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India's 'bulldozer justice' flattens Muslim dissent
AFP - 5 July 2022, 11:22 PM
After two nights in police custody, Indian teenager Somaiya Fatima was released in time to watch live footage of an excavator claw smashing into the walls of her childhood home.
Scores of dwellings and businesses have been flattened by wrecking crews this year, in a campaign authorities
have promoted as a battle against illegal construction and a firm response to criminal activity
© Sanjay KANOJIA
The residence is among scores of dwellings and businesses flattened by wrecking crews this year, in a campaign authorities have promoted by turns as a battle against illegal construction and a firm response to criminal activity.
Indian teenager Somaiya Fatima was released in time from jail to watch live footage of an excavator claw
smashing into the walls of her childhood home. © Sanjay KANOJIA
But rights groups have condemned "bulldozer justice" as an unlawful exercise in collective punishment by India's Hindu nationalist government, and many of the campaign's victims have one thing in common.
"We are Muslims and that's why we are being targeted," Fatima told AFP.
The 19-year-old was arrested along with her family after her father was accused of masterminding a large public protest in the northern city of Allahabad last month.
It was one of several rallies across India last month condemning a ruling party spokeswoman whose provocative comments about the Prophet Mohammed during a televised debate sparked anger across the Muslim world.
The day Fatima was released, she was sitting in a relative's living room when she came across footage of her home's destruction on her phone.
She said the demolition was a lesson for Muslims tempted to "speak up" against the government.
"They've instilled fear in an entire community," she said. "Everyone now looks at their home and thinks that if it happened to us, it can happen to them also."
Jordan: Man arrested for beating 2 daughters to death
Investigations revealed that the man used to constantly beat up his four children
Published: July 05, 2022 15:02
Khitam Al Amir, Chief News Editor
Sali and Ghazal, 12 and 9, who were beaten to death in Jordan by their father.
Image Credit: Supplied
Dubai: Jordanian security forces arrested a man for beating his two daughters to death in Ramtha, in the northwest of Jordan, local media reported.
The suspect has been allegedly accused of beating to death his daughters, Sali and Ghazal, 12 and 9, before he buried one of them in the vicinity of their house.
The spokesperson for the Public Security Directorate said an Arab woman lodged a complaint saying her ex-husband, who suffers from mental illness, brutally beat her four children continuously, two daughters and two sons. In her complaint, the mother said she fears for her children’s lives.
Police went to the house and arrested the suspect. While searching for the four children, only two boys were found and confirmed that their father had beaten them constantly. They also said that he killed their two sisters, 9 and 12 years old, after violently beating them.
During investigation, the father confessed that 10 days ago he had beaten one of his daughters, which led to her death and buried her in the vicinity of the house. Days later, he beat the other one to death, and threw her body into a pit next to the house. The spokesperson confirmed that the public prosecutor and the forensic doctor were immediately informed and summoned, and the bodies of the two girls were dug out and transferred to forensic medicine.
The two boys were sent to hospital to check on their physical and psychological conditions. According to a report by the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), 75 per cent of Jordanian children subject to physical violence.
Being physically violent against one's children is a Muslim right and expectation. Mental illness is no excuse because, as Syrian psychiatrist Wafa Sultan stated: “I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible…impossible…for any human being to read the biography of Mohammed and believe in it, and then emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.”
Metro ban for women without head coverings in Iran’s second city
Three coffee shops in Qom shut due to female customers not wearing head coverings
Published: July 06, 2022 18:52
AFP
A bazaar in Tehran. Since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian law requires all women, regardless of nationality or religious belief, to wear a hijab that covers the head and neck while concealing the hair.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
TEHRAN: Women in Iran’s second-largest city will be banned from taking the Mashhad metro if they are not wearing a head covering, local media reported on Wednesday.
Since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian law requires all women, regardless of nationality or religious belief, to wear a hijab that covers the head and neck while concealing the hair.
But many have pushed the boundaries over the past two decades by allowing their head coverings to slide back and reveal more hair, especially in Tehran and other major cities.
Mashhad’s deputy prosecutor wrote to the city’s governor “demanding he ban women not wearing an Islamic head covering from accessing the metro”, said the Young Journalists Club (YJC), a news agency linked to state television, publishing a copy of the June 26 letter.
If officials do not enforce the ban by July 6 “they will be prosecuted”, the letter said.
Mashhad, the capital of northeastern Razavi Khorasan province and home to more than three million people, is the site of the Imam Reza shrine, which honours one of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam.
“The letter from Mashhad’s deputy prosecutor is in accordance with the law,” Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri told the YJC, confirming the note’s authenticity.
On Tuesday, local media said authorities had closed three coffee shops in the city of Qom due to female customers not wearing head coverings.
Last month, police arrested several girls in the southern city of Shiraz after they removed their head coverings during a skateboarding event, along with organisers.
Mobs attack Christians’ homes, businesses after church's legal recognition
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor
Egypt Coptic church bombing
Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Outraged over the newly received formal legal recognition of a church in Egypt, Muslims in large crowds attacked and damaged the homes, shops and vehicles of many area Coptic Christians, according to a persecution watchdog.
The U.S.-based group, International Christian Concern, reported this week that Muslim mobs vandalized properties of Christians surrounding the Church of Michael the Archangel.
In the June 23 violence, Muslim mobs hurled rocks through the windows of homes and set fire to buildings and vehicles despite the presence of security personnel deployed in the area to protect the church, ICC said.
The local Christians had been waiting for years for the legal approval of the church, which was originally built in 2003.
“Throughout the process, Muslims in the area have rejected the legitimacy of the new church, asserting that the construction or restoration of a church contradicts Islamic law. The Conditions of Omar, thought to have been written by Caliph Omar I, is one Islamic text that they refer to. The text dictates that no churches should ever be built or repaired, and that Christians must make do with pre-existing churches only,” ICC said.
The Committee for the Legalization of Unlicensed Churches, which was formed in January 2017 comprising the ministers of justice, parliamentary affairs, and local development and housing, as well as representatives of local authorities and Christian communities, has legalized more than 1,600 churches in the Muslim-majority country.
However, opposition to churches by local Muslims remains.
The Copts, who make up about 10% of Egypt’s population, are the descendants of a long line of ancient Egyptians who later converted to Christianity in the early first century, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
According to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA, Egypt is among the 20 worst persecutors of Christians in the world.
Incidents of Christian persecution in Egypt vary from Christian women being harassed while walking in the street to Christian communities being driven out of their homes by extremist mobs, the group says on its website, adding that Christians are typically treated as second-class citizens.
Egypt’s government speaks positively about the Egyptian Christian community. Still, the lack of serious law enforcement and the unwillingness of local authorities to protect Christians leave them vulnerable to all kinds of attacks, especially in Upper Egypt, it explains.
“Due to the dictatorial nature of the regime, neither church leaders nor other Christians are in a position to speak out against these practices.”
Churches and Christian nongovernmental organizations are restricted in their ability to build new churches or run social services, it adds.
“The difficulties come both from state restrictions, as well as from communal hostility and mob violence.”
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