The top and bottom photos are of Amina Sboui, a Tunisian feminist and political activist who sparked world-wide controversy by posting topless pictures of herself on Facebook, with the words, Fuck Your Morals, written in Arabic across her chest.

Her cause was taken up by FEMEN, a feminist protest group based in Paris, known for organizing controversial, topless public protests against sex tourists, religious institutions, international marriage agencies and other sexist topics. As someone who was raised to believe that Riot Grrl activism could solve many of the sexist, homophobic problems that plague the world, I really wanted to support FEMEN in what they were trying to do: show their support of a woman who was threatened with death by any means necessary. Then the self-styled “topless jihad” started and everything went to hell.

What I found troubling about FEMEN was that by turning the international spotlight upon themselves the whole question of what happened to Amina got lost. Indeed, if a person hadn’t been following the protests from the beginning one might rightly assume this had nothing to do with Tunisia or Amina and everything to do with the right to shout down Islamists while topless and bash Muslim women for being slaves to the patriarchy. As many, many critics pointed out (from Bell Hooks to Fatima Thompson to the late Audre Lorde) when First World, white, privileged women start telling women of color from developing nations what they can and cannot do that is oppression.

Apparently, it wasn’t just Muslim feminists who found FEMEN’S actions highly problematic, though. Yesterday, Amina Sboui, the very person that prompted the protest in the first place, denounced and distanced herself from the organization, accusing FEMEN of Islamophobia and a lack of financial transparency.

“I do not want my name to be associated with an Islamophobic organization,” she told the Maghreb edition of the Huffington Post. “I did not appreciate the action taken by the girls shouting ‘Amina Akbar, Femen Akbar’ in front of the Tunisian embassy in Paris.” The chants were a parody of Allahu akbar (God is great).

Amina also criticized the burning of the black Tawhid flag and a Koran in front of a mosque in Paris.

“That offends many Muslims and many friends of mine. We must respect everyone’s religion,” she added.

Amina, who now calls herself an anarchist, also criticized the lack of financial transparency of FEMEN.

“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.”

At the end of May, three FEMEN activists — two French and a German — were arrested, and eventually freed, for bearing their breasts outside the main Tunis courthouse, in an earlier demonstration of support for Amina.