1y ago

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”.

27 comments

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.
- At the time, compared to pretty much anywhere in Europe outside of Iberia, women in the Umayyad Caliphate (along with Jews) were given a lot of freedom. You could do things like own property and run a business if you were a woman under the Umayyads.
  Women also ironically had more freedom under Saddam than they do now, because Saddam's Ba'ath party was secular.
  
  Saddam could have turned Iraq into an example for surrounding countries but instead chose to be a tyrant dictator. The fool didn’t realise that he was sitting on a goldmine of water and oil. The only country in the region to have both oil and water in the form of a huge fucking river flowing through it. He could have made billions just selling water to his neighbours. And turned into a tourist, cultural and modern Mecca. And he was secular so it could have been such an awesome place to visit and live in. But no, he decided to be a dickhead, fight Iran until his money ran out then tried to loot Kuwait to finance his war and it went downhill from there. In an alternate timeline, Iraq could have been the greatest country in the region.
- Pre-1979 Iran seemed pretty decent.
  
  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.
- Yo this is racist!!!
- It changing is one of the signs of the biblical apocalypse, so that tracks.
  
  I guess I'm not surprised that the bible is racist /s
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.
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!
- People always underestimate the fact that war creates chaos, not whatever your ostensible goal was. The people who “win” a war are gangs, warlords, and extremists. There hasn’t been a war that advanced the original policy goal in like 150 years.
  Edit: I know there are exceptions that prove the rule. No one has to be like “What about Kosovo?” or whatever.
  Edit 2: Especially the Emu war.
  
  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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
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”.
The government launched a campaign in 2023 to clean up social media content that it said breached Iraqi “morals and traditions”.
Despite years of war and sectarian conflict since the 2003 US invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Iraq has returned to a semblance of normality.
The original article contains 219 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 35%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh that's just the multipolar world kicking in.

27 comments