World roundup: February 12 2025

Stories from Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

February 12, 1502: Queen Isabella of Castile promulgates an edict outlawing Islam in her kingdom. The edict built on previous forced conversions in Granada and indeed was premised on the somewhat dubious rationale that it would be unfair to keep Islam legal in the rest of Castile when it had been outlawed in Granada. Muslims living in the kingdom were obliged to leave or convert, and since leaving cost money and meant uprooting one’s entire life, most chose conversion. Of course that only bought people about a century before King Philip III of Spain expelled the Moriscos, the descendants of converted Muslims, in 1609.

February 12, 1912: Puyi, the final emperor of both the Qing dynasty and China overall, abdicates, giving way to the Republic of China and marking the end of the Xinhai Revolution. Rebel leader Sun Yat-sen succeeded him as the first president of the provisional government of the Republic of China. Puyi would later serve as the “ruler” of the “Empire of Manchuria,” a puppet state established by Japan in northern China and Inner Mongolia that existed from 1932-1945.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Interim Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told reporters at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Wednesday that the government in which he serves will be giving way to a new interim Syrian government as of March 1. This new government “will represent the Syrian people as much as possible and take its diversity into account,” according to Shaibani, and would shepherd the country through new elections at some yet to be determined point (interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has talked about holding an election in five years). The full extent of the differences between the current interim government and the new interim government is unclear, but one big change will apparently be the formation of a transitional legislature. The current government has no legislative component.