Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead outside Baghdad home

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 244 points – Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead outside Baghdad home
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”.

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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.

Iraq definitely had promise and Saddam did ruin things, but that doesn't mean that the Middle East will "never not be a horrifying shithole."

I agree.

People need to put down their crystal balls and learn to experience life for themselves.

So, he was an idiot. We really are run by the dumbest fucks that can be around huh?

Saddam was encouraged by the US to invade Iran. The US also provided help to Saddams nerve gas program, including "consulting" on how to use it on Iraqi Kurds, resulting in the most deadly nerve gas attack in human history. Oh and the equipment on which they made the nerve gas was supplied by Germany.

Until Saddam went into Kuwait he was heavily supported by western countries.

How are you getting downvoted for this? It has to be paid shills cos no one is that stupid.

Even with Kuwait, he was given the go ahead by Madeline Albright who apparently told him what he does in his own backyard doesn't concern the US. He was their man in the Middle East until he got too big for his britches.

Except for the 3 large population blocs that hate eachother for reasons and will do unspeakable things to one another under the guise of religion.

Saddam was just the person to rise from the party that was dominant and did what the leader of the other groups would have done to the other groups of given the chance.

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.

I just meant how women could dress in Western-style clothing and whatnot.

Looks is not really the be-all-end-all of freedom.

I prefer having limits to what is considered appropriate clothing, over getting disappeared, tortured and murdered by interior police.

Also in regards to clothing, it is always interesting to take a look back at how people in the west dressed at the time and what was deemed acceptable. My father was shunned for being a "beatle" and "rowdy" for having long hair in the 70s in Germany. People at the time would get a heart attack with how people can dress nowadays.

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).

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!

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

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.

I know you tried to head off rebuttals with that "exception that proves the rule" line, but WWII seems like a big fucking exception.

I would say that it generally applies to those who start the war to begin with though, meaning that if the Nazis had won WWII, it would have applied.

I was talking about the people who initiate the war. Hitler didn’t accomplish anything in WWII unless his goal was to shoot himself in a bunker while we stole all his scientists to send people to hit golf balls on the moon.

The Emu War was one of the few times nature fought back and won and I salute you for it, emus!

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.

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