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A 25-year-old Pakistani woman was stoned to death today by her father and family for registering to marry a man of whom they did not approve. Three months pregnant, Farzana Parveen was on her way to the courthouse to contest an abduction charge her family filed against her husband, Mohammad Iqbal. A group of nearly 20 family members, her father and brothers included, accosted the couple in front of the courthouse and tried to pull them apart. When Farzana resisted, they fatally beat her with batons and bricks from a nearby construction site. Calling the murder an "honor killing," the...

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani clerical panel has endorsed polygamy, saying a woman cannot object if her husband remarries. The body that advices the government on religious affairs has long been condemned for its retrograde and misogynist outlook. "A woman cannot demand a divorce over a second, third or fourth marriage of her husband. Islam has given a woman right to separate from her husband, but another marriage could not be a valid ground for doing so," local media reported Islamic Council of Ideology (CII) chairman Shah Ahmed Sheerani as saying. He observed the Muslim Divorce Act, 1939, was against the Sharia....

The death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman and mother of five children, was upheld by the Lahore High Court in Pakistan on Thursday. Bibi has been convicted of blasphemy for drinking from the same bowl of water as Muslims and making derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad. "The case against Asia Bibi is a great example of how Christians and other religious minorities are abused in Pakistan by fundamentalists wielding the controversial blasphemy laws. The blasphemy laws were originally written to protect against religious intolerance in Pakistan, but the law has warped into a tool used by extremists...

The last week of September marks the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980. Formal ceremonies for Sacred Defense Week include a nationwide parade, war remembrance gatherings and—of the most interest to War Is Boring—theatrical unveiling events for new weaponry. This year Iranian authorities extended the weapons unveilings into the first week of October—national police week in Iran—and then a few days more. The extensive show of military might came amid the growing threat of Sunni militia groups inside Iran. Tehran is eager to project an image of strength. But that doesn’t mean all of this new weaponry...

A high court in Pakistan on Thursday upheld the death sentence for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five who in 2010 became the first Pakistani woman to be sentenced to death for “blasphemy,” after Muslim fellow laborers accused her of insulting Mohammed. After the high court in the Punjab provincial capital Lahore dismissed Bibi’s appeal, an organization that campaigns against Pakistan’s notorious laws accused the panel’s two judges of being swayed by about 25 Islamic clerics who it said were present in the courtroom “to apply pressure.” ... Under Pakistan’s penal code, insulting Mohammed or desecrating the Qur’an are...

An explosion in southern Lebanon last week destroyed what is believed to have been a Hezbollah weapons depot. This latest in a series of mysterious “accidents” in Hezbollah-controlled precincts proved, as one Israeli official wryly remarked, that those who “sleep with rockets and amass large stockpiles of weapons are in a very unsafe place.” With the Party of God’s overland supply route through Syria choked off by the 22-month-long uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and Israel virtually in total control of the maritime route, Hezbollah’s stockpile is being systematically degraded.Yet the arsenal of Iran’s other regional proxy force, Hamas,...

Six senior figures in the Pakistani Taliban have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a symbol of the terrorists' expanding influence among Islamist groups. Withdrawing their loyalty to the Afghan Taliban's leader Mohammad Omar, the men - made up of the group's chief spokesman Shahidullah Shahid and five regional commanders - said they will remain members of the Pakistani Taliban, but added they now consider themselves affiliates of ISIS. The move is likely to have serious consequences for security in Pakistan, particularly near the Afghan border where all six of the men are...

OSLO, Norway – Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for risking their lives to fight for children's rights.

Drew Gilpin Faust Office of the President Harvard University Massachusetts Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Dear Dr. Faust: This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition. The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of Qatar. Harvard University is assisting the Qatar Foundation to establish a law school in Doha, in order to “revitalize legal education in the Middle East, and represent Islamic and Arabic legal traditions in the global dialogue on legal and governance issues.” These traditions include Sharia law. Harvard University is arguably the greatest institution of...

