ISLAMABAD, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Thousands of mourners gathered in Islamabad on Saturday to start burying the 31 killed in a suicide bombing at a Shi’ite Muslim mosque, as residents expressed concern that there could be further attacks.
A man opened fire at the Khadija Tul Kubra Imambargah compound on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, then detonated a bomb that killed 31, as well as himself, and injured more than 170 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Funeral prayers for some of the victims were held in an open area near the mosque on Saturday morning under tight security, with police and a unit of elite commandos standing guard. Mourners beat their chests before stooping to lift the coffins and carry them toward the burial grounds.
“Whoever did this terrorism, may God burn them in hell and turn them to ash,” the prayer leader told mourners.
While bombings are rare in heavily guarded Islamabad, this is the second such attack in three months and, given the rise in militancy, there are fears of a return to violence in Pakistan’s major urban centres.
The government is “tracing the facilitators and handlers” behind the attack, said Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, adding that some victims remain critically injured in hospital and are “being provided the best healthcare possible.”
The bomber had a history of travelling to Afghanistan, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif posted on Friday on X, blaming neighbouring India for sponsoring the assault, without providing evidence.
India’s foreign office condemned the mosque attack and rejected the assertion that it had any involvement.
“It is unfortunate that, instead of seriously addressing the problems plaguing its social fabric, Pakistan should choose to delude itself by blaming others for its home-grown ills,” New Delhi said in a statement.
Shi’ites, who are a minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of 241 million, have been targeted in sectarian violence in the past, including by Islamic State and the Sunni Islamist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Writing by Lucy Craymer; Editing by William Mallard)
DHAKA, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Dhaka University student Sadman Mujtaba Rafid defied his parents and police to join protests that toppled former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, convinced the rallies were essential to ensure democracy prevailed over dynastic rule.
But ahead of the February 12 parliamentary election – the first since the upheaval – some of Rafid’s optimism has faded.
“We dreamt of a country where all people regardless of gender, race, religion would have equal opportunity,” the 25-year-old said. “We expected policy changes and reforms, but it is far away from what we dreamt of.”
Tens of thousands of young Bangladeshis, frustrated by years of repression and a lack of jobs and economic opportunity under Hasina’s rule, poured into the streets in 2024, eager for radical change and a “New Bangladesh”.
But while the elections will deliver a government without Hasina for the first time since 2008, there has been no major reform and no new viable alternative party has emerged, according to many, leaving the battle for government mostly between former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami.
Opinion polls put the established, but tarnished, parties as frontrunners.
Reuters spoke to more than 80 students under 30, mostly in the capital Dhaka. Most expressed excitement about voting in a freer election but were disappointed with the choice of candidates.
‘OLD GUARD VS STUDENT-ISLAMIST ALLIANCE’
Under 30s, popularly known as Gen-Z, drove the uprising and make up more than a quarter of Bangladesh’s 128 million voters.
“They are politically active and will in all likelihood go to vote and affect the electoral outcome,” said political analyst Asif Shahan, who teaches at Dhaka University.
Most were expected to back the newly-formed National Citizens Party (NCP), spearheaded by some of the uprising’s leaders, but it has struggled for their support.
An alliance with the hardline Jamaat-e-Islami may have further undermined its appeal.
“They have lost the moral high ground,” said Shudrul Amin, a 23-year-old archaeology student at Jahangirnagar University. “Voters who wanted a ‘New Bangladesh’ free from the baggage of the past now feel they are being forced to choose between the old guard and a student‑Islamist alliance.”
Shama Debnath, a 24-year-old Hindu, said politics remained “trapped in an ‘either this or that’ framework” with no new vision or choices.
‘SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION LOST’
The interim government of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has also disappointed many in Gen-Z after it failed to rein in mob violence targeting journalists and minorities.
“After a year, I feel the spirit of the July revolution is completely lost,” said Hema Chakma, a 23-year-old Buddhist student. “I am not saying the previous situation was good, but I feel the violence has increased a lot and the interim government is not taking any steps.”
Interviews with young Bangladeshis also betrayed unhappiness with the economy, the spark for the revolt that led to Hasina’s eventual exile in India.
NCP’s spokesperson Asif Mahmud, 27, who rose to prominence during the protests and served in Yunus’ government, said the party was constrained by being new and having mostly younger members. It also lacked resources, grassroots organisation and financial muscle, he added.
Mahmud stressed the alliance with Jamaat was strategic rather than ideological and there would be no move towards sharia law.
“We will work to fulfill expectations of the youth in the present and also in the future as promised,” he said.
Despite their misgivings, most Gen-Z Bangladeshis told Reuters they remained hopeful about the election itself, where 300 seats are being contested.
There will be a simultaneous referendum on reforms to state institutions, including term limits for prime ministers, stronger presidential powers and greater independence for the judiciary and election authorities.
Willingness to vote was as high as 97% among those aged 18 to 35, with an almost even split between BNP and Jamaat, according to a recent poll by the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center, a youth‑focused leadership platform.
“People are going to vote and that is enough,” said 26-year-old student activist Umama Fatema, a key figure in the 2024 uprising, adding that only a democratically elected “stable government” could steer Bangladesh.
For some, that means the BNP.
“Given that the new students’ party has shattered our hopes, I have decided to vote for BNP,” said 25-year-old Maisha Maliha, saying she believed the country needed a strong, united political party with enough people on the ground.
Others say the Islamists should have a chance. “We have seen BNP before, so Jamaat seems like a new option,” said 20-year-old Erisha Tabassum.
‘NOT READY TO GIVE UP’
Tasnim Jara, a doctor who returned from Britain to join the NCP but quit because of the Islamist alliance, is now contesting as an independent, determined to help foster what she calls a “genuinely new political culture”.
The 31-year-old spent two frantic days going door-to-door to collect the 5,000 signatures required to validate her nomination.
“The July uprising created hope that people like us, who were never part of the old political guard, could finally enter politics and change how it is practised,” said Jara.
“I do believe there is hope for a genuine political alternative in Bangladesh. But it will not emerge overnight,” she said.
Such efforts still resonate with some young voters.
H.M. Amirul Karim, a 25-year-old English literature student, said: “I continue to dream that even if not now, the desire for a new political structure will become a reality. I am not ready to give up.”
(Reporting by Ruma Paul and Tora Agarwala; Additional reporting by Zia Chowdhury: Editing by YP Rajesh and Kate Mayberry)
RAQQA, Syria (AP) — Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters clashed Monday around two prisons housing members of the Islamic State group in Syria ’s northeast. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said several of its fighters have been killed and over a dozen others wounded.
The clashes came as SDF chief commander Mazloum Abdi is said to be in Damascus to discuss a ceasefire deal reached Sunday that ended days of deadly fighting during which government forces captured wide areas of northeast Syria from the SDF.
