai Banowan violated ‘laws and regulations of the Islamic emirate’, says local Taliban official
A female-run radio station in Afghanistan’s north-east has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said.
Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only female-run station and started 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them female.
Continue reading...Matiullah Wesa, head of Pen Path, beaten and arrested outside a mosque after prayers
The founder of a project that campaigned for girls’ education in Afghanistan has been detained by Taliban authorities in Kabul, his brother and the UN have said.
The Taliban government last year barred girls from attending secondary school, making Afghanistan the only country in the world where there is a ban on education.
Continue reading...Queensland Human Rights Commission disagrees with assertion complaint is ‘lacking in substance’ and refers matter to tribunal over jurisdiction
Twitter has lost a bid to have a complaint by an advocacy group for Australian Muslims thrown out after they accused the platform of failing to take action against accounts that incite hatred.
The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (Aman) lodged a complaint to the Queensland Human Rights Commission (QHRC) last June. They argued that, as a publisher, Twitter Australia and Twitter Inc are responsible for content posted by a far-right account that has been referred to in the manifesto of a white supremacist and mass murderer.
Continue reading...Bloodshed and hardline Israeli politics raise tensions on eve of Muslim holy month
In the Old City of Jerusalem and the Palestinian neighbourhoods surrounding it, preparations for Ramadan are under way: strings of festive lights and lanterns are ready to welcome sundown on Thursday, while sweet shops and bakers are busy making qatayef – fried dumplings filled with cream or sweet cheese, traditionally eaten during the Muslim holy month.
The period of fasting that commemorates Gabriel’s revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammad is a time for self-discipline, reflection and celebrations with family and friends. As with almost every religious holiday in the contested city, however, this year Ramadan is accompanied by worries of surging violence.
Continue reading...Mayor turns on display made up of 30,000 sustainable lights on eve of Muslim month of fasting
Sadiq Khan has switched on the London’s first ever celebratory Ramadan lights, in Piccadilly Circus.
It is the first time a European city has seen such a grand display for the festival, with the installation featuring 30,000 sustainable lights.
Continue reading...Move met with indignation by many across country, where liquor sales have boomed in recent years
Over the past two decades of problems in Iraq, where to find a drink has never been one of them. But one of the country’s most popular vices – alcohol – is again at the centre of a tussle between hardliners, who are demanding an import ban, and drinkers intent on defying them.
The latest row about whether alcohol can be served has followed a decree from a conservative cabinet minister at the weekend that ordered customs officials to impose an import ban.
Continue reading...The verdict, the first of its kind in almost a decade, has shocked many who fear country is sliding back into state extremism
Three Sudanese men have been sentenced to hand amputation for stealing, the first time in almost a decade that such a punishment has been handed down in the country’s courts.
The three men in their 20s were convicted of stealing gas cylinders in Omdurman, Sudan’s most populous city, which sits across the Nile River from the capital, Khartoum.
Continue reading...Killing is latest in string of mob attacks against people accused of blasphemy in Muslim-majority south Asian country
A mob in eastern Pakistan stormed a police station on Saturday and snatched a Muslim man accused of blasphemy from police custody and lynched him, in the latest religion-linked killing in the conservative Islamic country.
Muhammad Waris, in his mid-30s, was in police custody in Nankana Sahib in Punjab province, 80km (50 miles) from Lahore, for desecrating pages of the Qur’an.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Erkin Tuniyaz ‘played central role’ in persecution of Uyghurs, says inter-parliamentary alliance on China
The Foreign Office has shocked cross-party opponents of the Chinese treatment of Uyghur groups by revealing that it has asked the Xinjiang governor for talks.
MPs belonging to the inter-parliamentary alliance on China (Ipac) called it “incomprehensible” that “anybody within government would think it appropriate to meet with someone who has played a central role in the persecution of Uyghurs – crimes our own parliament has declared to be genocide”.
