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Words by Nancy Uddin
Muslim models often experience dissonance. I know this personally – on one hand, I am walking a runway in a mesh outfit and on the other hand I am praying to Allah to not fall. And of course, I whisper Bismillah – because I begin everything in the name of God.
I archive the more risqué images of myself on Instagram during Ramadan. It feels like the least I can do – to try. To receive God in the Holy Month. I’ve unlearned shame, or at least I tell myself I have. But the guilt wavers, shifting like light on water, never fully gone. I draw power from being a baddie, from knowing I can command attention, step into a room and own it. But I also know who that power was designed for. I understand the transaction. Male supremacy is our ruin, but at the very least, I can make a bag from the male gaze. That’s the logic, right?
I don’t have answers, just honesty. Some days, I feel clarity as a Muslim model. Other days, like a literal walking contradiction.
When I sit with the quiet tension of my own identity, I turn to Allah. I have conversations with him like a friend, Al-Wali. Allah, guide me on the most iconic path. Make my life your art, Al-Musawwir. Bring ease, luxury, beauty, Ar-Razzaq. Remove all financial blockages, Al-Fattah. Send blessings and miracles. Allah always answers my prayers.
Growing up Bangladeshi-Muslim, I was prescribed shame like a second skin. Wearing revealing clothes, partying, attracting male attention – these weren’t just actions; they were transgressions. But more than sin, it was optics. What would people think? That question governed everything. My worth was measured in reputation, in how well I upheld the image of a “good” Muslim girl, not in my actual connection to God. Faith became a performance, not a relationship.
I don’t have answers, just honesty. Some days, I feel clarity as a Muslim model. Other days, like a literal walking contradiction.
It always felt like I had to choose: a dictated faith or a rebellious life. When I disobeyed, staying out late and dressing “inappropriately,” it didn’t feel as liberating as I had hoped. When I followed the rules, being the obedient Muslim woman, it didn’t feel true to my spirit. I lived in a constant negotiation of guilt, deviance, and shame, not quite belonging to either world.
I never imagined myself as a model. I didn’t even feel beautiful. Not seeing people who looked like me in the media only deepened that self-doubt. But even in that doubt, something in me kept pushing me to write – to claim space in ways that felt within my control. In 2018, I published an essay in DAZED about one of my biggest insecurities: my hooked nose. People – strangers all over the world, friends, women like me – affirmed my beauty, not in spite of my features but because of them. They saw themselves in my words. That piece cracked something open in me.
Similar to the intimacy that writing offered me, modeling became another space to bare myself – my heart, my spirit, and my body. Writing has always been a form of prayer, an act of surrender through art. I began to see modeling the same way – performance as devotion, muse work as a love language, beauty as trust in what God has given me. And as God’s muse, I vowed to follow my heart. Islam, at its core, is about purifying the heart. Around that time, my internet alter ego emerged: flybrowngurl (the version with an ‘i’ was already taken). Online, I built a community of ‘deviant’ women, researchers, DJs, and international friends – people who also lived in the inbetween. One of them was Nafisa K., who cast me for knitwear designer Rui Zhou. Walking out of that show, I felt empowered in my vulnerability. When I got home, I searched to see if supermodel Yasmeen Ghauri was Muslim. She was. Knowing this, I felt less alone – validated. It’s possible to be a Muslim model.
But validation isn’t the same as ease and justice. Halima Aden, a top Somali-American Muslim model, took to Instagram in 2020 to voice her frustration with the fashion industry, exposing the Islamophobia embedded in runway shows and editorial shoots. People assume that more hijabi models on the runway will solve the representation issue, but beyond visibility, how are values and religious beliefs being protected, respected, and destigmatised in fashion? Representation without infrastructure is hollow, a spectacle rather than a shift.
Like real faith, real Muslim diversity in fashion cannot be exploitative, performative, or reduced to a monolith. It must make room for our complexity, our contradictions, our multitudes. The industry needs to move beyond the currency of token visibility and invest in structural solutions: hiring more Muslims across production chains, implementing meaningful sensitivity training centering those directly impacted by faith, and uplifting modest wear designed by Muslim creators. Real change doesn’t come from optics – it comes from agency. This agency is our narrative, woven into our legacy.
Real change doesn’t come from optics – it comes from agency. This agency is our narrative, woven into our legacy.
And Muslims, true believers, know judgement is antithetical to Islam, rooted in fragility and patriarchal culture. As consumers, we can be critical, but through divine love. This looks like making space for a spectrum of experiences in contemporary Muslimhood. When Bella Hadid posted “Ramadan Mubarak,” my Muslim heart sang. She may not identify as Muslim, but as a Palestinian-Dutch American-born supermodel, her proximity to Islam feels like a nod, a recognition. Imaan Hammam, Moroccan-Egyptian Dutch supermodel, was featured in Mustafa the Poet’s music video, Imaan, showcasing the tightrope reality of the Muslim diaspora. Yet, imaan or faith always prevails.
I meet other Muslim models like Pia Ahmed, Uj Abdela, and Amran Hassan through modeling, and while we all carry different aesthetics, we share the same powerful declaration of faith, the same love for Allah. One of the most visceral experiences of my life was walking Rick Owens during Paris Fashion Week last year. I reached a new level of calm walking down the runway, past Cardi B, Luka Sabbat, and other effortlessly cool faces in the crowd. The rain had just stopped as the show began, and in its place, soft white flower petals drifted down. The floors were slick, but no one slipped, even in our three-inch platforms. Protected in my moss-green drape with sharp square shoulder pads, I felt honoured and invincible via Allah, Al-Hafiz.
That moment wasn’t just about fashion; but also about me and Allah. I found ease between self-expression and belonging, challenged gazes, and sensed true love for Al-Badi, the most beautiful.
This was tawakkul – the radical trust that what is meant for me will find me, that my effort is met with divine orchestration. It’s knowing that my prayers don’t go unheard, even when the answers unfold in ways I couldn’t have scripted. It’s moments like walking Rick Owens, gracing Vogue, and meeting aligned people in the industry, not just as personal wins, but as proof that surrendering to Allah’s plan brings outcomes greater than I could have imagined.
Yet, the tension of being a Muslim model never permanently disappears. Faith and desire. Discipline and autonomy. It lingers, like a quiet hum beneath everything I do. A runway and a prayer mat. A show and a surrender. I hold all of it.
