Rihanna in another outrage: And this time she's fully clothed.... at UAE's Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

She’s used to causing controversy with her racy music videos, but even dressed head-to-toe in a hooded black jumpsuit Rihanna has managed to provoke outrage.

The 25-year-old "Diamonds" singer posted images on her Instagram account showing her posing at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in UAE, where she is currently on tour.
Despite a very conscious effort to tone down her usual attention-grabbing-garb, she is seen sporting crimson lipstick and wearing dark red fingernails while adopting a series of trademark sultry, pouting poses that some have deemed "disrespectful" for a place of worship. Her followers on Twitter couldn't decide whether to condemn the pictures or enjoy them.
“Rihanna may look gorgeous and all but she’s covering her head out of fashion not out of respect for the mosque,” wrote one user.
Another person responded to the images writing: “I don’t see how Rihanna posing adjacent to a mosque in Abu Dhabi is disrespectful.
"If anything she’s showing respect by supporting the hijab.”

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I'm not outraged in the least I think she showed respect by wearing hijab  at a mosque and her poses were not sexual. She looks really classy and I think she has shown women look chic in hijab not ugly like so many anti-hijab people claim. I also think women shouldn't have to listen to anything men say about hijab. They can think and choose for themselves inshaAllah.

Lifting The Veil: Muslim Women Explain Their Choice

Comment: I find these sorts of articles and especially pictures of before and after and voyeuristic obsession with seeing the hair of the sisters...slightly creepy.

For centuries, Islamic scholars have said that Muslim women must cover their hair. But many Muslim women don't.

There are about 1 million Muslim women in America; 43 percent of them wear headscarves all the time, according to the Pew Research Center. About 48 percent — or half a million women — don't cover their hair, the survey found.

The split between women who've covered and women who've never done so has existed for decades. But now a generation of women is taking off the headscarf, or hijab.

Although the scarf is a public, sometimes even political symbol, women say the choice to unveil is highly private, emotional and religious.

'A Huge Responsibility'

Rasmieyh Abdelnabi, 27, grew up attending an Islamic school in Bridgeview, Ill., a tiny Arab enclave on Chicago's southwest side. It's a place where most Muslim women wear the hijab.

For 14 years, Abdelnabi was one of them. But after she graduated from college, she took off her hijab. Now, she has sideswept bangs, the kind that hide part of her face. She's quiet, reflective and sometimes shy.

"I'm the kind of person who likes to walk into a room and be unnoticed," Abdelnabi says. "When you wear hijab and you walk into a room, everyone notices you; everyone stares at you; everyone makes assumptions about you."

"When you put the scarf on, you have to understand that you are representing a community," Abdelnabi says. "And that is huge. That's a huge responsibility. And I don't know if it's for everyone."

Talking over falafel at her favorite restaurant, Abdelnabi explains why she stopped wearing the hijab.

She says that Islam teaches modesty — but wearing the hijab is taking it a step too far.

"I've done my research, and I don't feel its foundation is from Islam," she says. "I think it comes from Arab culture."

The headscarf can be a divisive issue among Muslims.

Abdelnabi describes the response some people have to that idea: "It's like, 'How dare you question God's will. How dare you?' " she says.

And in a tight-knit Muslim community like Bridgeview, Abdlenabi worries about offending fellow Muslims with her opinions — so during most discussions about hijab, she tends to keep silent.

"I sometimes feel like talking about hijab is like talking about abortion in mid-America," she says.

Looking For A Change

Another woman in Bridgeview, Leen Jaber, 29, says that a few years ago, she also decided to unveil.

"I started wearing hijab at the age of 14," she says.

Jaber says she wore the scarf for 12 years. But as her marriage started to fall apart, she took it off.

"I was going through a lot of difficult things. Perhaps I thought taking it off would just be one less thing to worry about," she says.

"I never took it off saying, like, it was the right decision. I just took it off because I wanted to do it. I wanted to see if my life would be different — if I would feel any better about the problems that I was going through."

But Jaber's problems didn't go away — in fact, they got worse. She lost her job, got divorced and moved in with her parents. That got her thinking more about God, and spirituality. One year and eight months later, Jaber put the scarf back on.

"It was a very different process than I had gone through when I was 14," she says. "When I was 14, it was like well, everybody's wearing it."

Jaber is outgoing and chatty. She writes poetry, blogs and dreams of the day she'll be on American Idol.

