North America
Michigan doctor charged with FGM
A Michigan physician was charged in federal cour for performing female genital mutilation on girls as young as six—a practice labelled a form of torture by the United Nations.
Tag: struggle within Islam
North Africa
Tunisia: DJ gets prison for offending public morality
A Tunisian court sentenced British DJ Dax J to a year in prison for "offending public morality" after the artist played a remix of the Muslim call to prayer in a nightclub.
Greater Middle East
Syria: Idlib between jihadis and imperial air-raids
Idlib governorate, where evacuees from Aleppo were forced to flee, is dominated by jihadist factions that both threaten secularists and draw air-strikes from the US and Russia alike.
Afghanistan
Pakistan: blast at Sufi shrine leaves scores dead
The local ISIS franchise claimed responsibility for a blast at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan's Balochistan region that killed 60 worshipers and injured more than 100.
Iraq
Iraq bans alcoholic beverages
Iraq's parliament approved a law "forbidding the import, manufacture and sale of all kinds of alcohol drinks." Lawmakers from the Christian minority protest it as discriminatory.
Greater Middle East
Syria: fall of Dabiq fails to spark apocalypse
Free Syrian Army forces backed by Turkish warplanes took the town of Dabiq from ISIS—failing to spark the apocalyptic battle that the "caliphate" had prophesied.
Africa
Nigeria: pogroms target Shi’ites
Shops and homes belonging to Shi'ite Muslims in Nigeria's Kaduna state were destroyed by rampaging Sunni mobs in a wave of attacks that spread across several towns.
Afghanistan
Hekmatyar: Afghanistan’s ultra-ironic peacemaker
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has gone from being a CIA-approved Mujahedeen commander to an officially designated "global terrorist" to a partner with the US-backed Kabul regime.
Greater Middle East
30,000 (Ahmadiyya) Muslims march against terror
The 30,000 Muslims who marched against extremism in London were followers of the Ahmadiyya sect—a dissident current in Islam persecuted by the orthodox Sunni.
North Africa
Algeria: five years for ‘insulting prophet’ online
An Algerian appeals court upheld the conviction of Slimane Bouhafs, accused of slandering the Prophet Muhammed in a Facebook post and now facing five years in prison.
Greater Middle East
Yemen: Saudis bomb anti-bombing demonstration
Saudi fighter jets carried out air-strikes on a peaceful rally in Yemen's capital Sanaa that had been called to protest Saudi air-strikes, leaving several dead.
Afghanistan
Civil society responds to Pakistan hospital blast
Lawyers went on strike and journalists staged demonstrations after scores were slain in a Taliban terror attack on a hospital in Quetta, capital of restive Balochistan province.