The SDF, the main U.S.-backed force that fought IS in Syria, controls more than a dozen prisons in the northeast where some 9,000 IS members have been held for years without trial. Many of the detained extremists are believed to have carried out atrocities in Syria and Iraq after IS declared a caliphate in June 2014 over large parts of Syria and Iraq.
The army said in a statement that some of the Shaddadi Prison detainees in the town of Shaddadeh were able to flee amid the chaos and a curfew has been imposed because of the breakout, calling for information on those who escaped as search operations continue.
The army and the SDF traded accusations over the release of the detainees, with the group confirming in a statement it lost control over the prison, which is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border with Iraq.
The Kurdish-led force also said nine of its members have been killed and 20 others wounded in fighting around another prison, al-Aqtan, northeast of the northern city of Raqqa.
An Associated Press reporter saw a U.S. convoy entering the prison area, apparently to mediate between the two sides. Washington has good relations with both.
The Syrian government had warned the SDF earlier Monday not to use “cases of terrorism for political blackmail,” saying it is ready to implement international law regarding the detainees.
“The government warns the SDF’s command not to facilitate the fleeing of Daesh detainees or opening prisons as a revenge measure or for political pressure,” read a government statement carried on state media. The government used the term Daesh, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LONDON — With one puff of a cigarette, a woman in Canada became a global symbol of defiance against Iran’s bloody crackdown on dissent — and the world saw the flame.
A video that has gone viral in recent days shows the woman — who described herself as an Iranian refugee — snapping open a lighter and setting the flame to a photo she holds. It ignites, illuminating the visage of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s highest cleric. Then the woman dips a cigarette into the glow, takes a quick drag — and lets what remains of the image fall to the pavement.
Whether staged or a spontaneous act of defiance — and there’s plenty of debate — the video has become one of the defining images of the protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy, as U.S. President Donald Trump considers military action in the country again.
The gesture has jumped from the virtual world to the real one, with opponents of the regime lighting cigarettes on photos of the ayatollah from Israel to Germany and Switzerland to the United States.
In the 34 seconds of footage, many across platforms like X, Instagram and Reddit saw one person defy a series of the theocracy’s laws and norms in a riveting act of autonomy. She wears no hijab, three years after the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests against the regime’s required headscarves.
She burns an image of Iran’s supreme leader, a crime in the Islamic republic punishable by death. Her curly hair cascades — yet another transgression in the Iranian government’s eyes. She lights a cigarette from the flame — a gesture considered immodest in Iran.
And in those few seconds, circulated and amplified a million times over, she steps into history.
In 2026, social media is a central battleground for narrative control over conflicts. Protesters in Iran say the unrest is a demonstration against the regime’s strictures and competence. Iran has long cast it as a plot by outsiders like United States and Israel to destabilize the Islamic Republic.
And both sides are racing to tell the story of it that will endure.
Iranian state media announces wave after wave of arrests by authorities, targeting those it calls “terrorists” and also apparently looking for Starlink satellite internet dishes, the only way to get videos and images out to the internet. There was evidence on Thursday that the regime’s bloody crackdown had somewhat smothered the dissent after activists said it had killed at least 2,615 people. That figure dwarfs the death toll from any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the mayhem of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Social media has bloomed with photos of people lighting cigarettes from photos of Iran’s leader. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em. #Iran,” posted Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana.
In the age of AI, misinformation and disinformation, there’s abundant reason to question emotionally and politically charged images. So when “the cigarette girl” appeared online this month, plenty of users did just that.
It wasn’t immediately clear, for example, whether she was lighting up inside Iran or somewhere with free-speech protections as a sign of solidarity. Some spotted a background that seemed to be in Canada. She confirmed that in interviews. But did her collar line up correctly? Was the flame realistic? Would a real woman let her hair get so close to the fire?
Many wondered: Is the “cigarette girl” an example of “psyops?” That, too, is unclear. That’s a feature of warfare and statecraft as old as human conflict, in which an image or sound is deliberately disseminated by someone with a stake in the outcome. From the allies’ fake radio broadcasts during World War II to the Cold War’s nuclear missile parades, history is rich with examples.
The U.S. Army doesn’t even hide it. The 4th Psychological Operations Group out of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina last year released a recruitment video called, “Ghost in the Machine 2 that’s peppered with references to “PSYWAR.” And the Gaza war featured a ferocious battle of optics: Hamas forced Israeli hostages to publicly smile and pose before being released, and Israel broadcast their jubilant reunions with family and friends.
Whatever the answer, the symbolism of the Iranian woman’s act was powerful enough to rocket around the world on social media — and inspire people at real-life protests to copy it.
The woman did not respond to multiple efforts by The Associated Press to confirm her identity. But she has spoken to other outlets, and AP confirmed the authenticity of those interviews.
On X, she calls herself a “radical feminist” and uses the screen name Morticia Addams —- after the exuberantly creepy matriarch of “The Addams Family” — sheerly out of her interest in “spooky things,” the woman said in an interview with the nonprofit outlet The Objective.
She doesn’t allow her real name to be published for safety reasons after what she describes as a harrowing journey from being a dissident in Iran — where she says she was arrested and abused — to safety in Turkey. There, she told The Objective, she obtained a student visa for Canada. Now, in her mid-20s, she said she has refugee status in and lives in Toronto.
It was there, on Jan. 7, that she filmed what’s become known as “the cigarette girl” video a day before the Iranian regime imposed a near-total internet blackout.
“I just wanted to tell my friends that my heart, my soul was with them,” she said in an interview on CNN-News18, a network affiliate in India.
In the interviews, the woman said she was arrested for the first time at 17 during the “bloody November” protests of 2019, demonstrations that erupted after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal that Iran had struck with world powers that imposed crushing sanctions.
“I was strongly opposed to the Islamic regime,” she told The Objective. Security forces “arrested me with tasers and batons. I spent a night in a detention center without my family knowing where I was or what had happened to me.” Her family eventually secured her release by offering a pay slip for bail. “I was under surveillance from that moment on.”
In 2022 during the protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, she said she participated in a YouTube program opposing the mandatory hijab and began receiving calls from blocked numbers threatening her. In 2024, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, she shared her story about it — and was arrested in her home in Isfahan.
The woman said she was questioned and “subjected to severe humiliation and physical abuse.” Then without explanation, she was released on a high bail. She fled to Turkey and began her journey to Canada and, eventually, global notoriety.
“All my family members are still in Iran, and I haven’t heard from them in a few days,” she said in the interview, published Tuesday. “I’m truly worried that the Islamic regime might attack them.”
The Keller City Council will consider a resolution stating that it will reject sharia law and other foreign legal systems.
