“I seriously was obsessed with this editorial because it was the only one that I ever found that was like this,” says Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of MuslimGirl.com, author of Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age, and Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient. The editorial in question is from a 2005 issue of Marie Claire featuring numerous women in hijabs and abayas (traditional Muslim robes) carrying the season’s most coveted accessories. “It was this fusion of culture and contemporary trends that I had never seen before,” Al-Khatahtbeh continues. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, this is cool. This shows the potential of rebranding the way we’re perceived as just being oppressed or that we have no say in the way that we express ourselves.’” She sent me the scanned images via email. They are teeny tiny files, so blurry I can barely make out the details. These files have followed her via hard drive through decades and computers—she’s made sure of it.
“There were no examples, no [style] icons,” Al-Khatahtbeh explains of the state of media in the early 2000s as she was cultivating her own sense of style with respect to Muslim ideals. (She often looked towards archival imagery—old Arab Hollywood glamour specifically—to shape her self-expression.) “And then every now and then there’d be one gem in the rough with some type of representation within the editorial world.”
Growing up in New Jersey in the wake of 9/11, Al-Khatahtbeh watched the media become extremely critical of Muslims—and that criticism often centered around what they wore in a very negative fashion. Frustrated, she launched Muslim Girl from her high school bedroom as a place to “talk back,” and reclaim the narrative of their culture in the media. There, they have conversations about everything from best nail polish practices to Shemima Begum’s courtroom proceedings—”the things that were actually directly relevant to our lives.”
She wants young Muslims to have a space to…
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