Modesty and modeling — two seemingly diametrically opposed concepts. But the founders of the cheekily titled Muslim modeling agency Underwraps are hoping to somehow marry the two. The first modeling agency of its kind, Underwraps aims to create “a fusion of Inclusion—creating the best of both worlds.”
I once spent a 4th of July weekend with about 15 hardcore evangelical Christians. (Ex-Mr. Jessica’s sister was a born-again.) Explaining to some of the women what kind of website I write for proved to be awkward. But when I told one woman that The Frisky was similar to Cosmopolitan magazine, she exclaimed, “Oh, I read that!”
“Really?” I asked. “Isn’t it a little … uh … raunchy?”
She laughed. “Oh, I just flip past all the shirtless guys and stuff about sex.”
Then what part of the magazine do you actually read? I thought to myself.
That conversation popped into my head again when I saw this article on The Daily Beast about religious websites selling sex toys and the horrifying — not being hyperbolic here — opening story about a Christian woman who was married for 25 years before she finally bought a vibrator and had her first orgasm. Praise be! Keep reading »
Imagine that you could not travel or go to school without your dad’s permission. You need him, your brother, or a male driver to take you anywhere you want to go in a car. He even has a say in who you get to marry.
This is life under Saudi Arabia‘s guardianship law — a combination of the legal code and religious doctrine within the kingdom. Men have guardianship over the unmarried women in their families, which usually means a father is guardian to his daughter (but in his absence, a son or uncle can fill in). When a woman marries, the guardianship switches over to her husband. Even when Saudi women are no longer minors, they are still treated like children in the eyes of the law.
One woman is trying to change all that: a 43-old-old doctor, going by the pseudonym “Samia” in press reports, is challenging her father’s guardianship in the Saudi Supreme Court. Keep reading »
Katya Koren, a 19-year-old contestant in the Miss Ukraine beauty pageant, was found stoned to death in a forest this week. Police are not clear on who killed her, but the main suspect is a mentally unstable 16-year-old boy who confessed to killing Koren, a Muslim, for violating sharia law by participating in pageants. The boy was possibly a “stalker” who was “obsessed” with Katya Koren and may have raped her before killing her. Other reports say that Katya Koren was stoned to death by a whole group of Muslims enacting sharia law. According to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, enacting sharia law in that part of the Ukraine is rare.
It’s incredibly sad in either case. But as someone who is extremely critical and unsupportive of beauty pageants, I just wanted to note that something I scoff at in America is, in other parts of the world, a freedom that I take for granted.
On June 17, women in Saudi Arabia are planning a protest of the country’s ban on women drivers en masse by getting behind the wheel. Women in Saudi Arabia are forced to rely on male relatives or male drivers to get anywhere by car, and are not allowed to travel outside the country without a male relative’s permission or to vote. The Women2Drive campaign, which is gaining support through a Facebook group called “I will drive starting June 17,” will be an act of civil disobedience that could perhaps lead to a sea change of women’s rights in the Saudi kingdom. According to The New York Times, the protest will not have a centralized location. Women with valid drivers’ licenses from other countries are asked to get behind the wheel of their car, put on their seat belts, and drive around, going about their usual day. If they are able to, women are asked to film themselves driving and upload the video to YouTube. Keep reading »
Who would have thought the “Love Guv” would have found himself moderating a feminist debate about the veil? Life sure is strange sometimes. The other night on Eliot Spitzer’s CNN program, Hebah Ahmed, a blogger for Muslim Matters who wears a veil, debated Mona Eltahawy, a Muslim commentator who does not wear a veil, about the “burqa ban” in France that went into effect on Monday. Keep reading »
France‘s ban on face-covering Muslim veils, like the niqab and the burqa, took effect yesterday. French citizens and tourists alike will be fined $215 for covering their faces in public or they must attend a class on French citizenship. Anyone who forced a woman to wear a veil in public faces a year in prison and a $43,000 fine — and fines are steeper if the person being forced to wear a veil is a minor. Muslim students are already banned from wearing headscarves in classrooms.
At least two women were taken in by police yesterday for daring to cover their faces with Islamic veils in public and a 27-year-old woman received the country’s first-ever fine for wearing a veil. Keep reading »
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