Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead outside Baghdad home ( www.theguardian.com )

Officials say unidentified man killed influencer who had previously been imprisoned over dancing videos

A man on a motorbike has shot dead a social media influencer known as Om Fahad outside her Baghdad home, Iraqi security officials have said.

The unidentified attacker shot Om Fahad in her car in the Zayouna district on Friday, a security official said, requesting anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the media.

Another security source said the attacker appeared to have pretended to be making a food delivery.

Om Fahad became known for lighthearted TikTok videos of herself dancing to Iraqi music wearing tight-fitting clothes.

In February last year, a court sentenced her to six months in prison for sharing “videos containing indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”.

Kyrgizion ,

The Middle East will never not be a horrifying shithole, especially for women. It's one of the things in this world that never changes, like the sun setting in the west and rising in the east.

whoreticulture ,

Yo this is racist!!!

grue ,

Pre-1979 Iran seemed pretty decent.

Tryptaminev ,

You mean pre 1953 Iran. After the US, Britain and Israel couped out the democratically elected President and installed the Shah, more than 30.000 people "went missing" at the hands of the interior police which received training from CIA and Mossad.

footoro ,

Add also Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq to the list before all the meddling and government overthrowing. Things were a mess, but the Middle East was developed, people were educated, and there was a lot of cultural developments that last until today e.g. in music. That was going on up until like the 60s, 70s when fundamentalism as a reaction to Western interference (Iran and to an extend even Saudi Arabia as ridiculous as it sounds in 2024), or Soviet invasion (Afghanistan).

FlyingSquid Mod ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The government launched a campaign in 2023 to clean up social media content that it said breached Iraqi “morals and traditions”. An interior ministry committee was established to scour TikTok, YouTube and other platforms for clips it deemed offensive.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/98388592-9597-4b03-be19-fe63b7c9e89d.png

Thanks for all your work there, budski! And to think, it only took hundreds of thousands of lives to give this level of freedom to the Iraqi people!

taanegl ,

The dumbest out of all the modern "military interventions". Invasions, really.

"Oh no, you can't call it that."

What do I look like, a fucking liberal? A socially conservative liberal even? GTFO here with that, you boot licking normie.

Iraq was bad under Sadam Hussein, but has gotten so much worse post-US invasion, after they installed a bevvy of corrupt collaborative yesmen of course, which has never been bad against any country in history of governance /s

gravitas_deficiency ,

It was never about anything other than makin’ fat stacks. Petro companies and PMCs made out like bandits from that shitshow. As a bonus, we also got a renewed generational regional resentment in the Middle East towards the west.

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