While ISIS fighters kidnap, torture and kill pro-Syrian government fighters, Kurds and members of the Yazidi tribe, the only place for women in this conflict have been as jihadists, money-mules, war brides, morality police employed to enforce Sharia Law and innocents gang-raped at gunpoint. It’s fucking bleak.
That’s why we almost salute 23-year-old Aliaa Magda al-Mahdy, who, through staging a really dirty protest against ISIS, has proved to be the only woman in this ongoing situation who isn’t part of forming a morality police or killing people.
The Egyptian-born artist, who now lives in Norway and is a member of Femen, has previously encouraged controversy by appearing in different states of undress, has now totally blown any skimpy dressing out of the water.
In this latest stunt, she’s naked and sitting atop an ISIS flag, with period blood on the flag. Next to her is a veiled woman, facing backwards with her middle finger facing the camera. The veiled woman is shitting on the ISIS flag.
Aliaa told a Norwegian news site that this protest was to ‘scream against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy.’
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However, the picture isn’t only offending ISIS, but many other Muslims, as the flag has the words ’There is no god but Allah’.
This hurts the entire secular current in front of those calling themselves the people of virtue,’ secularist Sayyed el-Qimni told CBS News, adding: ‘It's is a double disaster. Because I am liberal and I believe in the right of personal freedom, I can't interfere.’
Other people on social media have been complaining about her feminism – how can you be a feminist with your boobs out, they wonder? (You can, we think).
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We’re so down with Ali her taking to task ISIS and their methods – there’s no denying their jihadism is barbaric – but upsetting secular Muslims in the process isn’t really going to help the situation. On the plus side, it’s got us thinking more about the horrific treatment of women at the hands of extremists in the Middle East – not just ISIS, but Boko Haram and the Taliban.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.