In New South Wales, Australia, forty-eight-year-old defendant Hamdi Al-Qudsi appeared before the Supreme Court for his trial on July 18th. Al-Qudsi pleaded “not guilty” to charges that he intentionally directed a terrorist organization as he prepared toexecute attacks.
In Karnataka, India, a Hindu youth pretending to be Muslim posted a series of obscene posts on a fake social media profile insulting the Goddess Cauvery and the women of Kodagu. The police officials have arrested the suspect.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, authorities have taken action against the Tehran-based brand Domino Dairy for an ice cream commercial that shows a "provocative” image of a woman.
On July 11, Jafar Panahi, one of the most influential Iranian filmmakers, was taken into custody. He is the third director to be arrested in less than a week in Iran. He was arrested after he went to the prosecutor's office with his colleagues and lawyers to investigate why his fellow filmmakers, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-e Ahmad, were detained.
Arun Yadav, an IT cell in charge of the Haryana unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was removed from his post on July 7. The party has not provided any apparent reason. It is speculated that the party expelled Yadav because of a controversial tweet that he made against Islam in 2017. There was an online campaign on Twitter that demanded that Arun should be arrested for his controversial statements.
Pakistan's Blasphemy law has ruined many and sometimes taken lives since the country declared independence. In a recent hearing, a Christian believer named Ashfaq Masih, a mechanic was sentenced to death for blasphemy. The man was accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad by saying, "Jesus is supreme."
An honor-based family murder in a small town in the Fars province of Iran has once again sparked debates on the lack of laws to prevent “honor-killing” in Iran.
On June 27, the father of Ariana Lashkari shot the sixteen-year-old girl in the chest with a hunting rifle for allegedly laughing with a boy at a park, which he considered a disgrace to the family.
Teachers have been bewildered by the introduction of religious teachings in school education in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis recently launched a Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative (CLEI), which made Floridian teachers attend a three-day training session to learn how to indoctrinate students about Christianity.
On July 3rd, in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, the owner of a restaurant, Talib Hussain, was taken into police custody for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of the Hindu community by wrapping chicken dishes in old newspapers which contained the images of Hindu deities.
Locals that claim they saw him doing this had complained to the police.
An FIR was lodged by the senior sub-inspector, Ajay Kumar Tyagi, which stated that Talib Hussain was deliberately doing this to hurt the religious sentiments of the Hindus.
BJP leader Nupur Sharma was reprimanded by the Supreme Court last week for the inflammatory remarks that she made against the Islamic prophet. The Supreme Court said that her "loose tongue" had "put the entire country on fire,"
