WASHINGTON (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Niger’s police were confronted on Wednesday by hundreds of Muslim demonstrators in Niamey protesting against an international fashion show due to be held in the city this month.
Eight hundred protestors were fired on with tear gas and beaten with batons by police in order to disperse them.
They were demonstrating outside Niger’s Parliament against the International Festival of African Fashion (FIMA). Several nightclubs and lottery booths were smashed in the protest.
The show will host a number of European designers from France, Italy, Japan and Africa. Most of the featured designs would be in line with European and Western fashions, which reveal large parts of the human body, especially on women’s clothing, contrary to Islamic morality.
The Niger-born, Paris-based fashion designer Alphadi Sidnali has been the driving force behind the festival that is being held here for the second time in two years.
Muslim imams in the predominantly Muslim society of the country have been worried about the social and moral implications of such events on the country’s youth, especially among young women who would look up to the African models wearing the featured dresses.
The first FIMA was held 1998 in the Tenere desert near Agadez, 900 kilometers north of Niamey, and received the backing of the political establishment.
This year's FIMA, whose theme is "Peace and War Against Poverty", is to raise funds for Niger's poverty-eradication project. The event is being co-organized by the U.N. Development Program.
Niger is facing severe economic challenges, and in order to solve their economic problems they are following the lead of other depressed economies in the Islamic world by trying to attract foreign aid and investment by hosting Western cultural events that attract more money and investment.
