The State Department accused Indian officials on Wednesday of permitting, and sometimes promoting or participating in, mob violence against Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in its annual religious freedom report.
The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh announced on Tuesday increased penalties for crimes against cows, considered sacred by Hindus, including up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to 500,000 Indian rupees ($6,607), the Times of India (TOI) reported.
Christian groups in Pakistan accused the country’s Muslim leadership of denying religious minorities pivotal economic aid to survive the ongoing lockdown to contain the Chinese coronavirus, the Christian website Aleteia reported on Thursday.
The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is tolerating, or engaging in, the violent and “particularly severe” persecution of Muslim and Christian minorities in India, a bipartisan U.S. watchdog group reported this week, echoing several other assessments.
Protesters fought with police in New Delhi, India, on Monday over India’s highly controversial citizenship law. A policeman and two civilians identified as Muslims were killed just hours before the arrival of visiting U.S. President Donald Trump.
Pakistani authorities arrested a Hindu principal over the weekend after “blasphemy” allegations against him prompted a mob to ransack a temple and damage a school and homes belonging to the minority group.
India’s Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday hailed his decision to revoke New Delhi-administered Kashmir of its autonomy last week as “path-breaking.”
Lawmakers in India passed a bill Tuesday that strips the statehood of the Indian-administered portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Lawmakers in India this week outlawed the centuries-old practice that allows a Muslim man to instantly divorce by saying the word “talaq” three times in his wife’s presence.
A mob of alleged Hindu extremists beat a group of Muslim students playing cricket and forced them to chant Hindu slogans in northern India, the Hindustan Times reported this week.
One can point to a slew of conservative nationalist world leaders, in addition to India’s Narendra Modi, including Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, and Bibi Netanyahu, who have a sense that they are leading their country, starting with a majority of their people.
“Violence and terrorism against people of all faiths must end and it must end now,” Trump said, as the audience applauded.
The registrar general of India announced on Monday that some four million people have been removed from citizenship rolls in the northeastern state of Assam, which borders Bangladesh.
Contents: Sri Lanka declares state of emergency after Buddhist-Muslim violence; Growing violence by Sri Lankan Buddhist hardliners against Tamils; North Korea says it will denuclearize if the regime is ‘secure’
Al-Qaeda’s Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) wing is urging its supporters in India to target Hindus and their religious places, reports the Times of India (TOI), citing a recently released propaganda video titled “Saffron Terror” and intelligence sources.
India is struggling to contain a growing epidemic of violent assaults, some of them lethal, against meat-eaters by self-appointed Hindu cow vigilantes.
Contents: Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is; Generational history of the 1947 Partition War that created Pakistan and India
Contents: India’s ‘Operation All-Out’ brings Kashmir closer to all-out war; Kashmir escalations building to all-out war; Multiple terrorist attacks across Pakistan kill nearly 50
Contents: Sri Lanka targets radical nationalist Buddhists in Bodu Bala Sena (BBS); Brief generational history of Sri Lanka and Bodu Bala Sena (BBS)
Contents: India forced to delay Kashmir elections after large surge in violence; Hindu activists push for ban on cow slaughter across India; Why is a US carrier group strike force going to the Korean peninsula?
Contents: Sri Lanka Sinhalese Buddhist monks accused of racist hate speech against Hindu Tamils; Sri Lanka says that ’32 élite, well-educated Muslims’ have joined ISIS in Syria
A Facebook post thought to be ridiculing one of Islam’s holiest sites prompted a mob of over 100 Muslim protesters to loot at least 15 temples and hundreds of Hindu homes in the Muslim-majority nation of Bangladesh, a local Hindu community leader told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Thousands of Hindu and Christian girls, many under the age of 18, are being abducted and forcibly converted to Islam before they are coerced into marrying their captors, according to Pakistani activists.
Contents: India’s Narendra Modi finally hits out at Cow Protectors (‘Gau Rakshaks’); Generational history of cow protection in India and Hinduism
A 17-year-old was shot dead and a friend seriously injured by a Muslim mob in Pakistan, allegedly in retaliation for the arrest of a mentally unstable Hindu man accused of “desecrating” a copy of the Quran.
Contents: Bangladesh tries to recover from Dhaka terror attack, the worst in 40 years; Suspicions that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency supported the Dhaka attack
Contents: Iran and India sign ‘historic’ deal for Iran’s Chabahar port; Chabahar port deal highlights enmity between Iran-India versus Pakistan-China; Iran, India and the classic fables of Kalileh-wa-Dimneh, Jataka and Panchatantra; The Caspian Corridor and the New Silk Road
In Nepal, Hindus dedicate one day during the five-day festival of Tihar to dogs, known as Kukur Tihar. Other days are devoted to other animals, such as cows or crows.
Religious intolerance in secular India continues to grow as hardline Hindus target those they believe are butchering cows, which are sacred to them.
A new report by the Pew Research Center reveals that views on immigration vary considerably according to religious affiliation, with Muslims and Hindus topping the charts of those who say that increased immigration into the U.S. represents “a change for the better.”
Contents: Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) continues plan to exterminate Shias; Pakistan’s LeJ anti-Shia terror group may have links to ISIS; History of sectarian violence in Pakistan since Partition
Hostilities flared in Indian-held Kashmir after a right-wing Hindu group set a Muslim flag ablaze, claiming it was the banner of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), the Journal of Turkish Weekly reports.
