Shifani Reffai's photo series captures diverse faces, moods, and candid experiences from Muslim communities across the world.

Three young women having a chat inside the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, India, a place that is predominantly crowded by Muslim men.

This collection of photographs is of Muslims from different parts of the world, across different social backgrounds and periods of time. I wanted to show a variety of different moods through the pictures, and to capture abstract moments that are very open to interpretation, to reflect upon the diversity of symbols and ideas represented within the Muslim community. 

 

About the Author

I'm a 23 year old university undergraduate from Sri Lanka, currently living in Delhi, India. I enjoy film, photography, literature, and basically dabbling in anything creative and experimental. I was formerly a journalist for newspapers and magazines back home but drifted into the realm of creative writing. I'm currently the Story Editor of the magazine eFiction India and take photos while travelling around. I enjoy stories more than anything else, telling them, listening to them, looking at them, whatever form they happen to come in. My other passion is social activism which I have been involved in via the youth-based NGO I founded Reach Out, since 2009. The societal/cultural/religious image of the Muslim and particularly the Muslim woman and just the woman, as perceived by different people, is one that fascinates me immensely, and I am perpetually obsessed with studying that image and the things that affect its shape.

Related Content

Freedom in Restriction, Restriction in Freedom

Eline Hesse
In this short film, Dutch filmmaker Eline Hesse (a non-Muslim) considers the Dutch burqa debate by "stepping into another's shoes"--in this case, a niqab--to illustrate our shared interest in freedom.
More

Less Different

Soufeina Hamed
Artist Soufeina Hamed translates everyday issues in and out of the Muslima community into humorous and imaginative illustrations.
More

iCover

Sadaf Syed
Women veiled as truck drivers, in the army, at school, and beyond—Sadaf Syed’s sympathetic portraits dispel the stereotypes of Muslim women who cover.
More

“What If?”

Houria Niati
Houria Niati’s mixed-media work addresses her Algerian roots, and how displacement and colonization affect her personal history and her country’s history at large.
More