'Looked so real': How AI is being weaponised against India's Muslim women The freelance model from India-administered Kashmir was scrolling on her phone last year when a friend sent her a clip circulating on Instagram. But it was entirely fabricated. "It was proper stalking," Ayoub, 24, said. "They had followed my life from my first semester to the last at the university." The video stitched together photographs from Ayoub's time as a student at New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University - images drawn from everyday moments of campus life, including group projects, farewell gatherings and selfies with classmates.

A substantial number of AI images generated or edited with Grok are targeting women in religious and cultural clothing. Among the vast and growing library of nonconsensual sexualized edits that Grok has generated on request over the past week, many perpetrators have asked xAI's bot to put on or take off a hijab, a saree, a nun's habit, or another kind of modest religious or cultural type of clothing. In a review of 500 Grok images generated between January 6 and January 9, WIRED found around 5 percent of the output featured an image of a woman who was, as the result of prompts from users, either stripped from or made to wear religious or cultural clothing. Indian sarees and modest Islamic wear were the most common examples in the output, which also featured Japanese school uniforms, burqas, and early 20th century-style bathing suits with long sleeves. "Women of color have been disproportionately affected by manipulated, altered, and fabricated intimate images and videos prior to deepfakes and even with deepfakes, because of the way that society and particularly misogynistic men view women of color as less human and less worthy of dignity," says Noelle Martin, a lawyer and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia researching the regulation of deepfake abuse.

Welcome to the brave new world of securo-feminism*. In the long tradition of systems of patriarchal violence representing themselves as the solution to patriarchal violence, the ongoing expansion of draconian "war on terror" measures is being advertised as an advance for women's rights. For instance, countries like the United Kingdom have extended anti-terrorism provisions to now not only strip citizenship from "terrorists", but also from (some of) those convicted of sexual abuse: a "double punishment" reserved exclusively for dual nationals and suspected dual nationals, predominantly Muslims and other racialised targets from former colonies in the Global South. Simultaneously, the British government itself is threatening the rights and safety of abuse survivors and others fleeing violence, with its proposed new bill to "secure the borders" by penalising asylum seekers for arriving by unauthorised routes (never mind that such penalties flagrantly violate international refugee law). In the United States, President Joe Biden's "feminist" credentials include the introduction of new justice mechanisms to address sexual assault within the military: packaged in the same piece of legislation escalating American "defence" spending to unprecedented heights, surpassing even the previous record set by his predecessor Donald Trump.

"I'm increasingly coming to terms with the fact that I may never get married," said Mustafa, a 34-year-old Black Muslim man who asked that we not use his real name. He has been on two dates with women he met on dating apps in the past year – and they left him feeling fatigued and doubtful that he would ever find a genuine connection with someone. He had turned to the apps, he said, because, there is no dating scene in his British-Somali community. But, he lamented, "it's really hard to find someone. This is not how Mustafa imagined his life would be in his mid-thirties. When he was younger, he pictured himself as a devoted husband and loving father to a couple of children by now. In this mental image of familial bliss, he was also living in a picturesque cottage in the English countryside complete with "a lake or something". Instead, he recently celebrated his 34th birthday single and living in a flat overlooking the Wembley Stadium arch in North West London. But, he added with a shrug, "I've started learning how to cycle." Discussing his hobbies and interests – cycling, reading, writing – he sounds more optimistic. He has directed his energy away from the fickle and unpredictable pursuit of love and towards those variables of his life he can control, like picking up new pastimes. 'All they see is a Black guy' Although the United Kingdom's Black Muslim community is culturally diverse, including people from a wide range of African and Caribbean backgrounds, it only comprises 10 percent of the UK's Muslim population. This can make dating or finding a marriage partner particularly difficult. A recent survey by Muzmatch, a Muslim-specific dating app that has been heralded for helping 20,000 Muslims meet and marry since its launch in 2015, revealed the challenges faced by Black Muslims dating in the UK. Muzmatch asked 471 of their members from different ethnic groups if they felt that race and ethnicity affected the matches they received and whether they had negative experiences as a result of this. In their answers, Black users pointed to a range of issues – including fetishisation, colourism and discrimination. Most of the Black women surveyed complained about being fetishised and branded "exotic". One West African woman described how dark-skinned women were considered unattractive and how she had been called the n-word by one user. A Sudanese man expressed concern that he was matched with women with similar interests to him who subsequently rejected him because their family wouldn't accept him. "It doesn't matter if you're on your deen and have a successful career.

A "sexual predator" has been jailed for eight and a half years for blackmailing and spying on Muslim women using intimate photographs and videos he took of them without their knowledge. Farhan Mirza, 38, of Abertillery, Blaenau Gwent, secretly filmed the women and threatened to share the footage before demanding money. Mirza, who denied the charges, met some of the women on online dating sites. He was jailed for voyeurism, blackmail, theft and fraud at Cardiff Crown Court. During the trial, jurors heard Mirza had initially impressed his victims by claiming to be a doctor and hung surgical scrubs in his wardrobe and carried a stethoscope in his car. He also claimed his family were highly educated professionals working in locations around the world.