Joyce Marshall
Star-Telegram/Joyce Marshall
Keller Mayor Armin Mizani is proposing a resolution rejecting sharia law and other foreign legal systems and affirming that the city will only abide by the Constitution and U.S. laws.
The City Council will vote on the resolution during its regularly scheduled meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
When asked why he is proposing the resolution, Mizani said, “The resolution reaffirms that in Keller, we only abide by the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law.”
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, sharia — meaning the correct path in Arabic — refers to the divine counsel that Muslims follow to be close to God and live moral lives. Most of the Muslim majority countries have laws referencing sharia. Some countries have laws administer what critics believe are cruel punishments or place undue restrictions on women and minorities. But people also misunderstand sharia and how it is applied, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mizani, who is also running in the District 98 Republican primary for the Texas House, said there is a “growing concern” with outside influences in Texas, citing examples that include legislation prohibiting “hostile foreign nations” from purchasing property in the state.
Mizani also discussed a proposed development in Collin County formerly called EPIC City. The development is now called The Meadow. The East Plano Islamic Center is proposing the development, which will include 1,000 residential units, a faith-based K-12 school, a mosque and stores according to the Texas Tribune.
The development has gotten backlash from politicians, including Gov. Abbott, and in early December, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the developer, alleging securities fraud by misrepresenting the proposed development’s location and its leader’s compensation in relation to the project.
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Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the DFW chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said he heard about the proposed resolution in Keller, calling it “tiresome.”
Carroll said Muslims have been a “political football” since 9/11.
“People don’t even know what sharia law is,” he said. “Sharia law says Muslims must follow the laws of the land.”
Carroll said politicians must talk about bringing people together.
“At this point, we are so divided at this point. They keep bringing up sharia law because it helps them fire up their supporters,” Carroll said.
Mizani said he believes the resolution will pass.
“We recognize and embrace freedom of religion. What we’re not going to recognize is any sort of development, foreign entity or organization that wants to create its own standards and own set of rules. Anyone wanting to create a development only open to one segment of the population goes against our Constitution. People have the right to be Christian or Catholic or Muslim, but the minute you propose a development that elevates one religion, that’s where we have an issue,” Mizani said.
With my guide dog Freddie, I keep tabs on growth, economic development and other issues in Northeast Tarrant cities and other communities near Fort Worth. I’ve been a reporter at the Star-Telegram for 34 years.
NEW YORK (AP) — Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City just after midnight Thursday, taking the oath of office at an historic, decommissioned subway station in Manhattan.
Mamdani, a Democrat, was sworn in as the first Muslim leader of America’s biggest city, placing his hand on a Quran as he took his oath.
The ceremony, administered by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a political ally, took place at the old City Hall station, one of the city’s original subway stops that is known for its stunning arched ceilings.
He will be sworn in again, in grander style, in a public ceremony at City Hall at 1 p.m. by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the mayor’s political heroes. That will be followed by what the new administration is billing as a public block party on a stretch of Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes,” famous for its ticker-tape parades.
In addition to being the city’s first Muslim mayor, Mamdani is also its first of South Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. At 34, Mamdani is also the city’s youngest mayor in generations.
In a campaign that helped make “affordability” a buzzword across the political spectrum, the democratic socialist promised to bring transformative change with policies intended to lower the cost of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities. His platform included free child care, free buses, a rent freeze for about 1 million households, and a pilot of city-run grocery stores.
But he will also have to face other responsibilities: handling trash and snow and rats, while getting blamed for subway delays and potholes.
Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, an academic and author. His family moved to New York City when he was 7, with Mamdani growing up in a post-9/11 city where Muslims didn’t always feel welcome. He became an American citizen in 2018.
He worked on political campaigns for Democratic candidates in the city before he sought public office himself, winning a state Assembly seat in 2020 to represent a section of Queens.
Mamdani inherits a city on the upswing, after years of slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Violent crime has dropped to pre-pandemic lows. Tourists are back. Unemployment, which soared during the pandemic years, is also back to pre-COVID levels.
Yet deep concerns remain about high prices and rising rents in the city.
He’ll also have to deal with Republican President Donald Trump.
During the mayoral race, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the city if Mamdani won and mused about sending National Guard troops to the city.
But Trump surprised supporters and foes alike by inviting the Democrat to the White House for what ended up being a cordial meeting in November.
“I want him to do a great job and will help him do a great job,” Trump said.
Still, tensions between the two leaders are almost certain to resurface, given their deep policy disagreements, particularly over immigration.
Mamdani also faces skepticism and opposition from some members of the city’s Jewish community over his criticisms of Israel’s government.
The new mayor and his team have spent the weeks since his election victory preparing for the transition, surrounding Mamdani with seasoned hands who have worked inside or alongside city government.
That included persuading the city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to remain in her position — a move that helped calm fears in the business community that the administration might be planning radical changes in policing strategy.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Whether it’s stand-up comedy specials or a dramedy series, when Muslim American Mo Amer sets out to create, he writes what he knows.
The comedian, writer and actor of Palestinian descent has received critical acclaim for it, too. The second season of Amer’s “Mo” documents Mo Najjar and his family’s tumultuous journey reaching asylum in the United States as Palestinian refugees.
Amer’s show is part of an ongoing wave of television from Arab American and Muslim American creators who are telling nuanced, complicated stories about identity without falling into stereotypes that Western media has historically portrayed.
“Whenever you want to make a grounded show that feels very real and authentic to the story and their cultural background, you write to that,” Amer told The Associated Press. “And once you do that, it just feels very natural, and when you accomplish that, other people can see themselves very easily.”
At the start of its second season, viewers find Najjar running a falafel taco stand in Mexico after he was locked in a van transporting stolen olive trees across the U.S.-Mexico border. Najjar was trying to retrieve the olive trees and return them to the farm where he, his mother and brother are attempting to build an olive oil business.
Both seasons of “Mo” were smash hits on Netflix. The first season was awarded a Peabody. His third comedy special on Netflix, “Mo Amer: Wild World,” premiered in October.
Narratively, the second season ends before the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but the series itself doesn’t shy away from addressing Israeli-Palestinian relations, the ongoing conflict in Gaza or what it’s like for asylum seekers detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
In addition to “Mo,” shows like “Muslim Matchmaker,” hosted by matchmakers Hoda Abrahim and Yasmin Elhady, connect Muslim Americans from around the country with the goal of finding a spouse.
The animated series, “#1 Happy Family USA,” created by Ramy Youssef, who worked with Amer to create “Mo,” and Pam Brady, follows an Egyptian American Muslim family navigating life in New Jersey after the 9/11 terrorists attack in New York.
Current events have an influence
The key to understanding the ways in which Arab or Muslim Americans have been represented on screen is to be aware of the “historical, political, cultural and social contexts” in which the content was created, said Sahar Mohamed Khamis, a University of Maryland professor who studies Arab and Muslim representation in media.
