Miss Iraq 2015, Shaymaa Qasim has been warned by terrorist group ISIS in a spine chilling phone call that she will be abducted unless she joins them. According to the Jerusalem Post and Kuwaiti daily al-Watan, Student Shaymaa, who is Iraqi’s first beauty queen since 1972 was told to join the caliphate or face being kidnapped. But Shaymaa says she’s not scared of the threat.
The beauty queen speaking to NBC
News said she was determined to show her confidence because she wasn’t doing
anything wrong.
‘I want to prove that the Iraqi woman has her own existence
in society, she has her rights like men. I am afraid of nothing, because I am
confident that what I am doing is not wrong.’
Qassim is set to represent Iraq in
the Miss Universe contest to be held in Thailand in March 2016. The competition
finale was held in a Baghdad hotel and featured eight contestants in evening
dresses. It was the only part of the competition opened to media.
According to Reuters, at least two
young women had pulled out of the contest after receiving death threats. And
organisers dropped the swimsuit section of the competition and postponed the
televised finale in an attempt to deflect some of the criticism from religious
hardliners and conservative tribal leaders who said such pageants are
un-Islamic and threatened public morality.
The first and last time Iraq
participated in a major international beauty pageant was in 1972 when Wijdan
Burhan al-Deen represented the country at the Miss Universe contest.
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