Obama simply does not get it or refuses to do so. His failure puts us closer to a nuclear cataclysm with every passing day The President’s lack of attention and indifference to years of intelligence reports and analysis is leading to a potential horror in which Iran fulfills its quest to make its own nuclear weapons. It already has the missile capacity to deliver them throughout the Middle East and to Europe. On October 6th Secretary of State John Kerry received a letter signed by 354 members of the House of Representatives that said in part “We are concerned that...

The decision by the EU and other western countries to boycott anti-Israel proceedings at the UNHRC has many Islamic countries up in arms, as can be seen in the embedded video. Agenda Item 7 of the UNHRC is entitled, “The Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories" and is directed atg Israel. Pakistan, speaking for the Islamic Group at the UNHRC, expressed "deep disappointment that certain member states of the Western European and Others Group had ceased their participation under agenda item 7, which [is] particularly disturbing in the light of the latest Israeli behavior." The United...

This is incredible. The European Union has decided to boycott the anti-Israel agenda item that is part of every meeting of the United Nations 'human rights council.' Let's go to the videotape.

Indian and Pakistani troops traded gunfire over their border in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing at least four civilians and worsening tensions between the longtime rivals, officials on both sides have said. The small-arms and mortar exchanges – which Indian officials called the worst violation of a 2003 ceasefire – also left 18 civilians wounded in India and another three in Pakistan.

IT is often offered as a solution to the problem of destitute women. If every man married four of them, some have stated, then all women would have a male guardian, a protector, someone to support them. The reality of polygamy, however, is often neither this neat nor this simple. Last week, The National, a leading newspaper out of the United Arab Emirates, published news of emerging research that reveals how polygamy is injurious to the mental health of women in such relationships, fostering negative emotions and ultimately creating harmful patterns that detract from having a healthy emotional life. Conducted...

Women Stoned To Death In Syria For Adultery BASSEM MROUE BEIRUT (AP) — A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress. None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did...

"India desires a peaceful and stable environment for its development," Modi said, when delivering a speech for the first time as prime minister of India to the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly, which entered its fourth day here in New York. Noting that a country's destiny is linked to its neighborhood, Modi said "That is why my government has placed the highest priority on advancing friendship and cooperation with her neighbors." "This includes Pakistan." Modi said he is prepared to engage in a serious bilateral dialogue with Pakistan in a peaceful atmosphere, without the shadow of terrorism,...

Two major groups of Arab sates questioned Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas in Gaza, in addresses to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday in Geneva. Describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as self-defense is both “legally incorrect” and “morally abhorrent,” said Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. […] Switzerland, Ireland, and Iceland were among the few Western countries to address to address the UNHRC under Agenda Item 7. Ireland condemned both Israel and Hamas as unacceptable for attacking innocent civilians during the Gaza war. With respect to Israeli attacks in Gaza, Ireland said,...

Oddly Gillibrand insists on living in the United States instead of in the more progressive Pakistan under the notoriously feminist Sharia law.New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, appointed to her position via Senator Schumer as a favor for a politically connected clan, changed all her political positions and is working hard to pretend that she’s a serious legislator.Mainly by repeating stupid things that other people have said. The most animated speaker was Gillibrand, who condemned opposition to expanding paid family leave across the country.The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act would establish a national paid family and medical leave insurance program...

Militants In Afghanistan, Pakistan Claiming Allegiance To IS by Charles Recknagel Amid fears the Islamic State (IS) extremist group could expand to Afghanistan, there are already signs that some militants in the region are eager to claim affiliation with the group. One sign came this week in a video sent to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that shows three purported Afghan militants, their faces covered, sitting beneath the black IS battle flag. Speaking in the Ghazni dialect of Pashto, the trio's spokesperson claimed to represent a group called the Islamic Organization of Great Afghanistan and stated his readiness to fight for the IS and...

What's in a name? When you're an Islamist extremist group believed to pose an existential threat to the Western world, everything. In the past few months, we've seen the strange and somewhat revealing saga of what to call the group alternatively referred to as ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State and Daesh. ........................................................ While there have been reports of groups in Pakistan taking on the Khorasan label, analysts cast doubt that the term is being widely used within Syria to refer to any distinct group. “There have been no jihadis in Syria or [Jabhat al-Nusra] to use that name when referring...