After the 9/11 attacks, Arabs and Muslims became the villains in many American films and TV shows. The ethnic background of Arabs and the religion of Islam were portrayed as synonymous, too, Khamis said. The villain, Khamis said, is often a man with brown skin with an Arab-sounding name.
A show like “Muslim Matchmaker” flips this narrative on its head, Elhady said, by showing the ethnic diversity of Muslim Americans.
“It’s really important to have shows that show us as everyday Americans,” said Elhady, who is Egyptian and Libyan American, “but also as people that live in different places and have kind of sometimes dual realities and a foot in the East and a foot in the West and the reality of really negotiating that context.”
Before 9/11, people living in the Middle East were often portrayed to Western audiences as exotic beings, living in tents in the desert and riding camels. Women often had little to no agency in these media depictions and were “confined to the harem” — a secluded location for women in a traditional Muslim home.
This idea, Khamis said, harkens back to the term “orientalism,” which Palestinian American academic, political activist and literary critic Edward Said coined in his 1978 book of the same name.
Khamis said, pointing to countries like Britain and France, the portrayal in media of people from the region was “created and manufactured, not by the people themselves, but through the gaze of an outsider. The outsiders in this case, he said, were the colonial/imperialist powers that were actually controlling these lands for long periods of time.”
Among those who study the ways Arabs have been depicted on Western television, a common critique is that the characters are “bombers, billionaires or belly dancers,” she said.
The limits of representation
Sanaz Alesafar, executive director of Storyline Partners and an Iranian American, said she has seen some “wins” with regard to Arab representation in Hollywood, noting the success of “Mo,” “Muslim Matchmaker” and “#1 Happy Family USA.” Storyline Partners helps writers, showrunners, executives and creators check the historical and cultural backgrounds of their characters and narratives to assure they’re represented fairly and that one creator’s ideas don’t infringe upon another’s.
Alesafar argues there is still a need for diverse stories told about people living in the Middle East and the English-speaking diaspora, written and produced by people from those backgrounds.
“In the popular imagination and popular culture, we’re still siloed in really harmful ways,” she said. “Yes, we’re having these wins and these are incredible, but that decision-making and centers of power still are relegating us to these tropes and these stereotypes.”
Deana Nassar, an Egyptian American who is head of creative talent at film production company Alamiya Filmed Entertainment, said it’s important for her children to see themselves reflected on screen “for their own self image.” Nassar said she would like to see a diverse group of people in decision-making roles in Hollywood. Without that, it’s “a clear indication that representation is just not going to get us all the way there,” she said.
Representation can impact audiences’ opinions on public policy, too, according to a recent study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Results showed that the participants who witnessed positive representation of Muslims were less likely to support anti-democratic and anti-Muslim policies compared to those who viewed negative representations.
For Amer, limitations to representation come from the decision-makers who greenlight projects, not from creators. He said the success of shows like his and others are a “start,” but he wants to see more industry recognition for his work and the work of others like him.
“That’s the thing, like just keep writing, that’s all it’s about,” he said. “Just keep creating and keep making and thankfully I have a really deep well for that, so I’m very excited about the next things,” he said.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Sydney — Australia will use a sweeping buyback scheme to “get guns off our streets,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday, showing his government was keen to take quick action less than a week after a terrorist attack left 15 people dead at a Jewish holiday gathering on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach.
Sajid Akram and his son Naveed are accused of opening fire on the festival, which was organized to mark the first day of Hanukkah on Sunday, in what was one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings.
“There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns,” he said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett are seen on Dec. 19, 2025, in Canberra, Australia, during a news conference in the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty
Australia would pay gun owners to surrender “surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms.”
Albanese said Monday that his government was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws.” He specifically suggested measures that could limit the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain, and mandating a review process for existing licenses.
The prime minister said the federal government would evenly split the cost of the buyback program with Australia’s state and territorial administrations, with further details to be worked out when lawmakers return to work next week.
Investigation continues as Sydney remains on high alert
Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in a gunfight with police, but his 24-year-old son Naveed survived. The unemployed bricklayer was charged earlier this week with 15 counts of murder, an act of terrorism, and dozens of other serious crimes after waking up from a coma in a Sydney hospital.
Albanese said the attack was inspired by ISIS ideology, and Australian police are still investigating whether the pair may have met with Islamist extremists during a visit to the Philippines just a couple weeks before the shooting.
They spent most of November in the south of the Asian nation, in a hotel in Davao City. A hotel employee told CBS News on Thursday that the father and son extended their stay week by week and paid in cash, and that they would go out during the day but return to the hotel every night, often bringing food back to eat in their room.
He said staff noticed nothing particularly suspicious about the men during their nearly monthlong stay.
A view of the GV Hotel, where Sajid and Naveed Akram, suspects in the Bondi Beach terror attack, stayed in November, as seen on Dec. 18, 2025, in Davao City, in the southern Philippines.
Ezra Acayan/Getty
Sydney, meanwhile, remains on high alert almost a week after the shootings.
Armed police released seven men from custody on Friday, a day after detaining them on a tip they may have been plotting a “violent act,” as they reportedly headed for Bondi Beach.
Police said there was no established link with the alleged Bondi gunmen and “no immediate safety risk to the community.”
A second major Australian gun buyback spurred by a mass shooting
The new buyback, assuming it is approved by lawmakers next week, will be the largest such government-funded program since 1996, when then-Prime Minister John Howard cracked down on firearms in the wake of another mass shooting, in which 35 people were killed in the town of Port Arthur.
Just 12 days after that attack, Australian lawmakers approved legislation banning the sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns; forcing people to present a legitimate reason, and wait 28 days, to buy any firearm, and initiating the massive, mandatory gun-buyback for banned weapons.
The government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms in the wake of the law’s adoption, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half.
“It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia,” former premier Howard, who defied many in his own conservative party to usher in the 1996 law, told CBS News’ Seth Doane two decades later, in 2016.
A Sept. 8, 1996 file photo shows Norm Legg, a project supervisor with a local security firm, holding an ArmaLite rifle similar to the one used in the Port Arthur mass shooting, which was handed in for scrap in Melbourne as part of a mandatory government gun buyback program after the attack.
WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty
In the 15 years before those laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia. In the two decades after, there wasn’t a single one. Gun homicides overall decreased by nearly 60% in the same period.
Asked to respond to critics who said the fall in gun deaths did not necessarily happen because of the legislation, Howard told CBS News: “The number of deaths from mass shootings, gun-related homicide has fallen, gun related suicide has fallen … Isn’t that evidence? Or are we expected to believe that that was all magically going to happen? Come on!”
A study published earlier this year, however, found Australia still has some way to go to fully implement the 2016 legislation, called the National Firearms Agreement. The paper, by the Australia Institute think tank, said some of the measures had yet to be brought into force 29 years later, and others were being inconsistently enforced across different states.
