A federal judge deemed 'too radical' by GOP lawmakers during his confirmation hearings said on Thursday that he will grant a motion by blue states to vacate (reverse) a declaration by HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blocking breast removal and other procedures for youths with gender dysphoria.
by Uzay Bulut
Pakistan, included by US President Donald J. Trump in his "Board of Peace" for the Gaza Strip, nevertheless continues to be one of the most dangerous countries for Christians and other non-Muslims. International watchdog organizations continue to rank Pakistan among the most difficult countries for Christians.
"The year 2025 was marked by a deepening crisis for religious minorities in Pakistan, characterized by entrenched legal discrimination, rising mob violence, and a climate of near-total impunity for perpetrators." — 2025 report by "Voice of Pakistan Minority."
The same day Masih was murdered, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) thankfully issued its 2026 report, in which it urged the US government to redesignate Pakistan as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC), under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, over systematic and ongoing violations of religious freedom.
USCIRF also called for lifting an existing waiver that exempts Pakistan from penalties available with the designation. In addition, USCIRF calls for targeted sanctions on Pakistani officials and government agencies responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals' assets and/or barring their entry into the US under human rights-related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations.
USCIRF additionally called for holding accountable individuals who incite or participate in vigilante violence, targeted killings, forced conversion, and other religiously based crimes. It noted: "The U.S. Congress should incorporate religious freedom concerns into its larger oversight of the U.S.-Pakistan bilateral relationship through hearings, letters, resolutions, and congressional delegations and advocate for the release of FoRB [Freedom of Religion or Belief] prisoners in Pakistan."
Pakistan would seem hardly the most helpful member for any real "Board of Peace."
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22354/pakistan-persecution-of-religious-minorities
Pakistan, included by US President Donald J. Trump in his "Board of Peace" for the Gaza Strip, nevertheless continues to be one of the most dangerous countries for Christians and other non-Muslims. International watchdog organizations continue to rank Pakistan among the most difficult countries for Christians.
On Open Doors' 2026 World Watch List, which assesses persecution faced by Christians worldwide, Pakistan again ranks eighth. The report cited systemic discrimination, mob violence, forced conversions, bonded labor, and gender-based abuses, noting that perpetrators often act with impunity.
According to a 2025 report by the organization "Voice of Pakistan Minority":
"The year 2025 was marked by a deepening crisis for religious minorities in Pakistan, characterized by entrenched legal discrimination, rising mob violence, and a climate of near-total impunity for perpetrators.
"Christians, Hindus, and other non-Muslim minorities faced a combination of physical attacks, forced displacement, and structural exclusion. The Christian community remained particularly vulnerable to accusations of blasphemy that rapidly escalated into collective punishment, with mobs burning churches, targeting homes, and destroying livelihoods in affected neighborhoods. Hindus and smaller communities continued to report forced conversions, abductions, and coerced marriages of women and girls, often in contexts where access to effective legal remedies was severely constrained by corruption, intimidation, and bias."
On March 4, a 21-year-old Christian farmworker in Pakistan's Punjab Province, Marcus Masih, was tortured to death by his Muslim employers, who then tried to stage the murder scene as a suicide by hanging, the victim's brother said.
The same day Masih was murdered, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) thankfully issued its 2026 report, in which it urged the US government to redesignate Pakistan as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC), under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, over systematic and ongoing violations of religious freedom.
USCIRF also called for lifting an existing waiver that exempts Pakistan from penalties available with the designation. In addition, USCIRF calls for targeted sanctions on Pakistani officials and government agencies responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals' assets and/or barring their entry into the US under human rights-related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations.
USCIRF additionally called for holding accountable individuals who incite or participate in vigilante violence, targeted killings, forced conversion, and other religiously based crimes. It noted:
"The U.S. Congress should incorporate religious freedom concerns into its larger oversight of the U.S.-Pakistan bilateral relationship through hearings, letters, resolutions, and congressional delegations and advocate for the release of FoRB [Freedom of Religion or Belief] prisoners in Pakistan."
