Author: Priya Saha

The U.S. House of Representatives backed an amendment last week that requires the Secretary of State to prepare an assessment of whether Turkey’s Grey Wolves should be categorised as a terrorist organisation. In his analysis on the matter, former member of the Turkish parliament and senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Aykan Erdemir compiles various attempts to ban or penalise the Turkish ultranationalist group across Europe. Will Washington join its European allies in their pushback against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s far-right partners? A version of the text follows below, originally published by FDD: The…

Oct 1 (Reuters) – For years, Rohingya leader Mohib Ullah, one of the most prominent advocates for the persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar, predicted he would be killed by the hardliners who regularly sent him death threats.”If I die, I’m fine. I will give my life,” he told Reuters in 2019 in his office in a bamboo hut in one of the Bangladesh refugee camps outside the port of Cox’s Bazar. “If suddenly there’s an ‘accident’, no problem. Every community worker gives his life at last.”On Wednesday night, gunmen shot him dead in the same office where he held community…

Number of countries with terrorist activity related to religion declines for a fifth consecutive year How we did this This is the 12th in a series of annual reports by Pew Research Center analyzing the extent to which governments and societies around the world impinge on religious beliefs and practices. The studies are part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. To measure global restrictions on religion in 2019 – the most recent year for which data is available – the study rates 198 countries and territories by…

posted September 30, 2021 at 08:10 pm by  AFP United Nations—UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an “urgent” international response to the political crisis created in Myanmar by the February 1 military coup, in a new report released by the United Nations on Wednesday.  In the document on “the situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar,” the UN chief also said he feared that the military’s grip on power would become increasingly difficult to counter.  “It is urgent to mount a unified international and regional response to help to put Myanmar back on the path to…

Indian media has recently tried to spread unverified reports about the involvement of the Pakistan Army in Panjsher, Afghanistan. It was most humiliating for the Indian Gen Bakshi to be told that the pictures of the Pakistan army’s involvement in Afghanistan that he had presented as proof, were those of Pakistani actors from the movie Yalghar.  Likewise,  the obstinate insistence of the  Indian anchor Goswami on the presence of ISI officers on the 5th floor of Serena Hotel in Kabul became a butt of mockery when there was a spade of tweets to expose that Serena has only 2 floors.…

The suffering of the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority continues in Iraq, as survivors of the Islamic State persecution seek recognition, reparations and closure. The Yazidis, who follow their own ancient pre Iranian religion and inhabit the northwestern Sinjar region of Iraq, were the victims of unimaginable brutality at the hands of the Islamic State (IS). The campaign against them began in August 2014 and resulted in the massacre of 5,000 men, whilst at least 7,000 women and girls were sold into sexual slavery. However, the true scale of the horror may never be known. Last spring, a “landmark” investigation…

Demonstrators hold signs apologizing for their past failures to support Rohingya in Monywa, Myanmar, this past Aug. 25. It was the fourth anniversary of the start of a military campaign of killings and arson against Rohingya, a majority-Muslim ethnic group in a mostly Buddhist Southeast Asian country. Kaung Hsu Thar/The Globe and Mail In the eight months since a military coup, Myanmar’s ethnic majority has shown unprecedented efforts to build solidarity with long-persecuted minorities, including the Rohingya, and to make amends for failures to stand with them in the past. Since the military seized power on Feb. 1, its forces…

Human rights activists in Pakistan have slammed the recent judgment of Lahore High Court that mental capacity outweighs age in child religious conversion cases.Justice Tariq Nadeem last week rejected a petition filed by Gulzar Masih, a Catholic rickshaw driver from Faisalabad, seeking the recovery of his 14-year-old daughter Chashman from her alleged abductor Muhammad Usman.The judge said neither the Holy Quran nor any specific hadith of Prophet Muhammad expressly stipulates a minimum age for conversion to Islam. Prophet Ali was only 10 when he accepted Islam, he said, adding that Muslim jurists regard the mental capacity of a child as of crucial…

Representative ImageLahore [Pakistan], September 29 (ANI): A Pakistani sessions court passed on a verdict of death penalty to a Muslim woman of blasphemy under the charge of Section 295-C of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).The woman was sentenced to death and fined Pakistani Rs 50,000.”It is proved beyond reasonable doubt that accused Salma Tanveer wrote and distributed the writings which are derogatory in respect of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and she failed to prove that her case falls in exception provided by section 84 of PPC,” rules Additional District & Sessions Judge Mansoor Ahmad Qureshi in his 22-page verdict, Dawn reported.An…

Shri Shri Gouri Shankar Goshala Society, an integral part of the heritage of Lalmonirhat town, is shambling with the financial crisis as a portion of its properties has been illegally occupied by a local influential, while some other portion was acquired by the government around 50 years ago. This institution gave its name to the Goshala Bazar and Goshala Road in the town. Established to fund Hindu ritual activities in the locality, with the course of time, it became the epicentre for the Hindu community in the district. But now, despite owning 14 acres of property, the institution is struggling…

Pakistan (International Christian Concern) – This week, Pakistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs rejected a bill that would have criminalized “forcible conversion after threats to call for violent protests from Islamic clerics and scholars,” according to The Media Line. The Anti-Forced Conversion Bill 2021 was recently prepared by Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights and aimed to protect underage girls from being kidnapped and forced to marry and convert to Islam. The law, if passed, would have forbidden the conversion of a non-Muslim to another religion, including Islam, until the expressed age of maturity, 18 years old. The consequences per violation would…

Application of Foreigners Act, 1946 on Religious minorities protected under CAA 2019 The Calcutta High Court last week sought the State government’s stand on the application of the Foreigners Act, 1946 in respect of prosecution of religious minorities from Bangladesh in light of the fact that non-Muslim religious minorities from neighboring countries have been precluded from being treated as ‘illegal immigrants’ vide the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 amended the Citizenship Act, 1955 by inserting a proviso to Section 2, Sub-section 1 of the principal legislation. The amendment grants citizenship on the basis of religion to…