Muslim beauty pageant challenges Miss World

The News 19 Sept 2013 JAKARTA: Muslim women in headscarves and elaborately embroidered dresses took to the stage Wednesday for the finale of an Islamic beauty pageant in Indonesia, a riposte to the Miss World contest that has sparked hardline anger. The twenty contestants began the Muslimah World show by elegantly descending a flight of stairs into public view—all covered head to toe wearing shimmering and sparkling materials. While the women, from six countries, will be assessed on their appearance the judges are also looking at piety and Islamic knowledge and skills, such as recitation of the Koran. All contestants must wear headscarves in their daily lives. “We’re just trying to show the world that Islam is beautiful,” Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola, a 21-year-old contestant from Nigeria, told AFP backstage in the capital, Jakarta, before the final got under way. “We are free and the hijab (Muslim headscarf) is our pride,” she said, adding that the pageant was “nothing like Miss World, where women expose their bodies”. Organisers say they want to show Muslim women there is an alternative to the idea of beauty put forward by the British-run Miss World pageant, and also want to show that opposition to the event can be expressed non-violently. Eka Shanti, who founded the pageant three years ago after losing her job as a TV news anchor for refusing to remove her headscarf, bills the contest as “Islam’s answer to Miss World”. “This year we deliberately held our event just before the Miss World final to show that there are alternative role models for Muslim women,” she told AFP. “But it’s about more than Miss World. Muslim women are increasingly working in the entertainment industry in a sexually explicit way, and they become role models, which is a concern.” Hosted by Dewi Sandra, an Indonesian actress and pop star who recently hung up her racy dresses for a headscarf, the pageant began with a choral performance of a song about modesty, one the traits judges will be looking for in the winner. While the contestants looked glamorous, the venue, the exhibition hall of a shopping mall, was a far cry from the likely lavish setting of the Miss World final on Bali. And the pageant, which features Indonesian Islamic designer wear and popular bands, is a starkly different way of protesting Miss World than the approach taken by Islamic radicals. Thousands have taken to the streets in Indonesia in recent weeks to protest Miss World, denouncing the contest as “pornography” and burning effigies of the organisers. Despite a pledge by organisers to drop the famous bikini round, radical anger was not appeased and the protest movement snowballed. The government eventually bowed to pressure and ordered the whole three-week pageant be moved to the Hindu-majority island of Bali, where it opened on September 8. Later rounds and the September 28 final were to be held in and around Jakarta, where there is considerable hardline influence. More than 500 contestants competed in online rounds to get to the Muslimah World final in Indonesia, one of which involved the contenders comparing stories of how they came to wear the headscarf. Contestants will retell these stories and answer questions from judges at the final, with the 20 women whittled down before a winner is crowned and awarded 25 million rupiah ($2,179) and trips to Mecca and India. “What I will be looking for is strength of personality—someone with a vision for the future, who gives back to their community and shows that beauty is not just about bodies,” said Jameyah Sheriff, an education expert from Malaysia who is on the judging panel. The contest was first held in 2011 under a different name and was only open to Indonesians, Shanti said, but after the media began comparing it to Miss World, it was rebranded as a Muslim alternative to the world-famous pageant. Because of its popularity, organisers accepted foreign contestants this year, with Iran, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Nigeria and Indonesia represented.

Most Beautiful Azan ever heard.

