Minaret of Freedom Weblog

Transporting “Noureddine Bhairi and his sister-in-law … to an unknown destination” is President Kais Saied’s latest move to drag Tunisia into tyranny:

• Tunisia’s Ennahdha Party Says Senior Official Detained (Aljazeera)

At one point Facebook blamed the “widescale deletion of Palestinian posts” on “a technical bug that it sought to fix,” but, to the alarm of rights groups, the deletions persist:

• Palestinians Raise Alarm over Facebook Content ‘Suppression’ (France 24)

The Gujarat High Court rejects the claim that Islamic law grants power to a husband to force a woman to cohabit with him against his will:

• On “Muslim Law Permits Polygamy”, a High Court Ruling on Wife’s Rights (NDTV)

Supporters say Modi’s policies have decreased violence, but a more careful look shows a “re-militarisation of the Valley has since been swift and comprehensive” and bodes ill:

• How Modi Govt’s Policies in 2021 Inflamed Rather Than Diffused Conflict in Kashmir (The Wire)

Unsatisfied with Taliban assertions that restrictions are “recommendations, not compulsory,” the Biden administration refuses to release the Afghani government’s funds, even in the face of some Democratic dissent in Congress:

• Taliban Cracks Down on More Rights While Demanding Western Aid (Washington Post)
• More than 40 House Democrats Urge Treasury Department to Unfreeze Afghanistan’s Bank Reserves (Washington Post)

“The petition cited inflammatory speeches made by … [the] priest of Dasna temple, the anti-Muslim slogans made at the Jantar Mantar rally” and disruptions of Friday prayers at which protesters spread cow dung and issued “threatening slogans”:

• Muslim Body Moves Supreme Court Against Hate Speeches (The Hindu)

“The liberal Zionist vision of partition has been outmaneuvered and defeated by its [right-wing] opponents”:

• The Two-State Solution Is Dead—and Liberal Zionists Can’t Save It (Foreign Policy)

That Tunisian President Kais Saied’s plan for a return to democracy is disturbingly unpromising is no surprise, but the U.S.’s “tepid” response is simply disgraceful:

• The Tunisian President’s Election Plan Is Troubling. So Is the U.S. Response (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

Not satisfied with their violence against Palestinians, settlers now expand their sights to include members of the Israeli government itself:

• An Israeli Leader Criticized Jewish ‘Settler Violence.’ Now He Has 24/7 Protection After Extremist Threats (Washington Post)

“[P]olitical parties across the mainstream-separatist spectrum in the Kashmir Valley” see the MOUs coming out of the conference as a nail in the coffin of their autonomy intended to transfer land from locals to owners from outside the once semi-autonomous region:

• Day After Realty Summit, Kashmir Parties Slam Attempt to ‘Change Demography’ (Indian Express)

The UAE is changing its laws out of consideration for the foreigners who comprise 90% of it spopulation:

• UAE Issues First Civil Marriage Licence for Non-Muslim Couple (Aljazeera)

“Israel collects hundreds of millions of dollars worth of taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority …, but Israel has withheld funds over the Palestinian Authority’s payment of stipends to thousands of families that have had loved ones killed, wounded or imprisoned in the conflict”:

• Israel Approves Measures for Palestinians After Leaders Meet (NBC News)

“The ban, which will be in place until March 6, will free up 209 megawatts of power for consumption in the household sector”:

• Iran Orders Crypto-mining Ban to Prevent Winter Blackouts (Aljazeera)

“Israel refused to grant Archbishop Tutu and Professor Chinkin authorisation to enter Gaza, but they were eventually able to travel to the besieged territory via Egypt”:

• Anti-apartheid Icon Archbishop Tutu Dies. Here Is What He Said About Israel-Palestine (Middle East Eye))

The Sangh Parivar seeks to claim exclusively for Hindus a shrine belonging to both Islamic Sufi and Hindu Avadhuta traditions,  which has been “a symbol of Hindu-Muslim amity for centuries”:

• Datta Peetha-Bababudangiri: How Karnataka’s Hindu-Muslim Shrine Became ‘Ayodhya of the South’ (The Print)

Israel illegally annexed Syria’s Golan Heights in 1981:

• Israel plans to Double Settlement in Golan Heights (Press Herald)

“Most Christians in Iran are ethnic Armenians who celebrate Christmas on January 6” …

• Christian Prisoners in Iran Get Rare 10-Day Holiday Leave (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)

… but  foreigners are not included in the leave:

