Tag: Protest

Strikes paralyzed several cities in Pakistan, as demonstrators protested against a proposal to moderate the blasphemy law, which currently carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Islam, and which has been criticized for being used to persecute religious minorities.

People in Wootton Bassett, the town famous for honouring dead British soldiers returning from Afghanistan, reacted defiantly on Saturday to news that a controversial Islamic group is to march through its streets. Islam4UK – which calls itself a “platform” for extremist movement al-Muhajiroun – plans to parade through the Wiltshire town in the coming weeks. The group’s website says the event is being held “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military” but of the Muslims its says have been “murdered in the name of democracy and freedom”.

Iranian employees of the British Embassy in Tehran face the prospect of a show trial after the regime said that they had admitted conspiring against the Islamic Republic. Tensions between the Iranian theocracy and the EU rose as a hardline Ayatollah accused Britain of attempting to undermine the regime and EU officials expressed concern that confessions may have been extracted by torture, leaving the door open for a wholesale withdrawal of EU diplomats from the country.

Conservative Catholics angered by president’s abortion rights record

String of sit-ins going on for more than four years at closed churches