On November 17th 2001 18 year old Agbani Darego from Nigeria was chosen Miss World. The finals were hosted by Jerry Springer and took place in Sun City in the heart of South Africa. Nelson Mandela was guest of honour. This year pride prevailed over the usual criticism (1) on the bikini-parade: Darego was the first black African Miss World, a shining example to many girls and women all over Africa, for whom having a fair complexion was still the highest ideal in beauty (2). Darego, resident to the south of Nigeria, made it specifically clear she’s a Christian. Her very special thanks went out to »God, whom [she would] always be grateful [to] for crowning [her] life with his love…«

Nigeria, after having lurched from one military coup to another, had had an elected leadership since 1999, when Olusegun Obasanjo came to power. But the political liberalisation ushered in by the return to civilian rule allowed militants from the many different ethnic and religious groups (3) to express their frustrations more freely, and with increasing violence. Since 1999 thousands of people had died in communal rivalry, and separatist aspirations among some groups started to grow. The gradual imposition of Islamic law, Shari’ah, in 12 of the impoverished, predominately islamic northern states embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee to the south after more than 3000 had died in bloody protest marches. The Shari’ah courts imposed strict punishments, including floggings and amputations for transgressions like theft (4) and adultery.

On March 22nd 2002 Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old Muslim woman, was sentenced to be stoned to death by a Shari’ah court at Bakori in Katsina State, northern Nigeria. Amina had confessed to having had a child while divorced. The man named as the father of her baby denied having had sex with her; the charges against him were dropped. Amina did not have a lawyer during her first trial, when the judgement was passed. Later she filed an appeal against her sentence, with the help of a lawyer hired by a pool of Nigerian human- and women’s rights organisations. But on August 19th, a Shari’ah court of appeal in Funtua took the decision to uphold the sentence of death by stoning, imposed on Lawal. This confirmation shocked civil society in and outside Nigeria, especially all those who had been actively campaigning for Amina’s rights to be protected.
On September 27th 2002, Amnesty International presented a 1.3 million-strong petition for Amina Lawal to the Nigerian officials of the London High Commission, presumably one of the biggest mobilisations in the history of the Internet.

Amina Lawal’s case cast a shadow over the Miss World 2002 pageant, to be held on November 30th in Nigeria’s capital Abuja. Candidates from France, Canada, Belgium, Ivory Coast and Norway threatened to boycott the competition if Amina’s case was not resolved. Finalists from Costa Rica, Denmark, Switzerland, Panama and South Africa had already decided not to take part at all. Others who thought their presence in Nigeria might function as a statement in itself, fell prey to Christian as well as Muslim criticism on the bikini parade: showing bare upper legs was considered highly controversial in Nigeria. The Muslim community also opposed the date of the finals, November 30th falling in the last week of the holy month Ramadan. The competition’s preparations could only be resumed after the date was postponed to December 7th, and after the Nigerian government had delivered an official statement concerning Amina Lawal’s prosecution: »We restate that no person shall be condemned to death by stoning in Nigeria. Nigeria will invoke its constitutional powers to thwart any negative ruling, which is deemed injurious to its people.« (5)
Amina, who could read nor write and in her village had never had access to radio nor newspapers, had never heard of Miss World before she was asked to give her opinion (6) on the boycott held in her honour by several of the world’s most beautiful women. Still she made it clear she wanted the show to go on: »Let them come. I know things will work out because people are coming from all over the world for me.«
And so the aspiring Misses ended up in the feminist camp, trying as they claimed to raise attention for the rights of repressed Muslim women, doing justice to the competitions latest slogan: »Beauty with a Purpose«.

On Saturday November 16th 24 year old Isioma Daniels, educated in England and a Christian, commented on the Muslims reactions to the Miss World spectacle in Nigeria’s popular daily ThisDay. »The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria to ask them to revel in vanity,« she wrote. »What would [the Prophet] Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among [the contestants].« (7)
The next days indignation under Muslims grew (8) until, on Wednesday 20 November, mosques in the northern city of Kaduna officially called for demonstrations against Daniels, her article, ThisDay and the Miss World contest.
More than 200 people got killed in the riots that followed. Thousands became homeless or wounded. Twenty churches and eight mosques were destroyed, and ThisDay’s headquarters in Kaduna were burned down to the ground. On Friday November 22nd, despite a formal apology in ThisDay’s copy of that same day, the riots spread to Abuja. Outside the city’s biggest mosque demonstrators yelled: »Down with beauty!«, while at short distance the Miss World contestants were kept hidden under severe security in the Abuja Nicon Hilton Hotel.