• French Tourist Jailed in Iran Goes on Hunger Strike (Reuters)

“While Kashmiri parties are disappointed that six of the seven proposed new seats in the state assembly have been allocated to Jammu, Jammu parties were unhappy that Kashmir continues to have a greater share of total assembly seats”:

• Here’s Why Neither Kashmir Nor Jammu Is Happy With Delimitation Commission’s Draft Report (The Wire)

There was no steal in Iraq, either:

• Iraqi Court Ratifies Election Result, Rejects Appeal (Reuters / US News)

Ten Palestinian civilians and one Israeli soldier have been wounded at the site of the unauthorized settler outpost:

• Palestinians, Israeli Forces Clash near West Bank Outpost (abc News)

“The stakes extend well beyond Iran. The world’s nuclear order, already perilous, is now at risk of unravelling”:

• The Looming Threat of a Nuclear Crisis with Iran (New Yorker)

If you think UAE kowtowing to Israel is something new. think again:

• UAE’s First Astronaut Reveals He Brought Israeli Flag to Space (Jerusalem Post)

As targeting nuclear development has become more difficult, Israel has turned to “conducting massive cyberattacks on sensitive civilian targets like dams, gasoline stations and power plants to foment nationwide riots with the objective of toppling the regime or keeping the rulers busy with day-to-day, endless riots”:

• A Hacking Slugfest Between Iran and Its Foes Sparks Fears of a Wider Cyberwar (LA Times)

Local Muslims have welcomed the reopening of Srinagar’s 125-year-old St. Luke’s Church which was “closed in the early 1990s when an armed rebellion against Indian rule started in the Muslim-majority region“:

• Historic Kashmir Church Reverberates with Prayers After Decades (Aljazeera)

The Gurgaon government’s refusal to permit building more mosques as Muslim population has grown “has forced the community to hold Friday afternoon prayers — the most important of the week for Muslims — in open spaces”:

• No Place to Pray: Muslim Worshippers Under Pressure in India (France 24)

The organization “which has challenged Triple Talaq and the Ram temple verdict, has now decided to publish a monthly journal on Muslim religious law “to remove falsehoods about Sharia” and explain its position on matters such as women’s rights, marriage, mosques barring entry of women, adoption and inheritance”:

• To Fight Falsehood, AIMPLB Plans Journal on Muslim Religious Law, Women’s Rights (Economic Times)

Special Rapporteurs allege, “The Islamic Republic of Iran executed Mr. Ghorbani in secret, on the basis of overbroad provisions, following a deeply flawed process, and while his case was still under consideration by the Supreme Court”:

• Iran: UN Independent Experts Condemn Secret Execution of Kurdish Prisoner (UN News)

The attorney for the student’s family said the white teacher demanded “to see tears” from the student he forced to kneel and beg:

• A Darby Township Teacher Made a Black Muslim Student Kneel and Beg for His Cell Phone, Lawyer Says (Philadelphia Inquirer)

At the “religious parliament,” the general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha made a direct call for mass murder:  “Be ready to kill and be ready to go to jail. Even if 100 of us are ready to kill 20 lakhs of them (Muslims), then we will be victorious, … [defending] Hindutva from every demon who is a threat”:

• Hindutva Leaders at Haridwar Event Call for Muslim Genocide (The Wire)

“The Bosniak member of the country’s tripartite presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic” refuted Orban’s “shameful and rude” statement, saying, “It is not a challenge for the EU to integrate 2 million (Bosnian) Muslims, because we are an indigenous European people who have always lived here and we are Europeans”:

• Hungary’s PM Denounced in Bosnia for Anti-Muslim Rhetoric (Seattle Times)

Democracy before partisanship. The “commander in Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who heads its foreign military operations, told the leaders of two [pro-Iranian] militias” to accept their loses in the recent Iraqi election:

• Iran Seeks to Cool Tensions in Iraq (Reuters)

Sri Lanka will not let it lack of cash pervent it from paying its debt to Iran:

• Sri Lanka Plans to Pay Off Iran Oil Debt with Tea (BBC)

“Palestinian homes, paved roads and water cisterns are repeatedly demolished thanks to a near-total ban on construction, while illegal Israeli settlements flourish,” yet, a local community movement of “non-violent Palestinian activism … has often worked hand in hand with the anti-occupation movement in Israel”:

• ‘We Are Family’: the Israelis Sharing Life and Hope with Palestinians (The Guardian)

