- Datuk Mohd Na’im Mokhtar, Malaysia‘s Islamic affairs minister, recently clarified that “[p]ublic caning for Shariah offences is carried out outside the confines of prison in a closed-door setting.”
- “The League of Imams and Alfas in Yorubaland [West Africa] has declared that Ramadan 1446 AH (2025) will begin on Saturday, March 1, 2025, breaking away from the long-standing tradition of waiting for the Sultan of Sokoto’s official announcement.”
- “Afghanistan rejected disbanding its Ministry of Vice and Virtue, despite appeals from foreign ministers from several European countries, as well as Canada and Australia, local TOLO News reported on Sunday. Saif-ul-Islam Khyber, spokesman for the Ministry of Vice and Virtue, said the ministry serves the needs of the Afghan people and functions under the principles of ‘Islamic Sharia.'”
- Afghanistan also “rejected the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over their country, declaring as ‘unlawful’ the decision in 2003 by their predecessors to join the Hague-based court’s founding treaty. The decision follows the ICC chief prosecutor’s announcement last month, seeking arrest warrants for the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and a close associate, accusing them both of being ‘criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women.'” “Accusing the ICC of political bias, the Taliban claimed the court ‘is not founded on justice and fairness’ and dismissed Afghanistan’s previous membership in the ICC as legally invalid.” For the ICC arrest warrants against Abdul Hakim Haqqani and Hibatullah Akhundzada, consult the SHARAIsource portal.
- Commenting on human rights and especially women’s rights in Afghanistan, Massooda Jalal, “a 61-year-old medical doctor who served as Afghanistan’s women’s affairs minister from 2004 to 2006, insisted that ‘there is a way to replace the darkness with the light.'”
- “High-ranking officials of the Taliban-led interim government of Afghanistan, including deputy economy minister Abdul Latif Nazari, have visited Japan at the invitation of the nonprofit Nippon Foundation. With women in Afghanistan ‘forced to live in a severe environment,’ [an] official said the visit is also expected to help develop a ‘broad vision toward nation building.'” For more content and context on the recent developments in Afghanistan, consult our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Intisar Rabb’s “Resource Roundup: Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Islamic Law.”
- “The third international conference titled ‘International Humanitarian Law in View of Islamic Jurisprudence’ kicked off at Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre on Monday. The conference aims to explore the relationship between international humanitarian law and the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (law), with special emphasis on issues related to armed conflicts and the protection of human rights in times of war.”
- It has been reported that “[t]he Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), an international autonomous non-profit organization that sets the standards in the Islamic finance space, is considering new guidelines on sukuk, Standard 62, that could transform how fixed-income sukuk are structured and distributed.”