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”.

69 points

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.

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67 points
*

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.

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43 points

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.

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20 points

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.”

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9 points

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

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7 points

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.

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1 point

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.

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32 points
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Pre-1979 Iran seemed pretty decent.

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31 points

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.

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10 points

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

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-1 points

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).

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-3 points

Yo this is racist!!!

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-4 points

It changing is one of the signs of the biblical apocalypse, so that tracks.

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2 points
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I guess I’m not surprised that the bible is racist /s

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49 points

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!

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18 points

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

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20 points
*

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.

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4 points

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

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2 points

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

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7 points

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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2 points

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

makin’ fat stacks

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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3 points

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!

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2 points

Oh that’s just the multipolar world kicking in.

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