The law “was ambitious, politically brave, and necessary for public safety,” the report concluded, lauding Howard’s will to defy his fellow lawmakers.
But “Australia still allows minors to hold firearm licenses, still lacks a National Firearms Register, and still has inconsistent laws that make enforcement difficult,” the group said, adding that overall gun ownership across the country had actually boomed over the last three decades.
“There are now over four million registered privately owned guns in Australia: 800,000 more than before the (1996) buyback,” the institute said in its May report. “Australians needs gun laws that live up to the Howard Government’s bravery, and right now Australia does not have them.”
Albanese, along with state and territorial leaders, agreed on Monday to look at ways to bolster gun laws, including by accelerating the launch of the national firearms register called for in the 1996 legislation, making gun licenses available only to Australian citizens, and imposing new restrictions the types of weapons that are legal for licensees to own.
A memorial at sea, and a day of reflection planned for Bondi Beach victims
Hundreds of people plunged into the ocean at Bondi Beach on Friday to honor the 15 people killed in the terror attack, forming a massive ring in the sea on surf and paddle boards, as Albanese announced a national day of reflection to be observed on Sunday.
Albanese urged Australians to light candles at 6:47 p.m. on Sunday, “exactly one week since the attack unfolded.”
Surfers and swimmers paddle out into the ocean to hold a tribute for the victims of the terror attack at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 19, 2025.
Steve Markham/AP
On Friday, swimmers and surfers paddled into a circle, bobbing in the gentle morning swell, splashing water and roaring with emotion.
“They slaughtered innocent victims, and today I’m swimming out there and being part of my community again to bring back the light,” security consultant Jason Carr, 53, told AFP. “We’re still burying bodies. But I just felt it was important.”
Carole Schlessinger, a 58-year-old chief executive of a children’s charity, said there was a “beautiful energy” at the ocean gathering. “To be together is such an important way of trying to deal with what’s going on.”
“It was really lovely to be part of it,” she said, adding: “I personally am feeling very numb. I’m feeling super angry. I’m feeling furious.”
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday approved former Iraqi President Barham Salih as the next head of the U.N. refugee agency, its first from the Middle East since the late 1970s.
The 193-member world body elected the 65-year-old Kurdish politician as the U.N. high commissioner for refugees by consensus and a bang of the gavel by Assembly President Annalena Baerbock. Diplomats in the assembly chamber burst into applause as Salih’s election became official.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former refugee chief who recommended Salih for the post, said he brings “senior diplomatic, political and administrative leadership experience” to the job, including as “a refugee, crisis negotiator and architect of national reforms.”
At the age of 19 in 1979, Salih was reportedly arrested twice by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party on charges of involvement in the Kurdish national movement and spent 43 days in detention. When he was released, he finished high school and fled to the United Kingdom to avoid further persecution.
After Saddam was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in 2003, Salih returned to Iraq and held various posts in the government. He became Iraq’s president in 2018, in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic State group’s rampage across Iraq and the battle to take back the territory seized by the extremist group. He served until 2022.
Salih succeeds longtime agency veteran Filippo Grandi, whose second five-year term expires Dec. 31. Salih’s five-year term starts Jan. 1.
Salih will take the reins of the Geneva-based UNHCR at the end of a devastating year for many U.N. organizations, including the refugee agency. The U.N. has cut spending and thousands of jobs in the wake of sharply reduced foreign aid contributions by the United States — traditionally its top donor — and other Western countries.
In a statement after his election, Salih said his experience as a refugee “will inform a leadership approach grounded in empathy, pragmatism, and a principled commitment to international law.”
With record displacement and severe funding shortages for humanitarian operations, he said, helping the world’s refugees requires “a renewed focus on impact, accountability and efficiency.”
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that the father and son suspects in the antisemitic terror attack on a Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach were inspired by ISIS, as officials in India confirmed that the older man was originally from that nation.
Authorities also revealed that gunmen had recently returned from the Philippines, where they traveled to an area known as a hotbed for terrorist groups.
The mass shooting on the famous beach left 15 innocent people dead, including a 10-year-old girl and an Holocaust survivor. The attack was “motivated by Islamic State ideology,” Albanese said Tuesday as he visited one of the heroes who tried to stop the attackers.
Australia’s federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett also said Tuesday that it was “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” referring to the now disparate group that, for several years, held a huge swathe of territory spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The suspects, a father and son aged 50 and 24, used guns that were owned legally by the older man, whom officials in New South Wales state have named as Sajid Akram. He was shot dead at the scene, and his son was still being treated in a hospital on Tuesday, where Australian public broadcaster ABC said he had regained consciousness.
Indian police confirm father was from Hyderabad
Police in the southern Indian state of Telangana confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that Sajid Akram was originally from the city of Hyderabad. In a statement, the police said he earned a degree in Hyderabad before migrating to Australia in November 1998, where he married a woman of European origin.
Sajid Akram held an Indian passport, while his son Naveed and a daughter were both born in Australia and are citizens of the country, the police said, confirming previous statements by Australian officials about the son’s nationality. U.S. officials had told CBS News soon after the attack that at least one of the Akrams was believed to be a Pakistani national, but that appears to have been a case of mistaken identity, and a man with the same name as the younger suspect has come forward in Sydney to say he was wrongly identified.
The Telangana police said the elder Akram had “limited contact with his family in Hyderabad over the past 27 years,” visiting six times since he migrated to Australia, “primarily for family-related reasons.”
The police statement said family members in India had “expressed no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization, and that the son’s apparent radicalization appeared “to have no connection with India.”
Australian officials have confirmed that homemade ISIS flags were found — along with an improvised explosive device — in the suspects’ vehicle at Bondi Beach on Sunday, and police provided new information on Tuesday about their recent movements.
Suspected gunmen spent most of November in the Philippines
Both men traveled to the Philippines in November, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters on Tuesday, adding that investigators were still looking into the reasons for the trip and where exactly the men went.
The Philippines Bureau of Immigration said both Sajid Akram and his son, identified widely by Australian media as Naveed Akram, spent most of November — from the 1st until the 28th — in the Philippines, and listing the city of Davao as their final destination.
Muslim separatists, including the Islamist Abu Sayyaf group that once publicly backed ISIS, are active in that part of the southern Philippines. ABC, the Australian public broadcaster, said the men had undergone “military-style training” in the Philippines, citing security sources.
That group and others in the region have drawn and trained some foreign militants from across Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past, according to the Associated Press, though Abu Sayyaf has been weakened in recent years by repeated military offensives.
The AP cited Philippine military and police officials as saying there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants operating in the south of the country.
Did Australian officials fail the Jewish community?