The Christian Daily International reported that Marcus Masih's murder reflectsbroader vulnerabilities faced by religious minorities in Pakistan. The country's stratified social system confines Christians, Hindus, and other religious minorities to low-wage and dangerous jobs in informal sectors. In recent years, several high-profile cases have underscored these concerns.
In February 2025, Christian laborer Wasif George was abducted by Muslim landowners, humiliated and paraded on a donkey after being accused of stealing wood. Images and videos of the assault circulated widely on social media. Despite pleas from his family, none of the main perpetrators was arrested.
In March 2025, Zohaib Iftikhar, a Muslim, slit the throat of his coworker, Waqas Masih, a 22-year-old Christian, after accusing him of committing blasphemy by touching an Islamic textbook with "unclean hands."
In May 2025, Christian laborer Kashif Masih was tortured to death by a group of Muslims, including a former police officer, over an unproven allegation of theft. The murder sparked outrage among minority-rights groups, who criticized authorities for failing either to prevent or promptly prosecute such crimes.
In June 2024, 18-year-old Catholic worker Waqas Salamat was tortured to death by his Muslim employer and others for allegedly leaving his job without permission. His family said he was subjected to hours of eventually fatal electric shocks.
USCIRF said in its latest report:
"In 2025, religious freedom conditions in Pakistan continued along a troubling trajectory. The government continued to enforce its strict blasphemy law, impacting people of all faiths, including religious minorities. Increasing vigilante attacks and mob violence targeting religious minorities, specifically Ahmadiyya Muslims and Christians, contributed to an intensified climate of fear and intolerance.
"Authorities continued to wield the blasphemy law and its death penalty provision to punish those deemed to have insulted Islam."
In January 2025, four individuals were sentenced to death for allegedly posting blasphemous content on social media.
Also, a mentally challenged Christian man, Farhan Masih, was imprisoned on charges of blasphemy and terrorism. Despite being acquitted, he could not return to his village due to fear for his safety.
In March 2025, the Lahore High Court removed from its case list Junaid Hafeez's appeal hearing related to charges of blasphemy. Hafeez — a former visiting lecturer at the Department of English Literature of the Bahauddin Zakariya University — was arrested by police in 2013, and his trial started in 2014. Authorities have held Hafeez in solitary confinement since 2014. He was sentenced to death in 2019 on blasphemy charges. His appeal against the sentence has been pending since 2020.
In October, a high court finally acquitted Christian pastor Zafar Bhatti of blasphemy charges after 13 years in prison. Days after his release, after years of medical neglect, Bhatti succumbed to cardiac arrest.
Violent attacks against religious minorities continue with impunity. Days after a Christian man's throat was slit over a false blasphemy allegation arising from his refusal to renounce his faith, a Hindu man, Nadeem Naath, a 56-year-old Hindu, was shot to death in Peshawar by a Muslim, Muhammad Mushtaq, after refusing to convert to Islam, on March 29.
Last September, two gunmen attacked Christian pastor Kamran Naz as he traveled to Islamabad to lead a church service. He had previously received death threats and was accused of "proselytizing among Afghan refugees."
Reports of forced conversions among Hindu and Christian girls in Punjab and Sindh Provinces persisted throughout 2025.
In February, a 12-year-old Christian, Saba Shafique, was reportedly abducted in Sindh Province, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to a 35-year-old man, Muhammad Ali.
In July, the Sindh Human Rights Commission expressed concern about the abduction and forced conversion to Islam of a 15-year-old Hindu girl, Shahneela. Her uncle said in a police report that two armed men had forcibly entered the family's home in Matli and kidnapped Shahneela.
Additionally, although Pakistan's constitution establishes Islam as the state religion, a 1974 amendment declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims, thereby excluding them from political representation and equal voting rights.
In 2025, USCIRF reported:
"Throughout Pakistan, authorities continued to impose restrictions on Ahmadiyya Muslims' ability to practice their faith and allowed for assaults against Ahmadiyya mosques. In February, a mob of TLP members destroyed minarets of an Ahmadiyya mosque in Sialkot without police intervention. In October, three gunmen attacked an Ahmadiyya mosque in Rabwah, wounding six worshipers. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
"In March, authorities arrested dozens of Ahmadiyya Muslims, including children, for offering Friday prayers. Days later, police issued two First Instance Reports against two dozen Ahmadiyya Muslims, based on a complaint from TLP members that the community was sacrificing animals for Eid-ul-Adha.
