Indonesia has announced that it will hold a pageant exclusively for
Muslims, The Muslimah World contest, to rival the Miss World beauty
contest, scheduled to hold in the country on September 28, 2013.
The founder of the Muslimah World contest, Eka Shanti, said the
Muslimah World contest, to be held on Wednesday, September 18 in the
Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is “Islam’s answer to Miss World.”
“Muslimah World is a beauty pageant but the requirements are very different from Miss World,” Ms. Shanti said.
“You have to be pious, be a positive role model and show how you balance a life of spirituality in today’s modernised world.”
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 Ms. Shanti said is an
opportunity to show young Muslim women that they do not need to show
their “immodest” parts, including their hair, and bare shoulders to be
beautiful.
Ms. 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’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?’”
The Muslimah World pageant is formed as a result of the protest
against the Miss World pageant, 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”.
After repeated protests, the Miss World final was moved from the
outskirts of the capital Jakarta to the resort island of Bali, where the
contest began last week with no opposition from the Hindu majority
there.
Despite the move, protestors from the Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir
Indonesia demonstrated in the central Java city of Yogyakarta with its
spokeswoman saying, “Miss World is not welcome in Indonesia at all.”
Miss World contestants were reported to have been ridiculed with
around 300 members of the radical Islamic Defenders Front gathering in
the capital, holding signs that read “Miss World is a whore contest.”
The decision to move the final round 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.
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