On November 23rd the Miss World organisation decided to move the final and the contestants to London, »for the sake of the nation«, as the pageants spokeswoman Stella Din put it.
The disappointment over loosing the competition hit Abuja hard; the prospect of billions of viewers world-wide being introduced to Nigeria’s touristic splendour went up in smoke. The losses of investors including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Ministry of Women Affairs and Youth Development, Nigeria Airways and first lady Stella Obasanjo’s Child Care Trust, added up to an estimated 10 billion Naira (9). Agbani Darego claimed to be »shocked« and at Silverbird Productions, the Nigerian organisers of the beauty pageant, staff spoke of »a national disaster«. President Obasanjo claimed the media were responsible for the controversy over the Miss World pageant.
In the northern state Zamfara a fatwa was called upon Isioma Daniels by Mamoudu Shinkarfi, deputy governor of that state. Shinkarfi on national TV: »Any true Muslim would make sure that this woman’s blood is spilled wherever she is.« Though the legitimacy of the fatwa was disputed by Muslims all over the world (Daniels was not a Muslim herself, and had apologised through her employer, ThisDay), Daniels resigned from her job and fled to the United States.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, another young woman was threatened by radical Muslims for her outspoken ideas.
A brief biography: Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia in 1969. Her father, a political activist, had to flee the country in 1975 for criticising it’s dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and took the family to Kenya. In spite of her strict fundamentalist Islamic upbringing Ayaan was allowed to attend school, but to her grandmothers wish she was circumcised, and married off to a cousin at the age of 20. She escaped to the Netherlands where she studied political sciences, became board member of Amnesty International, then started working for the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, the scientific research centre of Dutch »Labour Party« PVDA. The focus of her research became the position of Muslim women in the Netherlands.
For 20 years leftwing governments had tried to integrate immigrants in Dutch society under the motto »integration with respect for individual identity«, resulting in hundreds of state-funded Islam-schools, help-organisations and refuges. Hirsi Ali stated all these institutions contributed to the segregation of Muslim immigrants from Dutch society, while overlooking the underlying socio-religious mechanisms that kept Muslim women’s problems (circumcision, arranged marriages, illiteracy, social and financial dependency, isolation, torture) intact. Hirsi Ali proposed a radical cultural change, an Enlightenment from within Muslim society, a society she claimed compulsively blamed others for its own problems. These issues were traditionally not discussible amongst leftwing culture relativists. Ayaan argued they had been fighting for the emancipation of western women, but left the Muslim women out in the rain: »As an immigrant, the Labour Party keeps telling me I have a right to my own backwardness«. (10)
When Hirsi Ali openly diverted from Islam after September 11 2001 her father, who lived in London, started receiving threats to her life, mostly coming from Somalian refugees. In the year that followed Hirsi Ali’s position got more clear: she explicitly blamed Islam, both as a culture and as a religion, for the abuse of Muslim women, where her party PVDA made a distinction between extremist and moderate Muslims. The threats on her life increased and around the 20th of October 2002 Hirsi Ali decided to leave Holland and ( with financial support of the Beckman Foundation) hide in the United States, like Isioma Daniels. There she wrote a controversial article about a controversial career move: she would leave the PVDA to join the VVD, the rightwing liberal party.
From the right wing reactions went from enthusiastic (»She’s right leaving PVDA. They should be sued for racism and discrimination« (11)) to sceptical (»She’s just a ruthless opportunist« (12)). From the left some warned Hirsi Ali (»She should realise that not only Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to our society, so is rightwing radicalisation. Her statements can easily be misused by racist cells« (13)), while others wished her luck (»Integration means immigrants don’t stay isolated within their minority group, but decide independently with whom they wish to associate« (14)).
On December 2nd Ayaan was inaugurated on VVD’s electoral (15) congress and thus became what critics called »Holland’s first electable rightwing Apology Ali«. In neo-populist, post-»9-11« Holland traditional leftwing or rightwing positions within the existing political relations could no longer be taken for granted, even (or especially?) when the rights of Muslim women were concerned.

On December 7th 2002, the Miss World final was broadcasted in 142 different countries from London’s Alexandra Palace to what the organisers claimed a global audience of more than two billion viewers. During the show a brief pause was held - at the contestants’ request - to remember Amina Lawal. The winner was Miss Turkey, 21 year old Azra Akin, who was born and raised as a third generation Turkish immigrant in Almelo, a small city in the East of the Netherlands. Azra took the crown and £100.000 (16), leaving 92 contestants behind her; her roommate in Abuja and London, Miss Holland Elise Boulogne, came number 14.
In a delirious ceremony Agbani Darego put the crown of victory on Akins head. Azra told reporters afterwards that she had been shocked by the violence in Nigeria, adding, »I wish people in the world would be more respectful to each other.«
Azra Akin became the first Muslim Miss World.

In Almelo reactions to Azra’s victory were mixed. Neighbours decorated her house with the Dutch flag saying: »We couldn’t find a Turkish one…« Tubantia, a local daily, hosted lively chat-sessions on its web-site. »If she wants to be Turkish, let her go to Turkey«, one reader would complain. Another would answer: »She’s one of us. Tulips once came from Turkey too, you know…« Nilgün Yerli, Turkish columnist for Amsterdam’s daily Parool, stated Azra would never have had a chance to any representative function had she been educated in Turkey: »This beauty who speaks four languages is a present to Turkey from the Dutch educational system«.
In Turkey however the welcome was unanimously warm. Azra, who was taught her very basic Turkish during a summer course after she learned she had been elected Miss Turkey (17), was welcomed by prime minister Gül in person while newspaper Hürriyet decorated its front-page with her portrait (in bikini): »a perfect example of the modern, secular Muslim woman«. Popular daily Milliyet headlined: »Azra leads Turkey into EU«.
But a week later Turke’s hopes for a date for EU membership were shattered: on December 18, during the EU Expansion-top in Copenhagen, a large majority of EU-members voted against Turkey’s accession, mainly quoting the state of human rights in Turkey as a reason. America’s president George Bush had been trying to influence Copenhagen’s decisions to the last moment in favour of Turkey. While preparing an eventual attack on Iraq, Turkeys border with the countries oil-rich north (18) were important. Also he feared that, following a rejection by the EU, disappointed Turks might easily fall prey to Muslim fundamentalism.
Miss World organiser and co-founder Julia Morley must have thought along the same lines when she was asked to react on the riots in Kaduna and stated: »What the world needs now is Tourism, not Terrorism«.

 

 

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