Zakia Belkhiri's Selfie Protest

Overview

Zakia Belkhiri's Selfie Protest refers to a series of selfies taken by 22-year-old Belgian Muslim woman Zakia Belkhiri in front of an anti-Muslim demonstration held in Antwerp, Belgium in May 2016. Upon the online publication of a photograph depicting the woman's selfie moment, the image quickly went viral, with many news outlets praising it as a symbolic act of defiance against Islamophobia, though it soon became a target of online backlash after the woman's history of anti-semitic remarks in the social media came to light.

Background

On May 14th, 2016, the third annual Muslim Expo, a weekend-long festival celebrating the lifestyle and culture of Muslims, was held in Antwerp, Belgium. During the second day of the event, around 40 members of Belgium's right-wing political party Vlaams Belang gathered outside the premise of the event for a protest with anti-Islamic picket signs reading messages like "No headscarves," "No mosques," and "Stop Islam." As the demonstration continued, a 22-year-old Muslim woman named Zakia Belkhiri decided to stage a subtle counter-protest by posing for some selfies in front of the picket line, a scene that was captured by photographer Jürgen Augusteyns.

Developments

That same day, Augusteyns's photograph was published by the Dutch edition of VICE^[1], while additional photographs of the woman taken by other attendees and bystanders at the event also began circulating on Twitter.^[2][3]

News Media Coverage

In the following days, several dozens of English-language news outlets reported on Belkhiri's protest selfie, including Vox^[8], BuzzFeed^[9], Mashable^[7], Mic^[3], Huffington Post^[10], BBC News^[6] and Telegraph^[5], with many of them describing her action as "fearless," "inspirational" and "defiant."

Belkhiri's Anti-Semitic Remarks

On May 19th, Dutch news site Geenstijl^[12] ran an article exposing a history of anti-semitic remarks posted by Belkhiri on her Twitter, Facebook, and Ask.fm accounts, including screenshots of an offensive tweet she had posted in December 2012, which read “Hitler didnt kill all the jews, he left some. So we [would] know why he was killing them,” and her Ask.fm post declaring “Fuck that Jewish language” (shown below). By May 21st, Belkhiri's anti-Semitic commentaries had been picked up by Breitbart^[13], as well as some of the aforementioned news sites.^[14][15]

Belkhiri's Response

On May 20th, as the backlash against Belkhiri continued to escalate in the wake of the revelations, she promptly deleted all of her social media accounts. Two days later, Belkhiri temporarily reinstated her Twitter account to address the accusations of anti-semitism (shown below).

Later on, Belkhiri issued a lengthy apology to "everyone in the Jewish community which I've hurt with my comments of several years ago," adding that "I am not an anti-Semite. Even if it seems so because I haven't thought of deleting my angry comments from when I was younger and ignorant."

Search Interest

External References