Hiba Krisht’s fashion Tumblr is getting thousands of hits. Why? Well the USP of the 25-year-old’s account is because it is, in her words: ‘dedicated to celebrating body and fashion, specifically for those who have broken away from Islamic modesty requirements.’
See, Hiba is ex-Muslim. Having spent her young adulthood living in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, once she moved the US, away from her family, she gave up Islam and with it gave up wearing the traditional hijab. She began to blog about her experiences, under the pen (type?) name of Marwa Berro. And then, this week, she set up the Tumblr account, called The Ex-Hijabi Fashion Photo Journal.
Within a day, the site, which features old photos of women in their hijabs next to photos of them in Western clothes accompanied with their stories of new-found atheism following Muslim upbringings, amassed thousands of hits, mostly positive. Smartly, she tweeted: ‘I'm not going to engage with a single comment or question directed at me. If you bombard me, I will block you. So don't waste your breath.’
In an interview, she explained why she left Islam: ‘It was very much driven by my inability to settle with women’s gender roles and modesty doctrines in Islam and other Abrahamic faiths. My body was constantly scrutinized and stigmatised.’
‘Too often Islamic modesty doctrines have bodies treated like a shame….we refuse to have our hair and limbs hypersexualised to the point that we are considered a danger and temptation simply for having them where eyes can see.’
She also told Vice about how she felt trapped by the hijab: ‘I had to practice enormous amounts of self-suppression and control. I was forced to lie in every way…with my body, my actions, my face, my words.’
This blog now gives her, and other women, the opportunity to overcome the pressures she felt before: ‘After having our bodies treated with such denigration and restriction, I feel it is very apt for us to have a space to celebrate our bodies in all their shameless glory.’
When asked if she was worried that the Tumblr could be hijacked by Islamophobes, she explained that she still gets treated as a Muslim by outsiders: ‘Plenty of non-Muslims are subjected to anti-Muslim bigotry because they are assumed or perceived to belong to Muslim culture.’
She added that the work she’s doing to reclaim women’s bodies is still important: ‘The possibility that our work will be misused is always present, but it is work that is too important to set aside for that reason. There is too much progress to be made in securing basic freedoms in Arab and Muslim societies and communities everywhere.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.