Muslim Brotherhood face new setbacks

The News Wednesday, September 18, 2013 From Print Edition CAIRO: Egypt’s army-backed authorities arrested the spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday and froze the assets of other Islamists, in a new blow to deposed president Mohammed Mursi’s supporters. Since Mursi’s overthrow by the army on July 3 and his detention, more than 2,000 members of the Brotherhood have been arrested and several are facing trial. The crackdown that has fractured the Brotherhood’s organisation has also seen thousands of Islamist supporters killed in clashes across the country. In a new blow to the Brotherhood, police arrested group spokesman Gehad al-Haddad and five others on Tuesday. An arrest warrant had been outstanding for Haddad, who was active on social networks. For weeks he managed to escape arrest although he kept active on social networks and appeared frequently on television. Among the others arrested on Tuesday was a Mursi-appointed former provincial governor, Hossam Abu Bakr, in an apartment in Cairo’s Nasr City district, security sources said. The six men are to be held at Cairo’s Tora prison where several top Brotherhood figures are jailed, including the group’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie, security sources said. Nasr City was the epicentre of pro-Mursi protests, where the deposed president’s supporters camped for weeks to demand his reinstatement and clashed with security forces. Mursi has been held at a undisclosed location since his overthrow in a military-led coup following government-sponsored protests against his one-year turbulent rule. In mid-August the military-backed interim government launched a bloody operation to break up two pro-Mursi protest camps in Cairo, including in Nasr City. Thousands of people there, and elsewhere in the country, were killed in ensuing clashes. By the following week, more than 1500 people had been killed in violence across Egypt, most of them Mursi supporters. Haddad’s arrest came as an Egyptian court ordered the freezing of the assets of top Brotherhood chief Badie, his two deputies Khairat al-Shater and Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Salafist leader Hazem Abu Ismail and preacher Safwat Higazi. The five are currently under arrest, accused of inciting the murder of protesters opposed to Mursi. Around 15 Islamist politicians have already had their assets frozen as part of the crackdown against the Brotherhood, a once formidable and highly organised movement founded in Egypt in 1928. Long banned in Egypt, the group had become gradually more tolerated in the years before the 2011 revolution, winning parliamentary seats through candidates who ran as independents.

Indonesians hold ‘Islam’s answer to Miss World’

Sunday, September 15, 2013 From Print Edition JAKARTA: The Miss World beauty contest, which has attracted fierce opposition by hardline Islamic groups in host country Indonesia, is now facing another challenge — a rival pageant exclusively for Muslims. The Muslimah World contest to be held on Wednesday in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is “Islam’s answer to Miss World”, the pageant’s founder Eka Shanti said Saturday. “Muslimah World is a beauty pageant, but the requirements are very different from Miss World — you have to be pious, be a positive role model and show how you balance a life of spirituality in today’s modernised world,” Shanti told AFP. The pageant is the latest backlash against Miss World, which has already dropped the bikini from its beach fashion round and has attracted more than a month of protests by Muslim hardliners demanding the show be scrapped. Radicals have set effigies of the organisers alight and deemed the contest “smut” and “pornographic”. The 20 Muslimah World finalists were chosen from more than 500, who took part in online rounds, reciting Koranic verses and telling stories of how they came to wear the Islamic headscarf, a requirement for the pageant. The finalists, from Iran, Malaysia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Indonesia, will parade Islamic fashions in what Shanti says is an opportunity to show young Muslim women they do not need to show their “immodest” parts — including their hair and bare shoulders — to be beautiful. But Shanti said she did not support hardliners’ calls to cancel the Miss World contest, acknowledging that Indonesia was a diverse country with many faiths. “We don’t just want to shout ‘no’ to Miss World. We’d rather show our children they have choices. Do you want to be like the women in Miss World? Or like those in Muslimah World?” Shanti said. The Muslimah World finalists will be welcomed with open arms, with hundreds of women wearing headscarves planning to take part in what they call an “elegance rally” Sunday to greet the contestants and offer a moderate voice to the debate, Shanti said. In contrast, Miss World contestants were again ridiculed Saturday, with around 300 members of the radical Islamic Defenders Front gathering in the capital, holding signs that read “Miss World is a whore contest”. Government officials gave in to hardliners last week and announced the Miss World final would be moved from the outskirts of Jakarta to the resort island of Bali, where the contest began last week with no opposition from the Hindu majority there. Despite the decision to keep all Miss World activities off the Muslim-majority island of Java, protestors from the Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia also demonstrated Saturday in the central Java city of Yogyakarta, where contestants had planned to visit but were forced to cancel their trip. “Miss World is not welcome in Indonesia at all,” a spokeswoman for the organisation in Yogyakarta said. MNC Group, the organisers and broadcaster of Miss World, said this week that they were not party to the government’s decision and have said it The decision to confine Miss World activities to Bali was the latest victory for Islamic fringe groups, who are wielding increasing power and have succeeded in getting several events they deem un-Islamic changed or cancelled in recent years.

Makka the Beautiful Video