BREAKING NEWS; Nigeria Wins Miss Muslim 2013, Full Details Inside

The muslim world beauty pageant held in Indonesia came to a close with Nigeria representative from Unilag winning the crown.The newly crowned Muslimah World 2013 Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola (C) tearfully prayed and recited Koranic verses as she won a beauty pageant exclusively for Muslim women in the Indonesian capital Wednesday, a riposte to the Miss World contest that has sparked hardline anger. The 20 finalists, who were all required to wear headscarves, put on a glittering show for the final of Muslimah World, strolling up and down a catwalk in elaborately embroidered dresses and stilettos. After a show in front of an audience of mainly religious scholars and devout Muslims, a panel of judges picked Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola from Nigeria as the winner..
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 While the event in a Jakarta shopping mall paled in comparison to Miss World on the resort island of Bali, in which scores of contestants are competing, Ajibola was nevertheless overwhelmed. Upon hearing her name, the 21-year-old knelt down and prayed, then wept as she recited a Koranic verse. She said it was “thanks to almighty Allah” that she had won the contest. She received 25 million rupiah ($2,200) and trips to Mecca and India as prizes. Ajibola said before the final that the event “was not really about competition”. “We’re just trying to show the world that Islam is beautiful,” she said. Organisers said the pageant challenged the idea of beauty put forward by the British-run Miss World pageant, and also showed that opposition to the event could be expressed non-violently. Eka Shanti, who founded the pageant three years ago after losing her job as a TV news anchor for refusing to remove her headscarf, bills the contest as “Islam’s answer to Miss World”. 

 “This year we deliberately held our event just before the Miss World final to show that there are alternative role models for Muslim women,” she said. “But it’s about more than Miss World. Muslim women are increasingly working in the entertainment industry in a s*xually explicit way, and they become role models, which is a concern.” Hosted by Dewi Sandra, an Indonesian actress and pop star who recently hung up her racy dresses for a headscarf, the pageant featured both Muslim and pop music performances, including one about modesty, a trait the judges sought in the winner. The pageant, which also featured bright Indonesian Islamic designer wear, is a starkly different way of protesting Miss World than the approach taken by Islamic radicals.