She says it's easy for some women to feel like the headscarf strips them of their individuality and turns them into a spokeswoman for the faith.

To avoid that, Jaber says, she is making sure other parts of her personality — like her singing — shine through.

Wearing The Scarf, Post-Sept. 11

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are a persistent theme in conversations about how to approach a Muslim tradition in modern America.

For some women, that tragedy had absolutely no effect on their decision to uncover. But for others, it was huge. They spoke of two distinct phases in their hijab life: pre-Sept.11 and post-Sept. 11.

Some of them said the terrorist attacks initially strengthened their desire to wear the hijab. They became diplomats for Islam; they said they wanted to represent a positive Muslim image, to counter that of al-Qaida.

But in the years that followed, that fervor waned, as anti-Muslim zeal grew.

And for some women, the scarf became a heavy burden to carry — one that affected the way strangers perceived them, the way colleagues treated them, and even the way fellow Muslims expected them to behave.

For others, the decision to remove their headscarf simply came down to a choice, as they grew older.

An Evolving Identity

Nadia Shoeb's family is from India. Her mother never wore a hijab. Her grandmother never wore a hijab. But Shoeb put one on when she was 17.

Shoeb, now 31, reads from a journal she kept back then:

"Never could I have imagined when I put it on, that five years later, on a day just as random as the day I put it on, I would take it off."

Eight years later, she still remembers that day clearly.

"That feeling is like, 'I am going out without a shirt on' — that sense of feeling exposed," Shoeb says.

"I had really long hair, and I actually tucked it into my sweater, because I was feeling so embarrassed that, 'Oh my God, I'm showing my hair — am I being immodest somehow?' "

"So that first day was quite difficult, just taking it off," Shoeb says, "even though I looked like every girl on the street."

America's Religious Landscape

Shoeb's decision was as much about religion as it was about her evolving feminine and American identity. She spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia, where she wore shorts.

After arriving in the United States as a teenager, she decided to cover, and eventually uncover, her hair. And Shoeb says she doesn't find that surprising.

"The religious landscape of America is one in which — it's a very deeply religious nation, but at the same time, it's so fluid," she says. "You know, people are born into one faith, and then they might still be Christian — but become of a different sect, or a different church."

The phenomenon of veiling and unveiling — and even re-veiling — is part of that same tradition, Shoeb says.

"We might think that this is something particular to Muslim-Americans," she says, "when in fact, that's the story of our religious landscape in America."

Shoeb has no intention of putting the scarf back on. But she also says she wouldn't be the person she is today if she had never worn it in the first place.

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HIJAB STORY:YaztheSpaz

Islamic head scarves take fashion cues

Atik has taken the Muslim head scarf, often known as hijab, and turned it into a canvas for her fashion sensibilities, with ideas inspired by designs from Forever 21 and H&M as well as haute couture runways and the pages of Vogue and Elle. Showing her latest design at a mosque was her way of gauging sentiment on scarves that go beyond the limited fashion realm they have thus far inhabited, such as floral and geometric prints or lace and beaded embellishments.

"I knew that I wanted to do a zipper scarf, because I knew that zippers were in style," Atik said, her head covered this day with a sea-foam hijab, echoing the color of her light green eyes.

The hijab has long been a palette of sorts for changing styles and designs, and shops across the Middle East are replete with colors and shapes that can vary from region to region. Some women in the Persian Gulf region wear their hair up in a bouffant with the scarf wrapped around it like a crown. Syrians are known for cotton pull-on scarves, the hijab equivalent of a T-shirt. And in Egypt veiled brides visit hijab stylists who create intricate designs and bouquets of color atop the bride's head.

But Atik's experiments with the hijab, which is meant as a symbol of modesty, are created with an eye toward being more adventuresome and risky.

To some, the trend heralds the emergence of Westernized Muslim women, who embrace both their religion and a bit of rebellion.

But to others in the Muslim community, what Atik is doing flies in the face of the head scarf's purpose. When the scarf is as on-trend as a couture gown, some wonder whether it has lost its sense of the demure.

Eiman Sidky, who teaches religious classes at King Fahd mosque in Culver City, is among those who say attempts to beautify the scarf have gone too far. In countries like Egypt, where Sidky spends part of the year, religious scholars complain that women walk down the street adorned as if they were peacocks.

"In the end they do so much with hijab, I don't think this is the hijab the way God wants it; the turquoise with the yellow with the green," she said.