"In April, a mob affiliated with the TLP stormed an Ahmadiyya mosque to prevent the community from offering Friday prayers. During the attack, the mob beat to death an Ahmadiyya man, Laeeq Cheema. Police allegedly did not intervene to stop the attack."
Christian community members criticized the Pakistani government for failing to deliver justice and accountability for the 2023 Jaranwala attacks, during which mobs destroyed homes belonging to Christians and churches, after allegations of blasphemy.
Last June, Christian communities accused authorities of ignoring evidence after a Pakistani court acquitted 10 Muslims involved in burning a church during the 2023 Jaranwala attacks. In August, victims of those attacks held protests to mark the two-year anniversary and repeated calls for government action.
In May, Pakistan's National Assembly unanimously passed the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Bill to curb child marriages and, by extension, the forced conversions of underage girls. Under this legislation, those who facilitate or coerce a child into marriage, including family members or clerics, can face up to seven years' imprisonment. The question remains: Will anyone actually enforce this law?
Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology strongly opposed the bill and declared it "un-Islamic" for not conforming with Islamic injunctions. Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman called for rallies protesting the law. Leaders of the Mili Yakjethi Council (MYC) similarly condemned the bill, calling it "un-Islamic" and unconstitutional.
In 2025, several attacks or threats of violence against places of worship took place. In February, the US Embassy in Islamabad reported that Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) threatened to attack Faisal Mosque. In response, the embassy prohibited US employees from traveling to the area. In March, at least six people, including a chief clerk, were killed by a suicide attack after Friday prayers at an Islamic seminary in northern Pakistan.
Pakistan's estimated population is 252 million, of which 96.5% are Muslim (85-90% Sunni and 10-15% Shi'a) and 3.5% belong to other religious communities, including Christians and Hindus, and perhaps fewer than 200 elderly Jews, if that, who might try to pass as Parsis.
Pakistan would seem hardly the most helpful member for any real "Board of Peace."
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
The nerve of a judge to deport an illegal immigrant who held the lofty status of a staff member for the New York City Council has left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in high dudgeon.
Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a data analyst for the council, will be deported to Venezuela. The Department of Homeland Security said Rubio overstayed his 2017 tourist visa, has an arrest for assault, and does not possess work authorization, CBS News noted.
Mamdani argued his version of reality should take precedence over the law.
“Today, an administrative immigration judge ordered the deportation of Rafael Rubio, a City Council employee. This is an affront to justice,” Mamdani posted on X.
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary on Thursday ignored a U.S. State Departmentwarning along with pleas from elite Iranian-American wrestlers to not execute 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting against the Khamenei regime.
Reports say Mohammadi was killed in a public hanging seen as a barbaric move by the Iranian regime to snuff out the ongoing movement seeking to topple it, according to Iranian American human rights activists and dissidents.
Nima Far, a human rights activist and Iranian combat athlete who is an expert on elite Iranian wrestling, told Fox News Digital, "His execution was a blatant political murder, part of the Islamic Republic’s pattern of targeting athletes to crush dissent and terrorize society, as seen with Navid Afkari and others executed despite international outcry."
He said, "The IOC [International Olympic Committee] and UWW [United World Wrestling] should have intervened forcefully with public ultimatums, threatening immediate suspension of Iran’s NOC [National Olympic Committee] and federations if the killing proceeded rather than relying on ineffective quiet diplomacy, given their own commitments to protect athletes from politically motivated harm." Both organizations did put out statements after being asked for response from Fox News Digital upon Mohammadi's death sentence.
Far called on the wrestling authorities to take action, stating, "Iran must be banned from international competitions until it halts executions of protesters and athletes, releases those jailed in sham trials, and ends retaliation against competitors who speak out or defect."
Fox News Digital sent new press queries to the IOC and UWW.
Reactions to his death came flooding in from Iranian commentators.