Australian officials confirmed Monday that Naveed Akram was under investigation for about six months during 2019 for suspected links to a Sydney-based terror cell, though the nation’s primary spy agency found he represented no threat, and officials said the probe had focused on associates.
Australia’s ABC network reported that his ties included “longstanding links” to members of a pro-ISIS cell in Australia, including contact with alleged jihadist spiritual leader Wisam Haddad and a man named Youssef Uweinat, who was convicted of recruiting young people in Australia to Islamic extremism.
A lawyer for Haddad has denied that the cleric had “any knowledge of or involvement in the shootings that took place at Bondi Beach,” according to the network.
Many people, from the daughter of one of the victims, to a former Australian leader, have told CBS News the men’s history should have raised serious red flags, if not stopped them before they claimed so many lives.
Israeli officials have harshly criticized Australia’s government for failing to protect Jewish people amid a sharp rise in recent years of antisemitic incidents.
Police set up a cordon at the scene of a mass shooting at Bondi Beach, Dec. 14, 2025 in Sydney, Australia.
George Chan/Getty
“We are now facing here a surge of antisemitism, and Australians of Jewish faith are not feeling secure in their own country, and this is insane,” Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon told CBS News on Tuesday, urging Australian leaders to create opportunities for young people of different faiths to come together, “and not once a year, but on a weekly basis.”
Maimon also said “boundaries should be set” by Australian authorities, referring to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been held in the country.
“I believe that it’s very important to make sure that while the principle of freedom of expression should be kept, there should be also a limit to the language that some protesters, and in some protests, we hear,” he said. “I always believe that there is room to do more. Always. I’m asking myself every day, ‘what can I do better? How can I do better?’ And I’m trying to do it. And I do expect the Australian government to do better.”
Former Australian leader says there are no easy answers
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told CBS News on Tuesday that the national government undoubtedly had some very big questions to answer, but he stressed that intelligence gathering — for all nations — is an imperfect science.
“This type of terrorism has been, the elements of that, have been present in Australia for a long time, and our agencies spend a lot of time keeping an eye on them, but it’s hard to track every single person,” said Turnbull, who was Australian prime minister from 2015 to 2018.
“Certainly, it’s a very big question: Why does somebody living in the suburbs of Sydney need six long arms, as he [Sajid Akram] had, even though they were licensed? Second question is, why were they licensed to a man who had a son who had been on an ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organization] watchlist because of links to ISIS-related entities? … And that trip to the Philippines raises another question: Why were they there? And so, you know, this gets back to the problem that I think we face all around the world, is databases talking to each other? Are we actually putting all the dots together in time?”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks during a news conference in Sydney, Australia, in a July 30, 2017 file photo.
AAP/Sam Mooy/via Reuters
“There are holes in everybody’s intelligence gathering,” Turnbull said. “But as you know, the terrorist only has to be right once. The security agencies have to be right every time.”
Regarding the sharp criticism levelled by many in the Jewish community, in particular, over perceived failings in detecting the threat posed by the suspects, and also in sufficiently protecting the pre-planned Jewish event on Bondi Beach, Turnbull said he wasn’t sure how much more could have been done by his successor Albanese.
“I’ve been prime minister, right? And I’m on the opposite side of politics, so I’m not trying to be partisan about this, but I struggle to see what he could have done that was different. I mean there have been people saying he shouldn’t have allowed pro-Palestine marches. Well, you know, we do have freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Australia. I mean we have restrictions in Australia on speech, on hate speech, and on guns, in particular.”
“When I ask people, they will say he should have condemned antisemitism more often. Well, I’ve never heard him do anything other than condemn it, but my question really is to say, what would difference would that have made? To those terrorists, you know, they’re not going to listen to a lecture on the evils of antisemitism from you or me or Anthony Albanese.”
“Remember, terrorism is a political act, right? So, you’ve got to try to interrupt people being radicalized, particularly young men, it’s the most vulnerable group, and that involves monitoring what is being said online, what they’re being taught, you know, in schools or in mosques or in other places. And the intelligence agencies are doing that all the time,” he said.
Pope Leo pushes for peace and unity at Blue Mosque in Turkey – CBS News
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Pope Leo celebrated mass in Istanbul with Turkey’s Catholic community on Saturday. He also visited the famous Blue Mosque to address peace and unity across faiths. Chris Livesay has more.
Pope Leo XIV visited Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque on Saturday but didn’t stop to pray, as he opened an intense day of meetings and liturgies with Turkey’s Christian leaders, where he again emphasized the need for Christians to be united.
Leo took his shoes off and, in his white socks, toured the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him.
The Vatican had said Leo would observe a “brief moment of silent prayer” in the mosque, but he didn’t. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was “Allah’s house,” but the pope declined.
Later, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: “The pope experienced his visit to the mosque in silence, in a spirit of contemplation and listening, with deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather there in prayer.”
The Vatican then sent out a corrected version of its bulletin about the trip, removing reference to the planned “brief moment of silent prayer,” without further explanation.
Leo, history’s first American pope, was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, as it is officially known, in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.
Pope Leo XIV, center, walking with Muezzin Musa Asgın Tunca, left, Dr. Emrullah Tuncel, second from left, and Imam of Mosque Sultanahmet Fatih Kaya, visits the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025.
Domenico Stinellis / AP
Papal visits to Blue Mosque often raise questions
Other visits have always raised questions about whether the pope would pray in the Muslim house of worship, or at the very least pause to gather thoughts in a meditative silence.
When Pope Benedict XVI visited Turkey in 2006, tensions were high because Benedict had offended many in the Muslim world a few months earlier with a speech in Regensburg, Germany that was widely interpreted as linking Islam and violence.
The Vatican added a visit to the Blue Mosque at the last minute in a bid to reach out to Muslims, and Benedict was warmly welcomed. He observed a moment of silent prayer, head bowed, as the imam prayed next to him, facing east.
Pope Benedict XVI, second from left, is guided by Istanbul’s Mufti Mustafa Cagrici, fourth from left, inside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006.
AP Photo/Salih Zeki Fazlioglu
Benedict later thanked him “for this moment of prayer” for what was only the second time a pope had visited a mosque, after St. John Paul II visited one briefly in Syria in 2001.
There were no doubts in 2014 when Pope Francis visited the Blue Mosque: He stood for two minutes of silent prayer facing east, his head bowed, eyes closed and hands clasped in front of him. The Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran, told the pope afterwards, “May God accept it.”
Pope Francis visits the Blue Mosque on November 29, 2014 in Istanbul.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
Speaking to reporters after the visit, the imam Tunca said he had told the Leo: “It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah,” he said. He said he told the pope: “‘If you want, you can worship here,’ I said. But he said, ‘That’s OK.’”
“He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased,” he said.
