Egypt courts hear appeals of jailed female protesters

Egyptian judges began hearing appeals on Saturday of 21 women and girls handed heavy jail terms over an Islamist protest, in a case that sparked an outcry.

The 14 adult women were handed 11-year jail terms and the seven minors sentenced to juvenile detention last month, shocking even supporters of the military-installed government.

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In the adult court, the 14 women were ushered into the defendants’ cage dressed in prison issue white and holding red roses.

They had scrawled the word "freedom" in black marker on their palms. 

The appeal hearing for the minors was being held in an adjacent courtroom.

They were convicted of taking part in a violent protest demanding Islamist president Mohamed Mursi’s reinstatement following his overthrow by the army in July.

There was a heavy police presence outside the court complex in the coastal city of Alexandria, where Mursi’s Islamist supporters have clashed repeatedly with opponents and security forces.

The women’s lawyer, Ahmed al-Hamrawy, told AFP he expected the courts to either acquit them or release them on bail ahead of a final ruling. Read More ...

Turkey lifts decades-old ban on head scarf

ANKARA: Turkey lifted a ban on women wearing head scarf in state institutions on Tuesday, ending a decades-old restriction as part of a package of reforms meant to bolster democracy.

The ban, whose roots date back almost 90 years to the early days of the Turkish Republic, has kept many women from joining the public work force, but secularists see its abolition as evidence of the government pushing a religious agenda.

The new rules, which will not apply to the judiciary or the military, were published in the Official Gazette and take immediate effect in the majority Muslim but constitutionally secular nation.

“A regulation that formally intervened in freedom of clothing and lifestyle – a source of inequality, discrimination and injustice among our people – has become history,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on his Twitter account.

SEE ALSO: Cameron expresses support for Muslim veil ban in UK schools

The debate around the head scarf goes to the heart of tensions between religious and secular elites, a major fault line in Turkish public life.

Critics of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan see his AK Party as seeking to erode the secular foundations of the republic founded on the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.

Erdogan’s supporters, particularly in the country’s conservative Anatolian heartlands, say he is simply redressing the balance and restoring freedom of religious expression to a Muslim majority.

The lifting of the ban, based on a cabinet decree from 1925 when Ataturk introduced a series of clothing reforms meant to banish overt symbols of religious affiliation for civil servants, is part of a “democratisation package” unveiled by Erdogan last week.

The reform programme – in large part aimed at bolstering the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish community – included changes to the electoral system, the broadening of language rights and permission for villages to use their original Kurdish names.

An end to state primary school children reciting the oath of national allegiance at the start of each week, a deeply nationalistic vow, also took effect on Tuesday.

Via - Tribune.com.pk

No profile pic? Indian Mufti says posting Facebook photos is ‘un-Islamic’

An Indian Mufti has declared that posting photos on Facebook and other social media sites is “un-Islamic,” according to an interview with the Press Trust of India (PTI) on Sunday.

Abul Irfan Naimul Halim Firagni Mahli, who helps to run two telephone helplines advising people Islam related issues, said that Muslims should avoid social media sites and women in particular should refrain from posting pictures of themselves online.

“Women should not post pictures on Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet. This is un-Islamic,” he told the PTI in an interview.

“Women are not allowed to show their faces to anyone apart from their male kin like father and brothers, so posting pictures on Facebook is ‘haram’ (forbidden),” added Saif Abbas Naqvi, who also runs the helplines, in an interview with the PTI.

“We are liberal. We are not Taliban-minded. When youngsters ask us if they can have a Facebook or Twitter profile, we allow that. But the Shariah (Islamic law) does not allow women to post pictures,” Naqvi stated.

However Mahli did concede that social media usage could be justifiable if an online account was being used for business purposes.


“If one is on Facebook for business purposes or for constructive purposes, then the account is justifiable,” he stated.