President Bashar al-Assad's decisions were unusual concessions to the religiously observant in Syria, which promotes a strictly secular identity.
Syrian activists called for fresh demonstrations Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to honor more than 80 people killed in a crackdown on protests that erupted nearly three weeks ago.
The protests brought sectarian tensions into the open as thousands took to the streets calling for democracy in a country where Alawites - a branch of Shiite Islam that represents just 11 percent of the population - have been in power for nearly 40 years. The country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
"All these moves will not stop the protests at all," said Radwan Ziadeh, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University in Washington and a founder of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Policy.
Syria's government does not understand that citizens "should be free to demonstrate peacefully," he said, but rather it "wants to solve the problems through killing and oppression."
On Wednesday, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch called on Assad to order Syrian security forces to stop using "unjustified lethal force against anti-government protesters."
In July, Assad banned the niqab, the full Islamic face veil that reveals only a woman's eyes, as part of his campaign to mute sectarian differences. Hundreds of primary-school teachers who were wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred in June to administrative jobs, angering conservative Muslims.
Ali Saad, the education minister in Syria's caretaker government, said Wednesday that the transferred teachers were now allowed to return to their jobs, said the state-run news agency, SANA.
The niqab is not widespread in Syria but has become more common recently.
The state-run newspaper Tishrin reported Wednesday that Casino Damascus had been closed because the practices of its owners "violate laws and regulations." It did not elaborate. Observant Muslims consider casino betting, lottery participation, and sports betting to be particularly un-Islamic.
Developments in the Region
Saudi Arabia: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tried to smooth the worst rift in years with this Arab ally and oil producer, reassuring the Saudi king that the United States remained a steady friend despite support for pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East.
King Abdullah welcomed Gates on Wednesday for what the Pentagon chief later said was a cordial and warm 90-minute visit. The hospitality masked deep unease among Saudi Arabia's aged leadership about what the upheaval in the Middle East means for its hold on power, its role as the chief counterweight to a rising Iran, and its changed relationship with the United States.
Iran: A leading cleric urged protesters in Bahrain to resist a government crackdown that has been backed by hundreds of Saudi troops. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, speaking to clerics in the holy city
of Qom, demanded that Saudi Arabia withdraw its forces from Bahrain.
The unrest in Bahrain has played out against the region's deep rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Largely Sunni Saudi Arabia has rushed to the aid of Bahrain's Sunni rulers; other gulf countries have accused predominantly Shiite Iran of meddling in Bahrain's affairs by allegedly trying to stir Shiite unrest there.
Yemen: Defying a deadly government crackdown, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Taiz, Yemen's second-largest city, in the latest demonstrations against long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Sixteen people were killed in Taiz Monday when government forces opened fire on demonstrators.
- Associated Press
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