The Satanic Temple (TST) filed suit against the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The city provides council members the choice of who gives the invocation before each meeting when they should be accepting requests from any community member to cite the prayer without regard for which deity they worship.
Authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province publicly caned two gay men — a total of 77 times each — with rattan sticks.
In Aceh's Tamansari city park, dozens of citizens witnessed the cruel enforcement of sharia law. Human rights activists chided Indonesia's authorities for the sadistic showcase.
In December 2020, a 16-year-old boy was constrained under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) for "detailed plans and preparations to conduct terrorist attacks" on Muslims as they worshipped in two local Mosques, authorities reported on January 27th, 2021.
The suspect was not identified because he is underage. The nameless Singaporean teenager is a Protestant Christian of Indian ethnicity. He is the youngest citizen to be investigated under the ISA for terrorism-related activities, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said in a media release.
On January 28th, the terrorist convicted (and later acquitted) of the 2002 abduction and beheading of Daniel Pearl, was ordered to be released by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. The court also dismissed an appeal of the killer’s, Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, acquittal filed by Pearl’s family and the Pakistani government.
Ultra-Orthodox demonstrators clashed with police in two of Israel’s major cities. Enforcing coronavirus restrictions in these religious neighborhoods has brought great challenges for local authorities.
A 13-year-old Nigerian sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemy is finally free as he wins his appeal in Kano state.
In August 2020, Omar Farouq was convicted in a Sharia court in Kano State of northwestern Nigeria, after being accused of using foul language about Allah while arguing with a friend.
Though only 13 years old, Farouq was tried as an adult because he has attained puberty and has full responsibility under Islamic law.
In a July 2020 interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Adrian Zenz, a German academic, explained how his opinion of the Communist Party of China’s actions in the Xinjiang region of Western China have changed. He once argued that China's actions are a "cultural genocide" as opposed to a literal one. But since recent developments regarding the suppression of birth rates among minorities of Xinjiang, Zenz now says that "we do need to probably call it genocide."
The state-run body (Diyanet) claims the tradition of wearing an eye-shaped blue amulet, the ‘evil-eye’ — which is believed to have originated from as far back as 3,300 BCE — is incompatible with Islam and prohibited. This tradition has become widely adopted in Turkey.
"Although the nature and condition of the evil eye are unknown, it is accepted by religion that some people can create negative effects with their gaze," according to the advisory published by Diyanet on the internet.
India’s Crime Inspection Department (CID) apprehended a man enticed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to leak sensitive information with nude photos of women and seductive conversations with them, India Today reported. He added that his greed for more pornography led him to reveal secret military information.
