Brunei is set to introduce new laws next week that could see LGBT people whipped or stoned to death for same-sex relations, according to human rights groups that have urged the country to abandon the plan.

• Muslims could face whipping or stoning for same-sex relations, adultery and rape
• Brunei delayed implementing the legislation after an international outcry in 2014
• A document posted to a government website shows it will come into effect next week

Homosexuality is already illegal and punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment in the tiny sultanate, but the changes would see Brunei become the first Asian country to make homosexuality punishable by death.

Brunei became the first East Asian country to introduce Islamic criminal law in 2014 when it announced the first of three stages of legal changes that included fines or jail for offences such as pregnancy outside marriage or failing to pray on Friday.

It delayed implementing the final two stages of changes after an international backlash in 2014, including a boycott of the Beverley Hills Hotel, which is linked to Brunei's government.

But it now plans to proceed with the changes — that would allow whipping and stoning to death for Muslims found guilty of same-sex relations, adultery, sodomy and rape — on April 3, said Matthew Woolfe, founder of human rights group The Brunei Project.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-26/lgbt-muslims-brunei-face-whipping...

What is a Sultanate? It's like Saudi Arabia — not a country but a fiefdom that belongs to the ruling family (not the people) but a bit smaller. Saudi Arabia is a "kingdom", the subjects of whom do not own the "country" (not a country) they live in.

Masih Alinejad, who is the founder of the White Wednesdays movement, which encourages Iranian women to remove their headscarves in protest, said that calling the hijab part of Iranian "culture" and wearing it out of “respect” was really an "insult” which sends the wrong message to women activists fighting against the compulsory head-covering law.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/455365-iranian-activist-hijab-culture/

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Note: this line of comments being very long, it has been split in two pages.

There were fireworks inside Sydney's Land and Environment Court as two men who took part in illegal land clearing began shouting and heckling before they were fined $100,000.

• The men were found guilty of conducing illegal land clearing at their Colo property
• Dr Mustapha Kara-Ali and Diaa Kara-Ali ran a religious guild on the land, in Sydney's north west
• They had claimed their property was exempt from Australian law

Brothers Mustapha and Diaa Kara-Ali illegally cleared land and developed on a bush block in Sydney's north west, claiming the Islamic spiritual group they ran on the property was exempt from Australian law.

The pair were asked to leave the courtroom by their lawyer at one stage and came back after they had calmed down.

Hawkesbury City Council took the brothers to the Land and Environment Court in June last year.

From the beginning, the duo refused to take part in court proceedings and ignored orders by the court to stop construction works on the land.

Today they were convicted of 12 counts of contempt of court.

The Kara-Alis argued they were exempt from Australian law because their spiritual group, Diwan al Dawla, was classed as a basic religious charity.

That claim was not endorsed by the Australia Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, who later stripped the group of its charity status.

The brothers were also accused of locking in a man delivering them court documents by padlocking the gates on the Colo property while he was still inside.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-18/illegal-land-clearers-heckle--peo...

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Religion is not an excuse for doing things that are illegal. 

A French teenager who criticised Islam on Instagram has moved to a new school after receiving death threats. 

Education minister Gabriel Attal told broadcaster LCI on Monday that they had found a new school for Mila "to allow her to continue her life".

Mila, 16, sparked a national row over free speech when she called Islam a "religion of hate". [After speaking about her sexuality she was called a "dirty lesbian" by a Muslim commenter.]

...

The controversy generated a nationwide debate on blasphemy. 

Critics decried her comments as offensive to Muslims - although the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, Mohammed Moussaoui, said nothing justified death threats no matter how serious her remarks.

French justice minister Nicole Belloubet also waded into the controversy, saying that death threats against the teenager were "unacceptable".

However, Ms Belloubet herself was criticised after arguing that an attack on religion was "an attack on freedom of conscience". French Senator Laurence Rossignol gave Ms Belloubet "0/20 in constitutional law", saying that in France "it is forbidden to insult the followers of a religion but one can insult a religion, its figures, its symbols". Ms Belloubet later said her comments had been "clumsy".

Mila's cause has been embraced by the far right. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said Mila had "more courage than the entire political class in power for the past 30 years".

Speaking in her only interview amid the controversy, Mila apologised for insulting people who practise their religion "in peace". But while she regretted the "vulgarity" of her words and their spread online, she defended her remarks. 

"I have absolutely no regrets about what I said, it was really my thought," she told the interviewer.

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51446519