The conflict is part of a larger debate among Muslims on which practices are too conservative and which too liberal.

And at a time when Muslims hear stories about women filing lawsuits after not getting hired or being barred from wearing head scarves at work — most recently at two Abercrombie & Fitch stores and Disneyland — the message is reinforced that the hijab is still regarded with suspicion.

For women like Atik, an Orange Coast College student who works part time at Urban Outfitters, fashion-forward hijabs are an attempt not only to fill a void, but to make the scarves less foreign and more friendly to non-Muslims.

The Islamic religious parameters for hijab — that the entire body must be covered except for the face and hands — are broad enough to include those who wear black, flowing abayas to those who pair a head scarf with skinny jeans.

Younger, Westernized Muslim women are seeking out trendy styles, with one Orange County student selling designs inspired by Vogue and Elle. But some critics wonder whether the stylish creations defeat the purpose of modesty.



On one of the holiest nights of Ramadan, Marwa Atik chose a crowded Southern California mosque to debut her latest creation.

It was just after midnight when the 20-year-old walked into the Islamic Center of Irvine, dressed in a long, flowing burgundy robe, her head wrapped in a charcoal-colored chiffon hijab, trimmed with decorative gold zippers.

After the group prayers, sermon and Koran recitation, a woman approached Atik, gesturing at the scarf. "OK, I want one," she said excitedly. "How can I get it?"

"We've gotten maybe just a few people saying, 'Oh, this is defeating the purpose,'" said Tasneem Sabri, Atik's older sister and business partner. "It really comes down to interpretation."

The criticism means little to Atik, a petite young woman who favors skinny jeans, embellished cardigans and knee-high boots.

Atik sees the fashion industry's treatment of the hijab as staid and lackluster. She wants to make the scarves edgier, with fringes, pleats, peacock feathers, animal prints.

"We want to treat the hijab like it's a piece of clothing, because that's what it is, it's not just an accessory," said Nora Diab, a friend of Atik who began the venture with her but bowed out to focus on college. "We can still dress according to what's 'in' while dressing modest."

Scarves from Atik's recent collections are sold under the label Vela, Latin for veil. In addition to the exaggerated zippers, there are Victorian pleats, military buttons and even a black and white scarf with gold clasps named simply Michael (as in Michael Jackson). A recent design features a plain scarf with a large sewn-on bow, called "Blair," after the "Gossip Girl" character. There is also a growing bridal scarf collection.

The scarves have a certain unfinished look to them, with frayed edges and visible stitching. Atik sews many of them herself, though she recently hired a seamstress to help fill orders placed through the Vela website. The scarves, which are not available in stores, range in price from $15 for basic designs to $60 for high-fashion styles, pricier than many on the market.

When not in class or at work, Atik spends most of her time researching trends, designing new scarves or filling orders. She makes frequent trips to Los Angeles for fabric.

Atik said she is inspired by risk-takers such as Alexander McQueen, the late avant-garde designer with an eye for shock value.

"I feel he says it's really OK to be different," Atik said while taking a coffee break in Los Angeles' Fashion District.

Atik, whose parents are from Syria, began wearing the head scarf in eighth grade. She was the editor of her high school yearbook but found herself spending more time browsing fashion websites than looking at photos of student clubs and activities. After school she would spend hours at Wal-Mart reading fashion magazines. In the summer of 2009 when she and Diab decided to design hijabs, she took sewing classes, the youngest among a group of elderly women making patterned quilts.

Before a photo shoot for her website this year, Atik did last-minute hemming and sewing at her makeshift work space in the kitchen of her Huntington Beach home. The kitchen table was covered with half-completed designs. Bags of satin and chiffon fabric sat on chairs and lacy and beaded scarves spilled out onto the fruit bowls.

Atik fingered a beige and pink chiffon scarf.

"I think we're going to try a couple on you," she told her friend Marwa Biltagi, who had arrived wearing a loosely wrapped black and gold scarf. "Because either way you can work it."

In the backyard, Biltagi and others posed beside palm trees, heads cocked to the side, backs arched. Someone commented that it looked very French Vogue.

"One, two, move, yeah exactly like that.... OK, I'm going to be taking like a lot so just keep switching it up.... Yeah, I like how you had your hand up on the wall," Atik said as she clicked the camera. "I feel like we need music."

Her mother watched from the kitchen.