“On the basis of population, Kashmir deserves more seats, however the delimitation commission has proposed more seats for Jammu as per geography”:

• ‘They Want to Hinduise Kashmir’: Saifuddin Soz on Delimitation Proposal (The Wire)

Although the court had already “ruled that Arzoo … was a minor and could not enter into a legally valid marriage as her consent had no legal value” she had refused to return to her parents until last Wednesday:

• Pak Court Allows Minor Christian Girl Who Converted to Islam to Go with Parents (NDTV)

“According to Israeli Public Broadcaster, Kan, the new rules give occupation forces the right to shoot Palestinian stone throwers even as they are fleeing”:

• Israel Army Allows Soldiers to Open Fire at Palestinian Stone Throwers (Middle East Monitor)

“Those who advocate strikes against nuclear sites are underestimating the risks and overestimating the benefit”:

• Don’t Attack Iran (Defense One)

“[A]round 20,000 employees of Jammu and Kashmir’s Power Transmission and Distribution Corporations went on an indefinite strike on Saturday to protest … the merger with the central government entity”:

• Over 20,000 Staff in Jammu and Kashmir Protest Decision of Merging State Power Grids (Indian Express)

“After three weeks of talks, discussions on the Iran nuclear deal are essentially back to where they were at the beginning of summer. Yet, diplomats said, even that reflects progress”:

• Iran Nuclear Talks Go Back to the Future (Politico)

“We are Muslims,” Ghalib said, sitting in the council chamber at city hall where he will soon preside. “We are proud of our beliefs and values. But we are not going to try and impose them on others” — Mayor-elect Amer Ghalib:

• Michigan City Gets Ready to Inaugurate All-Muslim Government (CNN)

The OIC wants to prevent a bad situation becoming worse, but it is “difficult for the West to engage with the Taliban,” as it fears “that such an interaction would be tantamount to admitting defeat in the 20-year war”:

• Pakistan Is Trying to Rally Muslim Countries to Help Afghanistan (NPR)

The Supreme Court order directs “that people from other faiths already holding shop licences in the temple premises must not be barred from participating in the auction for shops”:

• Srisailam Temple: Muslim Shopkeepers of Shrine Complex Hail Supreme Court Order (Indian Express)

“The Associated Press news agency said one of its photographers, Mahmoud Illean, was ‘pushed and beaten by Israeli police in an unprovoked attack’ while covering the protests, requiring hospital treatment”:

• Settlers Clash with Palestinians in Aftermath of West Bank Killing (Reuters)

“[A]lmost no Israeli officer or settler has been held accountable for” the 2,206 Palestinian children killed In the past twenty years:

• This Was the Deadliest Year for Palestinian Children Since 2014 (972 Magazine)

“The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act effectively bans all imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where the U.S. government has said that the Chinese Communist Party is perpetrating a genocide against the religious minority, including slave labor, forced sterilizations and concentration camps”:

• Crackdown on China’s Treatment of Muslim Minority Headed to Biden’s Desk (Politico)

The racialization of Islam is a deliberate attempt to immunize Islamophobes from charges of religious discrimination by reframing “Muslims as not a religious minority, but a national security threat and a suspect race:

• The Troubling Consequences of Seeing Muslims as a Racial Group (Time)

In only fifteen months Kashmir’s mai city has gone from being a “‘militancy-free zone’ with no locally recruited militants” to “to the highest number of allegedly targeted killings of policemen and civilians, including members of the minority community” …

• Srinagar District Turns into Hotbed of Militancy in Kashmir (The Hindu)

… its main mosque “has largely remained closed for the past two years” and its chief imam “has been detained in his home almost nonstop throughout that time”:

• In Kashmir, Closed Mosque Raises Questions About India’s Religious Freedom (AP / NPR)

It is unclear why Trump thought giving Netanyahu everything asked for in advance of a peace deal would lead to one, but … it didn’t:

• Trump Says Netanyahu “Never Wanted Peace” with the Palestinians (Axios)

CAIR-OH’s “longtime executive and legal director, Romin Iqnal, … admitted to leaking information to … a Washington DC-based non-profit group that  … uses ‘unsubstantiated threats that portray Muslims as dangerous to accrue funding'”:

• Top Employee of a Muslim Non-profit Secretly Shared Information with Islamophobic Group (The Guardian)

Conservative Texans take note: You governor is making a lie out of America’s promise. “If I don’t want to buy anything at WalMart, who are you to tell me not to shop at WalMart? Why do I have to pledge allegiance to a foreign country?”:

