When Noor, a public health official woke up on a Monday morning, she didn’t expect to find her name listed as part of a ‘Sulli Deals’ offering. In a statement to The Diplomat, Noor said, “They targeted us because we are women, we are Muslim and we are outspoken. Sulli is a derogatory word for Muslim women.”
But Noor wasn’t alone. Like her, there were 80 other names on the list—most of whom were artists, researchers, journalists, and students who were active on social media. These women found themselves being victims of cybercrimes, with their identities doxed. The women realised that their pictures along with their names were featured on this website without their consent, alongside a derogatory and objectifying title like “Your sulli deal of the day is…”
Says Noor, “I was enraged; how low can you stoop just because you hate us? It is plain Islamophobia. We were on the ground, we were working for the people and we were occupying space.”
The website on GitHub, an open-source software development platform, claimed to be a “community driven, open-source project.” Since the incident, some women have deactivated their accounts while others have filed FIRs and complaints with the police. However, after visible outrage and a massive push to report GitHub, the website content has been taken down and the account has been suspended.
Pilot Hana Mohsin Khan, who recently found out about her picture and had not had a decent night’s sleep since, told the portal, “Abuse is abuse. As women, we walk down the street, and we are pinched and touched without our consent. The only difference, and the most frustrating part about this, is that I still don’t know who is behind this.”
What’s worse, the women whose identities were unlawfully used on the website are now facing moral policing for even posting to social media, from people within their communities.