"There are people who say that it's not a hijab. As long as it covers the hair, I noticed these young people, they like these things," Safa Atik said. "Why I encouraged her is because ... she's making something that looks nice."

Alaa Ellaboudy, who runs the blog Hijabulous ("A hijabi's guide to staying fabulous"), is familiar with the scolding that non-traditional scarves can prompt. The Rancho Cucamonga resident wears her scarf tied behind her neck and has a penchant for dramatic eye makeup and bright clothes.

"Everyone has their opinion, 'Oh no that's haram [forbidden], you can't do that,'" Ellaboudy said. "But for me, it's always about finding that balance and still looking good."

On her blog, she defines "hijabulous" as being "exceptionally stylish yet conforming to the Islamic dress code."

When the over-sized September issue of Vogue arrived, Atik flipped through the pages for inspiration.

A few weeks later, stocking up on fabrics and an ostrich feather in the Fashion District, she went from store to store with the same request: "Do you have a leopard-print chiffon?"

At her third store she saw a leopard print but thought the look and feel of the silk fabric were not quite right.

"I wouldn't want this on my head. If only it was chiffon, I'd be all over it."

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My Beautiful Hijab

http://hijabrevival.blogspot.com/

How to wear Hijab

Muslim schoolgirls show that faith and fashion are not incompatible

In a first floor classroom in the Hackney campus of the London School of Fashion a small group of young schoolgirls are wrapping clothes on to tailor's dummies.

They are using conventional clothes in unconventional ways – turning ties into belts and baggy T-shirts into neckwear. The idea is to challenge traditional notions of normality in fashion.

The approach is a common one for aspiring designers but it feels especially appropriate for the 20 assembled schoolgirls, all of whom are British and Muslim and all of whom are in traditional Islamic dress.

The girls are taking part in an initiative called Faith and Fashion that is using the widespread fixation of Muslim women's dress as a starting point for a discussion on how to create fashion that reflects a British Muslim sensibility. Sophia Tillie, the 28-year-old white, British woman who runs the scheme, converted to Islam while at university. She is now engaged in trying to examine how the concept of modesty – so essential to Islamic thinking – can be interpreted differently depending on the context of time and place.

"The Saudi tradition of wearing the niqab is very literalist," she explains, "and it is part of a puritanical movement that is reductionist in its doctrine. But reading more widely I was struck by the flexibility of Islamic thinking and that was what this initiative seeks to encourage."

The scheme is backed by the Three Faiths Forum, an interfaith organisation that works at grassroots to support harmony and confront prejudice between different religious communities.

For Tillie the media obsession with the burqa obscures the richly diverse ways that Muslims throughout the centuries have chosen to dress. "Banning the burqa will send it underground and oppress further the women who are still perceiving it as the only way to dress to be a fully observant Muslim. The reason I set up Faith and Fashion was to create a safe space where we could look at why some Muslim women have chosen to interpret some verses of the Koran to support the burqa and by opening up that space that allows opportunities for other choices and other interpretations."

Among the girls who are busy wrapping a pale blue pair of trousers around the neck of the mannequin is 15-year-old Tasnem. "I've always been really interested in fashion," she says. "I like stuff that is funky, if I was wearing a hijab I would like to wear a massive bow with it."

The girls are all competition winners having beaten more than 100 other girls by producing portfolios which featured drawings of clothes they had designed which expressed their British and Muslim identities. The girls all attend Islamic schools in different parts of London and some of their portfolios included poetic explanations of their decision to wear the hijab. "Allah doesn't look for our outer but our inner beauty," reads one verse. "Men walking down the street, 'Oh she's a cutie'/Women wear the hijab for protection/Not for affection/We have education/And we want an occupation."

For the young women involved there is no contradiction between being interested in fashion and being observant Muslims. Says Nadaya: "I was on the bus and someone asked me why I was wearing a hijab – it frustrates me because they don't know anything about me and yet they are judging me."

Another of the young women, Musafa, 15, was dressed in a full veil that obscured everything except her eyes. She was also wearing an electric green jacket. "I like to dress nicely and I like to express myself through clothing," she says. "People think that I must be forced to wear this but I came to the decision on my own and because all my five sisters and my mother wear it."

During the three days that they are at the London College of Fashion they will develop design and IT skills and well as being given advice by design experts. It is the sort of training that they would usually never have the chance to receive in their Islamic schools.