• ‘I Thought I Was a Free Man’: the Engineer Fighting Texas’s Ban on Boycotting Israel (The Guardian)

Israeli analysts and Middle East countries weary of Iran realize the U.S. pullout from a nuclear accord was a huge mistake, that Israel is no longer in a position to attack Iran, and that Iran’s economic position may improve despite sanctions:

• Israel Opposed the Iran Nuclear Deal, but Former Israeli Officials Increasingly Say U.S. Pullout Was a Mistake (Washington Post)
• Gulf Arab States that Opposed the Iran Nuclear Deal Are Now Courting Tehran (Washington Post)
• Iran Says UK Is Discussing How to Repay £400m Debt (The Guardian)
• An Israeli Strike on Iran Might Have Been Possible a Decade Ago. Not Today (Haaretz)

After “a report last month about a 2019 incident in which US airstrikes killed scores of civilians,” U.S. evasiveness about civilians killed or wounded in last week’s attack is provoking concern:

• US Admits Civilians May Have Been Killed in Syria Drone Strike (Antiwar.com)

“The United Nations Development Program projects that the war in Yemen will have killed at least 377,000 people by the end of this year. … [A] staggering 70% of the total casualties are children under the age of five”:

• The World Keeps Yemen Waiting with Deadly Results (Antiwar.com)

Palestinians hold municipal elections without national elections to great controversy:

• Some 400,000 Palestinians Vote in Rare Municipal Elections (abc News)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the Biden administration “will not send any diplomatic or official representation” to the Olympics due to China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses”:

• Citing ‘Ongoing Genocide,’ Biden Announces Diplomatic Boycott of 2022 Beijing Olympics (USA Today)

Bennett confirms that extrajudicial execution is no fluke, it is official Israeli policy, with his “full backing,” adding, that there be no misunderstanding, “That is how our forces are expected to act”:

• Bennett Blesses Street Executions of Palestinians (Electronic Intifada)

A constitutional scholar weighs in on the abortion of Tunisia’s constitutional democracy:

• Prof. Noah Feldman of Harvard: What happened in Tunis is a “COUP D’ETAT” (CSID)

Political interests, not democratic principles, drive U.S. Middle East policy:

• Is the Glass Half-full or Half-empty? That Is the Question with Contradictory US Human Rights Policies Towards Saudi Arabia and Iran (Middle East Soccer)

The U.S. can stand up to Russia and insist on having its way with France, but when it comes to Israel, a powerful foreign lobby makes cowards of American politicians:

• It’s Time for the U.S. to Treat Israel Like a Normal Country and Tell It to Screw Off (Mondoweiss)

Detained without charge or trial, “Kayed al-Fasfous, 32, ended his hunger strike after reaching an agreement with Israeli authorities to end his administrative detention”:

• Israel Releases Palestinian Prisoner After 131 Days of Hunger Strike (New Arab)

“The report shows how Israel worked to …  protect the political and military officials responsible … [for devising and implementing] the unlawful open-fire policy, which resulted in the killing of more than 200 Palestinians and the injury of some 8,000 others”:

• Unwilling and Unable Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights)

The negotiations to restore JCPOA adjourn for a week to the disappointment of Europe and Iran, but to the delight of Israel who would like to see them permanently abandoned:

• Talks on Reviving Iran Nuclear Deal Adjourn amid Disappointment over Lack of Progress (Washington Post)
• Israel Calls on World Powers to Stop Iran Nuclear Talks Immediately (Reuters)

As Israel continues its war on Palestinian human right groups …

• After J Street slammed Israel’s terrorism smear of Palestinian human rights groups, its Codel reportedly heard ‘secret evidence’ from Israeli officials (Mondoweiss)

… in Britain, Zionists demonstrate how to persecute Jews with the pretense of fighting anti-Semitism:

• Equality Commission Steps in after Labour Accuses Nearly Entire Jewish Voice for Labour Board of Antisemitism (The Canary)

In a new city with a severe shortage of mosques Muslim workers have no choice but to pray outdoors on public lands, but now Hindu vigilantes hold raucus protests disrupting the prayers and inducing city officials to reduce permitted sites from 108 to 37:

• New City, Old Schism: Hindu Groups Target Gurgaon’s Muslim Prayer Sites (The Guardian)

Recognize Palestine and Siri won’t give you the time of day:

• TikToker’s Video Shows Siri Doesn’t Recognise Palestine’s Existence (Metro)