Proving it’s definitely gone in a radical new direction, the latest edition of US Playboy features a shoot with hijab-wearing Muslim journalist Noor Tagouri.
The October edition of the magazine is its “Renegades” edition and features Tagouri in jeans, a leather jacket Converse sneakers and hijab.
Last October, the former soft-porn men’s mag unveiled a radical new direction – ditching nude shoots, ramping up the journalism and chasing a younger, Millennial audience.
The 22-year-old Tagouri is a reporter for the video news site Newsy. In the accompanying interview she says: “To be honest, I think being a hijabi Muslim woman, helped me gain that trust [from interview subjects]. I know what it’s like to have the narrative of our community be skewed and exploited in the media. I was like, ‘Hey, I know what it’s like to be misrepresented in the media. I won’t do that to you. I want to tell your story because it’s important and deserves justice’.
“I know first-hand that once people are re-empowered, they realise their own story is powerful and they begin to share. It’s incredibly rewarding and can even help enlighten or save others,” Tagouri said.
But the shoots not gone down well with everybody. In a column on the Muslimvibe.com, commentator Hussain Makke said: “Noor’s actions are not a one-off instance. This is a result of Muslims attempting to integrate into the wider modern society at the expense of their Islamic principles. It is the attempt to gain a position in the world through the use of religion. To many Muslims, their religion no longer plays a real role in their life. It has become synonymous with being a minority race which is not dependant on an ideology,” he wrote.