"The great thing about this course is that the girls are learning that dressing modestly does not have to be boring," says Hassaanah, a teacher in an Islamic school in Tooting Bec.

"We do study aspects of identity at our school but the aspect of understanding other religions and their history of modesty has been new."

By the end of the afternoon the three tailor's dummies stood in their new outfits. "This was my chance to really be creative," said Tasnem proudly. "It was so great to be able to meet other Muslim girls who were also into fashion."

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Muslim fashion label conquers streets of Europe

WITTEN, Germany — T-shirts and hoodies declare "Terrorism has no religion." A head-covering tunic bears the message: "Hijab. My right. My choice. My life."

A German fashion label is out to tell the world that Islam isn't just compatible with Western values of tolerance and free expression — it can be hip, too.

The project was born in 2006 as Muslim mobs rampaged across Europe against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Designer Melih Kesmen became fed up with the anti-Muslim stereotypes that sprang up over the protests as well as the rioters' attempts to stifle free speech.

So Kesmen, a practicing Muslim born and raised in Germany to Turkish parents, decided to express his feelings through fashion.

"I first created a sweater just for myself with the slogan 'I love my Prophet' to take a stand as a peace-loving, tolerant Muslim," said the 34-year-old designer, sporting designer glasses and a black goatee.

The reaction was huge: People kept stopping him in the street to ask where he had found the top.

Kesmen quickly realized he'd found a market gap.

Together with his wife, Yeliz, he set out to create Style Islam, a brand of hip, casual clothing with Islamic-themed sayings as its focus.

More than three years on, Style Islam offers 35 different motifs that playfully merge Islam and pop culture. Besides clothing, their collection also features bags and posters.

"Women love buying rompers with the writing "Mini Muslim" across their chest,'" said Yeliz Kesmen, 30, who wears a brown hijab, or headscarf, and silver nose stud.

On its Web site, Style Islam's creators explain every motif they sell.

For hijabs they write: "In today's society, it is not easy for a woman to wear a headscarf. Often she is exposed to discrimination and prejudice ... even though from an Islamic point of view, the headscarf is a symbol for women's liberation from society's constraints."

Above all, the brand strives to spread a message of tolerance. One design reads: "Jesus & Muhammad/ Brothers in Faith."

Cotton T-shirts sell for just under euro20 ($27), laptop bags and hooded long-sleeve shirts go for around euro35 ($47). Style Islam also offers key chains featuring praying, covered-up Muslim girls.

Through the Internet, the company sells its clothes across western Europe, the U.S., Canada and Turkey. The next target market is the Middle East.

"We're ... getting a lot of requests from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates or Morocco," Kesmen said in his sleek white office in Witten, a town nestled in a western region known more for its steel mills than avant-garde fashion.

"They all want to buy our products, but we simply haven't built up the infrastructure yet to ship to the Arab world."

Currently the label sells thousands of items each month and has a team of seven designers, according to Kesmen.

Exact sales figures have not been released. But Kesmen says sales growth has prompted plans for a brick-and-mortar store in Berlin, with other locations likely.

Both Melih and Yeliz studied graphic design and worked in advertising before they founded Style Islam. Like her husband, Yeliz was born to Turkish immigrant parents who came to Germany in the 1960s as so-called guest workers.

Kesmen said he's approaching his work from a European point of view.

"First and foremost we're European Muslims. We were born here and we're at home here," said Kesmen. "When we go to Turkey, we're strangers. They call us the German Turks over there."

Kesmen says that Style Islam's key buyers are young Muslim immigrants, typically between 17 and 35 years-old. Their street wear is proving especially popular among university students.

"We want to give people food for thought with our clothes and signal that it's not a contradiction to be a practicing Muslim and to be modern, witty and critical at the same time," he said.

Not everyone agrees. The company gets mail decrying its use of Islamic-themed sayings and symbols, typically from devout Muslims who say the fashion label does not promote the seriousness of the faith.

Kesmen said they don't aim to offend. There are no T-shirts bearing images of Muhammad, for example, but the brand don't shy away from controversy, either. One shirt bears the legend "Gaza Stop the Killing Now" with a bloody palm print in red.

Abbas Schulz, a young imam from Berlin, has no problem with Style Islam's religious messages.

"Friends told me about it and I right away ordered a black 'I Love My Prophet' hoodie," Schulz told the AP. "I like the message and the oriental design looks really pretty."

On the Net:

• http://www.styleislam.com

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