There was also another change to the official program, after the Vatican said the head of Turkey’s Diyanet religious affairs directorate would accompany Leo at the mosque. He didn’t come and a spokesman from the Diyanet said he wasn’t supposed to, since he had welcomed Leo in Ankara.
Hagia Sophia left off itinerary
Past popes have also visited the nearby Hagia Sophia landmark, once one of the most important historic cathedrals in Christianity and a United Nations-designated world heritage site.
But Leo left that visit off his itinerary on his first trip as pope. In July 2020, Turkey converted Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, a move that drew widespread international criticism, including from the Vatican.
After the mosque visit, Leo held a private meeting with Turkey’s Christian leaders at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem. In the afternoon, he was expected to pray with the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew, at the patriarchal church of Saint George.
There, they were to sign a joint statement. The Vatican said in his remarks to the patriarchs gathered, Leo reminded them “that division among Christians is an obstacle to their witness.”
Pope Leo XIV visits the Ottoman-era Sultan Ahmed or Blue Mosque, in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025.
Emrah Gurel / AP
He pointed to the next Holy Year to be celebrated by Christians, in 2033 on the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, and invited them to go to Jerusalem on “a journey that leads to full unity.”
Leo was ending the day with a Catholic Mass in Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena for the country’s Catholic community, who number 33,000 in a country of more than 85 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslim.
The Airbus software update doesn’t spare pope
While Leo was focusing on bolstering relations with Orthodox Christians and Muslims, trip organizers were dealing with more mundane issues.
Leo’s ITA Airways Airbus A320neo charter was among those caught up in the worldwide Airbus software update, ordered by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The order came after an analysis found the computer code may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a JetBlue plane last month.
The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said Saturday that ITA was working on the issue. He said the necessary component to update the aircraft was on its way to Istanbul along with the technician who would install it.
Leo is scheduled to fly from Istanbul to Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday afternoon for the second leg of his inaugural trip as pope.
Pope Leo XIV started the second day of his trip to Turkey with a visit to Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on Saturday.
Leo was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the mosque in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.
This is the pope’s first foreign trip. He will also visit Lebanon.
Leo, history’s first American pope, is expected to speak in broader terms about peace in the Middle East
Spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a statement after questions arose about whether Leo prayed in the mosque or not, describing the mosque visit as a silent one to contemplate.
Bruni said: “The pope experienced his visit to the mosque in silence, in a spirit of contemplation and listening, with deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather there in prayer.”
Past papal visits to the mosque have always raised questions about whether the popes would pray in the Muslim house of worship or merely visit as a sign of respect to Muslims.
Asgin Tunca said he had invited Leo to pray, but the pope declined.
Speaking to reporters after the visit, Tunca said he had told the pope that the mosque was “Allah’s house.”
“It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah,” he said. He said he told Leo: “’If you want, you can worship here,’ I said. But he said, ‘That’s OK.’”
“He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased,” he said.
Leo visited the iconic mosque in Istanbul, where the head of Turkey’s Diyanet religious affairs directorate showed him the structure’s soaring blue-tiled dome.
The Vatican said Leo would observe a “brief minute of silent prayer.”
Leo was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the mosque in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.
ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan praised Pope Leo’s stance on the Palestinian issue after meeting him in Ankara on Thursday, and said he hoped his first overseas visit as Catholic leader will benefit humanity at a time of tension and uncertainty.
“We commend (Pope Leo’s) astute stance on the Palestinian issue,” Erdogan said in an address to the Pope and political and religious leaders at the presidential library in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Our debt to the Palestinian people is justice, and the foundation of this is to immediately implement the vision of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Similarly, preserving the historic status of Jerusalem is crucial,” Erdogan said.
Pope Leo’s calls for peace and diplomacy regarding the war in Ukraine are also very meaningful, Erdogan said.
In September, Leo met at the Vatican with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and raised the “tragic situation” in Gaza with him.
Turkey has emerged as among the harshest critics of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in its conflict there with Palestinian militant group Hamas.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Daren Butler)
ANKARA — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Turkey on Thursday on his first foreign trip, fulfilling Pope Francis’ plans to mark an important Orthodox anniversary and bring a message of peace to the region at a crucial time in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions.
Leo’s charter plane landed at Ankara’s international airport.
Later, he had a meeting planned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then move late Thursday on to Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings that will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is heading to Turkey on Thursday on his first foreign trip, fulfilling the late Pope Francis’ plans to mark an important Orthodox anniversary and bring a message of peace to the region at a crucial time for efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions.
Leo is arriving first in Ankara, where he has a meeting planned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then move on to Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings that will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip.
Leo’s visit comes as Turkey, a country of more than 85 million people of predominantly Sunni Muslims, has cast itself as a key intermediary in peace negotiations for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Ankara has hosted rounds of low-level talks between Russia and Ukraine and has offered to take part in the stabilization force in Gaza to help uphold the fragile ceasefire, engagements Leo may applaud in his arrival speech.
Turkey’s growing military weight, as NATO’s largest army after the U.S., has been drawing Western leaders closer to Erdogan even as critics warn of his crackdown on the country’s main opposition party.
Though support for Palestinians and an end to the war in Ukraine is widespread in Turkey, for Turks who face an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, owing to market turmoil induced by shake-ups in domestic politics, international politics is a secondary concern.
That could explain why Leo’s visit has largely escaped the attention of many in Turkey, at least outside the country’s small Christian community.
“I didn’t know he was coming. He is welcome,” said Sukran Celebi. “It would be good if he called for peace in the world, but I don’t think it will change anything.”
Some said they thought the visit by history’s first American pope was about advancing the interests of the United States, or perhaps to press for the reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary that has become a focal point in the push for religious freedoms in Turkey.
“If the pope is visiting, that means America wants something from Turkey,” said Metin Erdem, a musical instruments shop owner in the touristic Galata district of Istanbul.
The main impetus for Leo to travel to Turkey is to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.
Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, today’s Iznik in northwestern Turkey, and sign a joint declaration in a visible sign of Christian unity.
Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.
While the visit is timed for the important Catholic-Orthodox anniversary, it will also allow Leo to reinforce the church’s relations with Muslims. Leo is due to visit the Blue Mosque and preside over an interfaith meeting in Istanbul.
Asgın Tunca, a Blue Mosque imam who will be receiving the pope, said the visit would help advance Christian-Muslim ties and dispel popular prejudices about Islam.
“We want to reflect that image by showing the beauty of our religion through our hospitality — that is God’s command,” Tunca said.
Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan’s government has enacted reforms to improve the rights of religious groups, including opening places of worship and returning property that were confiscated.
Still, some Christian groups face legal and bureaucratic problems when trying to register churches, according to a U.S. State Department report on religious freedoms.
The Catholic Church, which counts around 33,000 members in Turkey, has no formal legal recognition in the country “and this is the source of many problems,” said the Rev. Paolo Pugliese, superior of the Capuchin Catholic friars in Turkey.
