Halima Aden Covers ELLE Singapore November; Denounces Fashion on Social Media; Enters Miss Universe Pageant

Halima Aden covered the November 2020 issue of ELLE Singapore, styled by Kate Moroney and fashion editor Jinh Ni in images by photographer Ben Lamberty (IG). /Creative direction by Jack Wang; makeup by Christopher Ardoff

Andrea Sim interviewed Halima Aden for the cover story: Somali-American Model and Activist, Halima Aden Has A Higher Purpose

It’s a fact that two seemingly contradictory facts or realities can exist at the same time. In this minute — when the world is reeling with pain and suffering on multiple fronts — AOC hasn’t fully processed Halima Aden’s fourth quarter in fashion world.

Talking about her rise to a position of top model with Andrea Sim at ELLE Singapore, Aden covered being championed by Kanye West at Yeezy and also [not mentioned but inserted by AOC] Carine Roitfeld. Halima enjoyed the support of one of fashion’s most influential women and mentors, with Carine even sharing the stage with Halima in a well-publicized event that supported her giving voice to modest dressing and her own determination to honor her Muslim values, as she defines and embraces them.

Halima Aden doesn’t mention Carine’s support — and I know that she made a stupid comment in 2020 about not seeing Halima as being Black when they were interacting. The blowback was fierce and Roitfeld apologized profusely As a white woman racial activist, I understand well the point Roitfeld was trying to make, but it did not go down well.

Roitfeld even devoted a 2018 CR Fashion Book cover and significant editorial exposure to Halima Aden and Gigi Hadid’s work with UNICEF, prompting AOC to write a headline: Carine Roitfeld Breaks Ranks With Gigi & Halima Promoting UNICEF USA & Doing Good In CR Fashionbook #23. With Edward Enninful’s arrival at British Vogue, activism gained a much more prominent place in those pages. But Carine Roitfeld moved out to the front of the pack in supporting Halima’s devotion to her modesty values.

The Fall 2020 issue of CR Fashion Book featured Halima Aden as one of multiple covers, and I assume that Aden has no issue with how she is portrayed in this image. As someone who has been vitally involved — to my own peril — in fighting the brutal flogging of 40,000 women a year in Sudan for wearing trousers or having an ankle showing — and also ending the most brutal forms of FGM — the entire topic of women, modesty and religion is very complex terrain for women generally — and me personally. In 2020, with the 2019 overthrow of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, these laws are being changed by the new government and the in-the-streets activism of legions of Sudanese women, who are credited with leading the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir.

In total — Roitfeld’s non-mention aside — the 23-year-old activist model, spoke well of the fashion industry in her ELLE Singapore November 2020 issue interview. Aden, who gave a most-inspiring TED Talk in Kakuma, the Kenya refugee camp that has been home to significant numbers of models, speaks of her days there as being '“joyful”.

This positive sentiment has been echoed by other models who lived in Kakuma.

It’s one of the reasons why Aden recounts her time in Kakuma to be joyful, and why she’s come to combine fashion and activism today as a UNICEF ambassador, using her platform to advocate for children’s rights. “I’m so proud to say that during one of my very first meetings with IMG, we talked about wanting to work with UNICEF, and they set up an appointment.” She lets on that her mum doesn’t so much get the fashion stuff or care for it, but is delighted whenever Aden tells her about the work she does with UNICEF. “That’s our common ground,” she says. “I’m just so grateful that I’m at a place where we can combine both things I love so much.”

Daily Sabah describes Halima Aden’s dramatic decision weeks later that “she was saying goodbye to her career as a top model, saying she prioritizes “DEEN (religion) over Dunya (world).” Announcing her decision to her fans in a very heartfelt text, Halima wrote, “I felt betrayed by myself” because she did things she did not believe in, for instance, dressing in a way to show her earrings or skipping prayers.

Halima Aden charges that brands made her wear clothes that did not align with her personality, or photographers took photos of her that she did not feel comfortable with.

Asserting her new rules, Halima said: “From now on, anyone who wants to work with me should know that I will not wear heavy makeup, I will wear wide hijab, and I will not wear clothes that I do not feel comfortable with in terms of privacy.”

Presumably, this ELLE Singapore fashion editorial is kaput going forward, given that Halima is wearing the heavy makeup that was apparently forced upon her without her approval. I’m also assuming that her decision to appear in Sports Illustrated in the first hijab-wearing model in a burkini is another example of the fashion industry forcing bad values on Halima Aden.

Daily Sabah explains that "Strictly rejecting glory, fame and money, Halima committed a radical act that is referred to as “symbolic suicide.”

Symbolic suicide occurs when a person destroys or escapes from their social identity or their position in society. Halima escaped from her position in society which is a position of accomplishment and beauty to embrace her ultimate position as a "kul" (creature) of Allah. In being kul, she dared to free herself of the worldly possessions which turn into obligations you have to abide by.

AOC isn’t certain that Halima Aden actually meant to do all that, but headlines in Muslim media worldwide are that she’s given fashion the boot.

My understanding was that she had given runway shows the boot, but countless headlines read differently.

The Ticker writes that Halima is even mad at Vogue Arabia, where she is a Diversity-Editor-at-large. Halima does like very much this Vogue Arabia cover, which didn’t require her to compromise her values.

Note that Vogue Arabia is giving Halima Aden much support in however she decides to enforce these new decisions about her career and how she will appear in public.

