Rabat - Morocco's Ahlam El Brinis, 20, has been chosen to take part in a beauty pageant in Italy.
Rabat – Morocco’s Ahlam El Brinis, 20, has been chosen to take part in a beauty pageant in Italy.
However, the young Italian model of Moroccan origin has been threatened on Facebook for deciding to participate in the Italian beauty contest, news website the Local reported.
El Brinis, a non-practicing Muslim, has been the target of threats for her bikini photographs and for ‘dishonoring Islam.’
“Miss Italy is a beauty contest, religion doesn’t enter into it and I don’t want everything focused on that,” El Brinis told Italian media.
“Everyone is free to choose and follow their religion in their own way,” she said. “I am aware that there are more conservative people who might think that I am mistaken about what I do.
Media headlines in Italy have also described her as “the miss who challenges Islam”.
“Insults and threats don’t hurt me,” she added. “But honestly that doesn’t interest me because I have my family’s support and that is enough for me”.
“I will follow my own path. “Whoever is attacking me has an old-fashioned attitude. They are writing about me on Facebook, they are offending me. What I am doing wrong by modeling?”
El Brinis said she feels above all Italian although she was born Muslim. “My parents arrived in Italy more than twenty years ago. I went to a school run by nuns, and my family has always been guided by western values. She added that her grandmother who lives in Morocco is her biggest fan. “She is the first to comment when I publish a photo on Facebook”.
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