Amina Sboui Quits Topless Protest Group Femen Over 'Islamophobia and Israeli Funding'

A Tunisian activist has quit Femen after accusing it of Islamophobia.

Amina Sboui, also known as Amina Tyler, said she left the radical group, famous its topless political demonstrations, just days after she was released from a Tunisian jail where she had been locked up since May for painting the word "Femen" on a cemetery wall.

"I do not want my name to be associated with an Islamophobic organisation," she told the Maghreb edition of the Huffington Post.

Sboui said she wanted to distance herself from demonstrations that other Femen activists had staged in her support.

"I did not appreciate the action taken by the girls shouting 'Amina Akbar, Femen Akbar' in front of the Tunisian embassy in Paris, or the burning of the black Tawhid flag in front of a mosque in Paris," she said.

"That offends many Muslims and many friends of mine. We must respect everyone's religion."

Sboui, 19, also accused Femen of a lack of financial transparency.

"I don't know how the movement is financed. I asked (Femen leader Inna Shevchenko) several times, but I didn't get a clear answer. I don't want to be in a movement supported by suspect money. What if it is financed by Israel? I want to know."

Shevchenko swiftly replied on Twitter:

Amina betrayed not FEMEN but thousands of women who acted for her freedom during "Free Amina campaign" and because of who she is free now

— inna shevchenko (@femeninna) August 20, 2013

Three women, one German and two French, were jailed for a month in June for staging a topless demonstration against her detention outside the Tunis central courthouse.

Earlier this month, Sboui was released pending trial for desecrating the cemetery outside the Great Mosque of Kairouan before a meeting of radical Muslim Salafists in the city.

She gained world notoriety by posing online topless with the words "F**k your morals" emblazoned across her chest, sparking debate in the moderate Muslim country.

The photo picture triggered a furious reaction from radical Muslims. Sboui disappeared for a few days amid claims that she had been kidnapped.

Just last week, she published a new topless picture of herself lighting a petrol bomb with a cigarette, which Shevchenko said was a protest "against the fake Islamist model of 'democracy'".