News and Analysis (11/11/20)

“The United Arab Emirates announced on Saturday a major overhaul of the country’s Islamic personal laws, allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate and loosening alcohol restrictions. The Gulf country also sought to criminalise so-called ‘honour killings’, a widely criticised tribal custom”:

• UAE Announces Relaxing of Islamic Laws for Personal Freedoms (Aljazeera)

The EU wants to legislate against the encrypted communication of messaging apps on the pretext that the “assault on privacy and expanding government surveillance … is necessary to ‘protect people in Europe from Islamism’”:

• Is the EU Using the Spectre of Islam to Crack Down on Messaging Apps? (TRT World)

Three young women have been held for months on charges of “affiliating with a legitimate university student group at Birzeit University and for being present at one of its meetings” as Israel continues the criminalization of “the peaceful exercise of basic and fundamental human rights: the right to freedom of association, expression and assembly”:

• The Growing Targeting of Palestinian Students: An Interview with LPHR (FOBZU)

The two assailants grabbed the woman in hijab, telling her, “We are in America, and when her husband “told them to leave, … began to b eat him in front of his family while calling him a ‘f—— Muslim.,” and then fled when the woman called 911:

• Savage Attack on Muslim Family in Rego Park Sparks Call for Hate Crime Probe (Queens Eagle)

More American Muslims elected to public office:

• Meet Nida Allam, the First Muslim Woman Elected to Office in North Carolina (Daily Tar Heel)
• Aurora’s Iman Jodeh Makes History Becoming First Muslim Lawmaker In Colorado (CBS Local)

• Students, Administration Condemn UI Employee’s Anti-Muslim Tweets (WCIA)

• Iran Finishes Moving First Batch of Advanced Centrifuges Underground (Reuters)
• Iran’s President Calls on Biden to Return to Nuclear Deal (AP)

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