August 21, 2013
Tunisian Activist Quits Feminist Group Femen
Winnie McCroy READ TIME: 1 MIN.
A women's rights activist who shocked Tunisians by posting topless photos of herself online said Tuesday she is quitting the Ukrainian feminist group Femen because of what she calls its anti-Islam outlook.
Amina Sboui told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Femen activists had shouted chants insulting to Islam at some of the group's demonstrations, among other "Islamophobic" acts.
Sboui said she also objects to the group's "obscure financing."
In Ukraine, Femen issued a statement saying it "believes Amina's accusations to be inspired by her conformist environment today and to be inappropriate, given the efforts we have undertaken toward her release."
Sboui spent more than two months behind bars after she was arrested in May for allegedly scrawling the word Femen on a cemetery wall in the Tunisian city of Kairouan, protesting a planned conference of ultra-conservative Muslims.
She was provisionally freed earlier this month and is awaiting trial on a charge of desecrating a cemetery.
Winnie McCroy is the Women on the EDGE Editor, HIV/Health Editor, and Assistant Entertainment Editor for EDGE Media Network, handling all women's news, HIV health stories and theater reviews throughout the U.S. She has contributed to other publications, including The Village Voice, Gay City News, Chelsea Now and The Advocate, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