In a simultaneous move that will give Republicans a lot of running room for throwing rotten tomatoes — Halima Aden hails from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Minnesota district — the model announced at the end of November that she is entering the Miss Universe contest — not an an American but as Miss Somalia, her true calling. I don’t know if Halima Aden is actually a US citizen, based on a quick but dedicated search. That’s irrelevant to me, but not to the Republicans who will try to take her down.

Aden took to social media over the weekend to state her wishes to be Somalia’s first representative in the international pageant. “All those other ‘firsts’ have prepared me for my true calling! I will be the first Miss Somalia on the stage of Miss Universe,” said Aden.

It does seem that Halima Aden is undergoing a major metamorphosis in her life, and we wish her only the best.

As someone who has been vitally involved — to my own peril — in fighting the brutal flogging of 40,000 women a year in Sudan for wearing trousers or having an ankle showing — and also ending the most brutal forms of FGM or the death penalty for being gay in Sudan — the entire topic of women, modesty and religion is very complex terrain for women generally and for me specifically.

In 2020, with the 2019 overthrow of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, these laws are being changed, and AOC launches a new year with a soon-published this weekend recap of all the changes in Sudan’s cultural laws that impact women and the LGBTQ community.

I expect that just as Halima Aden is using her global platform to condemn the fashion industry for encouraging her to betray Islam and the honor of Somalia, that she will also use her voice to shed a light on oppressive laws in her home country. I refuse to believe in any way that Aden embraces these practices of radical FGM, flogging for wearing trousers or the death penalty for being gay.

This article was written in 2008, but in Halima Aden’s Twin Cities, Minnesota home town, and cites the very dress-code challenges that Aden is addressing in the fashion industry. I never considered Mc-Donald’s type uniforms to be the equivalent of women being ‘naked’ as alleged in the lawsuit, but my very prolonged and insurgent involvement in the brutal flogging of 40,000 women a year in Sudan, was over Lubna Hussein wearing a pair of gabardine, loose-fitting trousers.

Lubna Hussein and the gabardine trousers she was wearing at the time of her arrest in Khartoum in July 2009. AnneofCarversville.com proudly and passionately came to her defense, becoming the first line of defense against Sudanese officials taking down videos that broadcast the brutality of the flogging that Lubna was facing. Lubna Ahmad al-Hussein has a ferocious 48-year-old spirit now and then, when she truly did bring a whip to the courtroom in Khartoum for her trial. We drove Sudanese officials crazy, with journalists in the courtroom texting out the details, which in my case went to the UAE where they were translated into English and then onto me here in America. We were posting the proceedings on social media 15 minutes after they happened in Khartoum. It was among AOC’s finest hours, and we will be returning to these actions in 2021, prompted to do so by the surging growth of right-wing forces, led by Donald Trump’s evangelical base here in America. ~ Anne

I will insert the image here of what Lubna Hussein was wearing when she was arrested. You can judge for yourself if she is “naked”. Lubna Hussein invited a group of 500 journalists to her public flogging — I was one of them — and the rest of my involvement in this issue is AOC history. All of these articles are being cleaned up this first weekend of 2021 with new, wider images.

The decision to update the discussion of modest dress is prompted by our celebration of victories won in Sudan but also Halima Aden’s challenge that the fashion industry disrespects her and her Somali culture. The entire topic is not so simplistic as Halima Aden would have it, and I will reach out to her via IMG with an invitation to submit an essay on the complexity of appropriate dress — or lack of it — from her perspective.

Halima calls modesty just the “oldest fashion staple.” In reality, the subject is far more complex from a women’s rights perspective, and AOC has a long tradition of exploring this topic. Our dialogue among women over wearing burqas is among the best on the Internet. However, it’s also the reason why comments are shut off on AOC since 2012.

I’m also motivated by the October 2020 beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty in his classroom Offended by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad shown in a class on free speech given by the teacher, Abdoullakh Anzorov, 18 — a product of the French education system — decapitated Paty, who advised in advance that he would take up the topic of the mostly caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that had been published by Charlie Hebdo. Mr. Paty had previously asked a female student wearing a Christian cross to remove it, based on France’s current laws on wearing religious identification in the classroom.

For the decapitation of Samuel Paty to happen at a time when Republicans in America are trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election underscores the extent to which religious factions are tearing the world apart. Trump’s big drawing card is religious freedom, so he and Halima Aden share this commitment to religious freedom and not secular values, which believe in a separation of church and state.

I am a secularist and I truly don’t know how all these conflicting religious values end, frankly. That’s my bias.

Returning to the 2008 article on American oppression of Muslim modesty in dress codes:

Six Somali women claim they were ordered by a manager to wear pants and shirts to work instead of their traditional Islamic clothing of loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that is representing the women.

The women have filed a religious discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"For these women, wearing tight-fitting pants is like being naked," said Valerie Shirley, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR. "It's simply not an option."

I’m working on an updated piece on FGM — which was not introduced by the colonial powers. This Guardian article by Somali-British archaeologist and author ‘Divine Fertility’ Dr Sada Mire , who herself was cut while living in Somalia, sheds important new light on the origins of FGM in East Africa. I will be reading her book ‘Divine Fertility’ which cements the FGM practice as originally a pre-Islamic, divine ritual eventually impacted by the rise of patriarchal power.

Dr. Mire argues that the origins of FGM predate our contemporary understanding of the practice. Note that it’s only affordable as an Amazon Kindle rental for a month at $9.21. $150+ for the book is not realistic. Other options are probably available, but to know that one can rent a very expensive book on Kindle is good news. ~ Anne