An American Muslim model Halima Aden drew media attention to herself and her faith when she announced om Wednesday that she was quitting fashion and runway shows after feeling pressured to compromise her religious beliefs.
It is not like being in the news is new to Halima Aden who is already in the record as the first model to wear a hijab and burkini in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But this time, she is the one ruling the roost. In a series of posts on Instagram, Aden recounted skipping prayers, wearing clothes she wasn’t comfortable in and styling her hijab in ways she felt betrayed her values.
“They could call me tomorrow and not even for $10 million would I ever risk compromising my hijab ever again,” she wrote, according to the CNN.
Let me go ahead and reproduced part of the CNN report:
Aden, who lived in a Kenyan refugee camp before moving to the United States, has broken numerous boundaries in her modeling career. She was the first hijab-wearing woman to appear on the cover of British Vogue and was part of Vogue Arabia’s first group hijabi cover.
But her work, and the excitement of being labeled a trailblazer, caused her to lose sight of her beliefs, she said. Aden’s mother had long encouraged her to walk away — but it wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted the model to stay home and take a break from the industry, that she “finally realized where I went wrong,” she wrote.
Among the campaigns she expressed regret over was a photo shoot for American Eagle’s first-ever denim hijab. “Why did I allow them to put jeans on my head when at the time I had only ever worn skirts and long dresses?” she wrote, explaining that “I was just so desperate back then for any ‘representation’ that I lost touch with who I was.”
Aden also posted an image from a photo shoot for Glamour magazine in 2017 showing her with a green wrap under her hijab and feathers around her neck. “I went back to my hotel room and just sobbed after this shoot because deep down I knew this wasn’t it. But was too scared to speak up,” she wrote. “Also very common struggle when you are the FIRST to do something.”
She also pointed to numerous other photo shoots where, though her head was covered, the scarf didn’t cover her chest or was styled in a way that hid it from view. These photo shoots were “essentially erasing my hijab completely,” she said.
‘Come correct or don’t come at all’
Despite her regrets, Aden pointed to a number of photo shoots that she felt were carried out respectfully, like the Vogue Arabia cover shot alongside two other black hijab-wearing models, Ikram Abdi Omar and Amina Adan.
And she isn’t walking away from fashion entirely, she said, but rather laying out conditions for those hoping to hire her.
“If my hijab can’t be this visible — I’m not showing up,” she wrote under a photo of her in a full unadorned hijab that covered her chest and shoulders. Under another photo, showing her full hijab, scarf and covered chest and shoulders, she wrote, “This is the standard moving forward if you want to work with me. Come correct or don’t come at all. Nothing less, nothing more.”
“These spaces were always predominantly white,” she added. “So you are already at a disadvantage for simply being YOU in a workplace that never considered someone of your background. We can’t give up, but it’s good to remain mindful.”
Aden, who is Somali-American, was born and raised in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, before moving with her family to the US in 2004 at the age of 7. After a decade-long vetting process, her family resettled in St. Louis, Missouri.
Until her family made its way to St. Cloud, Minnesota, Aden said she had difficulty adjusting to her new life in the US and longed for her home in Kakuma. However, her life changed in 2016 when she became the first contestant to wear a hijab and a burkini at the Miss Minnesota USA pageant. Aden went on to reach the semi-finals of the competition.
“There are so many Muslim women that feel like they don’t fit society’s standard of beauty,” she told CNN in 2018. “I just wanted to tell them it’s OK to be different, being different is beautiful, too.”
In this, I believe, is a lesson for Nigerian actress Rahama Sadau who seems to be under pressure to clothe herself in borrowed robes.
I am talking about her recent photo shoot some of which she shared on her social media handles. Though the backlash forced her to delete the photos and apologise, she missed the point completely in her remorse.
Like the Kaduna-based Islamic scholar Dr Ahmad Gumi noted, Rahama did not apologise for exposing her nudity, but for the fact that her pictures gave someone the platform to defame Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W). Gumi said Rahama will bear no responsibility for the sin of another, but for her own slip, which was dressing in a way that the prophet had preached against.
Therefore, I believe it is not late for Rahama Sadau and all of us to change from our wrong ways. We should be true to our conscience and remember that day that we would be called to account for our deeds.
Hindatu Abdullahi (Mrs.) is based in Abuja