Alizreza Nader, an expert on Iran and the human rights situation in the country, told Fox News Digital, "I feel very bad for him and his family. There should be a boycott of the regime when it comes to international sport. I do worry about individual athletes who will be impacted by this, as athletes in Iran are enduring very harsh conditions, including some reported as being virtual hostages by the regime. But there must be a heavy price for the regime for executing young people like this. There must be a deterrent."
IRANIAN SECURITY FORCES GUN DOWN AMATEUR BOXER AS FATHER SEARCHES MORGUES FOR MISSING SON: SOURCE
Iranian American activist Masih Alinejad wrote on X: "Today, in Iran, in the middle of a war, the regime executed a 19-year-old national wrestling champion for the crime of joining January protests. After signaling to the world, including President @realDonaldTrump, that they would halt executions of protesters, the regime has done the exact opposite."
She added, "Three young protesters, Saleh Mohammadi, Mehdi Ghasemi, and Saeed Davoudi, were hanged in Qom after a sham trial. Reports indicate torture. Forced confessions. No access to chosen lawyers. Closed-door proceedings. No right to appeal. I call on @GlobalAthleteHQ to stand with Iranian athletes who are being silenced, imprisoned, and executed simply for raising their voices. This is not just about sports. This is about human dignity."
Fox News Digital reported in late January that the official X account for the State Department in Farsi wrote, "The United States is deeply concerned by reports that 19-year-old wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi is facing imminent execution. The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran is massacring young people and destroying Iran’s future. We call on the Iranian regime to halt the execution of Saleh Mohammadi and all those sentenced to death for exercising their fundamental rights. #SalehMohammadi #StopExecutionsInIran #HumanRights #IranProtest."
LEAKED DOCUMENTS EXPOSE KHAMENEI'S SECRET DEADLY BLUEPRINT FOR CRUSHING IRAN PROTESTS
Elite Iranian American wrestlers told Fox News Digital in February that Iran’s regime must cease the executions of athletes. Sardar Pashaei, who won a Greco-Roman wrestling world championship title for Iran and coached the country’s elite Greco-Roman team, along with Afsoon Roshanzamir Johnston, the first American female wrestler to win a medal in world championship competition in 1989, urged the regime not to implement the targeted killing of athletes.
Pashaei told Fox Digital on Thursday that "My heart is broken for this young wrestler. Anyone who still shows sympathy for the Islamic Republic should understand — this is only a small glimpse of its brutality."
He added, "Before the internet was shut down, I spoke with one of Iran’s national wrestling team coaches. He warned me that Saleh’s case was critical. We were both deeply worried. I did everything I could — speaking to the media, raising awareness — but I could not save him. This regime is built on executions, fear, and hatred. It does not change. The International Olympic Committee and global sports bodies failed."
Iran International reported that Iran’s regime hanged Mohammadi and two additional Iranian men, Mehdi Ghasemiand Saeed Davoudi,"after being accused of killing two police officers during nationwide protests earlier this year, the judiciary-linked Mizan news agency reported."
A billboard depicting Iran's supreme leaders since 1979: (L to R) Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini (until 1989), Ali Khamenei (until 2026) and Mojtaba Khamenei (incumbent) is displayed above a highway in Tehran on March 10, 2026. Iran marked the appointment of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father as its supreme leader on March 9, 2026. (AFP/Via Getty Images)
The three men allegedly attacked "two police officers with knives and swords during protests on January 8 in the holy city of Qom."
The regime claimed that the men acted on behalf of Israel and the United States. Iran International noted this is "a frequent claim used by the Islamic Republic against protesters and dissidents."
Mohammadi won a bronze medal in September 2024, for Iran’s national freestyle wrestling at the Saytiyev International Cup in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
The Hengaw organization for human rights posted wrestling footage of Mohammadi. Hengaw wrote on X: "Footage shows Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old athlete and member of Iran’s national wrestling team, who was secretly executed in the early hours of Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Qom Central Prison on charges of ‘enmity against God’ (moharebeh). Mohammadi had previously shared this video on his Instagram page, documenting his athletic journey and efforts toward success."
Fox News Digital reached out to the U.S. State Department and Iran’s U.N. Mission in New York for comments.
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