Topless Women Crash Muslim Conference

Two topless women crashed a Muslim conference in France this weekend and were "violently removed" for their efforts, France24 reports. The third "Muslim Salon"—this one about women in Islam, notes Buzzfeed—was underway when two women from the feminist group Femen leapt onstage and grabbed the microphone. Two imams addressing the audience walked off while the women raised their fists and shouted, the Huffington Post reports. The protesters, aged 25 and 31, each had the words "Nobody makes me submit" written across their chests. Blurred video of the event on TMZ shows men rushing the stage, dragging the women off, and apparently kicking one of them.

"It was our duty to interrupt this enslavement event, and to let a scream of freedom be heard in the middle of their submission lessons," said Femen leader Inna Shevchenko after the protest. "Just a minute later, Femen activists were brutally beaten up by the organisers of the event on the same stage." Ironically, the imams were just telling attendees to follow the lesson of Muhammad and not beat their wives when the protesters arrived, Buzzfeed France reports. A Change.org petition had already opposed the conference outside Paris, but an update to the petition also opposed the protesters, saying Femen offered "a position of victimhood to preachers and reinforced the convictions of their audience." (More feminism stories.)