“But the Catholic Church enjoys a rather notable importance because we have an international profile … and we have the pope holding our backs,” he said.
One of the more delicate moments of Leo’s visit will come Sunday, when he visits the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Istanbul. The cathedral has hosted all popes who have visited Turkey since Paul VI, with the exception of Francis who visited Turkey in 2014 when its patriarch was sick.
Francis visited him at the hospital, and a few months later he greatly angered Turkey in 2015 when he declared that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was “the first genocide of the 20th century.” Turkey, which has long denied a genocide took place, recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest.
Leo has tended to be far more prudent than Francis in his public comments, and using such terms on Turkish soil would spark a diplomatic incident. But the Vatican is also navigating a difficult moment in its ties with Armenia, after its interfaith overtures to Azerbaijan have been criticized.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
A group of Muslim and interfaith leaders are urging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to reverse his proclamation designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Texas’s designation is state-level only. It does not carry the legal force of a federal Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) listing, which only the U.S. State Department can issue. Abbott’s proclamation, therefore, does not trigger federal terrorism penalties or authorities.
The leaders of several Muslim groups held a news conference on Tuesday to denounce the governor’s proclamation, which also labeled CAIR as a “a transnational criminal organization.”
The groups called on the governor to retract his labeling of the civil rights group, calling it defamatory, destructive and dangerous, according to Fox 4.
Muslim and interfaith leaders are urging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to reverse his proclamation designating CAIR as a terrorist organization.(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
This comes after CAIR filed a lawsuit against Texas over the governor’s declaration, arguing that it violates both the U.S. Constitution and state law.
CAIR argues the order violates its First Amendment rights and due-process protections, and that Texas overstepped its authority because terrorism designations fall under federal, not state, jurisdiction.
“The governor is attempting to punish the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization simply because he disagrees with its protected First Amendment rights to criticize a foreign state that is conducting genocide. This is not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law,” Mustaffa Carroll, the executive director for CAIR Dallas Fort Worth, said at the news conference on Tuesday.
“You know that CAIR has condemned Hamas attacks. You know that CAIR has spent 31 years fighting terrorism and bigotry. You know that the terrorism boogeyman you invoke is nothing more than a tired, formulated playbook to stoke fear of Muslims,” Marium Uddin of the Muslim Legal Defense Fund said on Tuesday.
CAIR filed a lawsuit against Texas over the governor’s declaration, arguing that it violates both the U.S. Constitution and state law.(Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
Leaders from other faiths, including Jewish voices, also spoke out against Abbott’s label.
“We stand steadfast in solidarity with our comrades in CAIR and in unwavering support in their lawsuit against Abbott’s false and unconstitutional proclamation,” Jewish Voice for Peace’s Deborah Armintor said.
State Rep. Terry Meza, a Democrat, added that the governor’s words “are not just wrong, they’re dangerous. Making comments like this is dangerous to our Muslim community.”
An Australian senator who has long campaigned for the Islamic women’s garment known as the burqa to be banned in the country has been suspended from parliament for a week for her protest on Monday in which she wore the full body covering into the chamber and refused to remove it.
Pauline Hanson of the anti-immigration One Nation party was accused of racism by fellow lawmakers when she walked into the parliament wearing a burqa on Monday. Hanson called the move — which she has now done twice in a decade — a protest against her colleagues’ refusal to allow her to introduce a bill that would ban burqas and other face coverings in public.
Once inside, Hanson refused to remove the burqa, leading the Senate to be suspended for the remainder of that day.
The protest was met by outrage by some of her fellow senators, with Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters calling it a “middle finger to people of faith.”
“It is extremely racist and unsafe,” Waters added.
Independent Senator Fatima Payman looks on as One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Nov. 24, 2025.
AAP/Mick Tsikas/REUTERS
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 55 to five on a motion that condemned Hanson’s actions as being “intended to vilify and mock people on the basis of their religion” and calling them “disrespectful to Muslim Australians.”
Following the motion, Hanson was barred for seven consecutive Senate sitting days, which will mean her suspension will continue when parliament comes back into session in February of next year after its holiday break.
Speaking to Sky News Australia, Hanson rejected accusations that her protest had vilified or mocked Muslims.
“At the end of the day this is Australia. It is not the Australian cultural way of life. I just want equality for all Australians and I don’t want to see the suppression or oppression of women in this country,” she told the news channel.
Hanson previously wore a burqa to Parliament in 2017, but this week was the first time she was punished for it. When she did it in 2017, she said it was to highlight what she called security issues posed by the garment, which she linked to terrorism.
Sydney — A far-right Australian politician sparked outrage Monday after donning a burqa at the country’s parliament, in a display that other lawmakers condemned as racist, unsafe and disrespectful.
Pauline Hanson of the anti-immigration One Nation party was seeking to introduce a bill in the Senate that would ban full face coverings in Australia — a policy she has campaigned on for decades.
Just minutes after other lawmakers blocked her from introducing that bill, she returned wearing a black burqa and sat down.
Her display was meet by outrage from her fellow senators.
Australian Greens leader in the Senate Larissa Waters said the move was “the middle finger to people of faith.”
“It is extremely racist and unsafe,” Waters added.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who also serves as leader of the government in the Senate, condemned it as “disrespectful.”
Senator Pauline Hanson, leader of Australia’s One Nation political party, wears a burqa in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Nov. 24, 2025.
AAP/Mick Tsikas/REUTERS
“All of us in this place have a great privilege in coming into this chamber,” Wong said. “We represent in our states, people of every faith, of every faith, of all backgrounds. And we should do so decently.”
Hanson refused to remove the burqa and the Senate was suspended.
It is the second time she has donned the Muslim clothing in parliament.
In 2017, she wore a full burqa in the Senate to highlight what she said were the security issues the garment posed, linking it to terror.
In a statement posted later Monday on a Facebook account that she endorses, Hanson called her actions a protest against the Senate rejecting her proposed bill.
“So if the Parliament won’t ban it, I will display this oppressive, radical, non-religious head garb that risk our national security and the ill-treatment of women on the floor of our parliament so that every Australian knows what’s at stake,” Hanson wrote. “If they don’t want me wearing it — ban the burqa.”
Independent Senator Fatima Payman looks on as One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Nov. 24, 2025.
AAP/Mick Tsikas/REUTERS
Hanson has previously described Islam as “a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own,” and she claimed in a 2016 speech that Australia was being “swamped by Muslims.”
Her party has seen its support among the public increase as the country’s main conservative opposition remain beset by infighting. A poll this month reported by The Australian Financial Review showed the One Nation party with a still modest, but record 18% support.
That comes as a government envoy said in September that Australia had failed to tackle persistent and intensifying Islamophobia.