Continue reading...Politicians accused of stigmatising Muslims and migrants after man with machete entered two churches in Algeciras
Conservative and far-right Spanish political leaders have been accused of seeking to smear and stigmatise Muslims and migrants after a suspected Islamist terrorist attack on two churches in the southern city of Algeciras in which one man was killed and four other people were injured.
On Wednesday evening, a man with a machete entered the Andalucían city’s San Isidro church and seriously wounded a priest there before going to the nearby Nuestra Señora de La Palma church and killing its sacristan, Diego Valencia. Three other people were injured in the violence.
Continue reading...Event in front of Turkish embassy will further inflame tensions between two countries
Turkey has condemned a demonstration involving the burning of Qur’ans in Sweden on Saturday, further inflaming tensions between the two countries amid Stockholm’s Nato bid.
The protest in Stockholm, which took place under heavy police protection in front of Turkey’s embassy, gathered about 100 people and a crowd of reporters, Agence France-Presse reported.
Continue reading...Campaigners urge policymakers to act on ‘cycle of poverty’ entrapping generations of British muslims
Campaigners have urged policymakers to act on the “cycle of poverty” entrapping generations of British Muslims, as the latest census shows that 39% of Muslims are now living in the most deprived areas of England and Wales.
The proportion of people who identify as Muslim has risen by 1.2 million in 10 years, bringing the Muslim population to 3.9 million in 2021, the census shows. Overall, Muslims now make up 6.5% of the population in England and Wales, up from 4.9% in 2011.
Continue reading...Head of World Cup organising committee says he sees rainbow armband as protest against Islamic values
The head of Qatar’s World Cup organising committee has accused teams who wanted to wear the OneLove armband at the World Cup of sending a “very divisive message” to the Islamic and Arab world.
Hassan al-Thawadi’s comments came as the UK sports minister Stuart Andrew said he would wear the rainbow-coloured armband at the England v Wales match on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Report finds stock indexes provided by MSCI include companies using forced labour or constructing surveillance state in Xinjiang
Many of the world’s largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report.
The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China’s Xinjiang region.
Continue reading...Makers of Bollywood film say it is based on real information and events but have not provided any evidence
Police in Kerala are investigating a controversial Bollywood film that portrays the southern Indian state as a hub of Islamic terrorism and forced conversion.
The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, has come under criticism for its fictional depiction of tens of thousands of women from Kerala who it claims were converted to Islam and became terrorists for Islamic State in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.
Continue reading...Teargas also used against protesters gathered in home town of 22-year-old Kurdish woman, says rights group
Iranian security forces have clashed with protesters who had gathered in their thousands in Mahsa Amini’s home town to mark 40 days since her death, with reports that shots were fired.
“Security forces have shot teargas and opened fire on people in Zindan Square, Saqqez city,” Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, tweeted without specifying whether there were any dead or wounded. It said more than 50 civilians were injured by direct fire in cities across the region.
Continue reading...The bravery of the women’s rights fight in Tehran and beyond is a cause for hope – and a call to action
It was in the strange days between the Queen’s death and her funeral that the bad news from Iran broke through the blanket coverage of the state mourning rituals. The news that pierced this was the report that a young woman had died in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, had been taken into custody because of “bad hijab”. She was visiting relatives in Tehran with her brother when the morality police challenged her about a few strands of hair that were showing from her standard hijab. According to her brother, she was in custody for just two hours before collapsing and being taken to hospital, where she lay in a coma before dying on 16 September. The authorities claimed that she had a heart attack from a pre-existing condition. Her family deny this, and state that her head and body were covered in bruises and signs of being beaten.
Continue reading...The uprising over the death of Masha Amini is like no other, but whether it leads to revolution remains to be seen
The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, was holding court to a small group of journalists at the Millennium Hilton in New York on his first visit to the United States since his election in June 2021. At home, protests over the death in police custody of Masha Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, were entering their sixth day.
At the start of the meeting, a 10-minute film was shown, part patriotic travel brochure and part paen to how the Iranian people “live peacefully together in a new model of democracy”. Given the events in Iran, it seemed like the kind of absurd propaganda only a severely self-deluded regime would screen.
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