Randy Swine

Mia Khalifa was 21 when a car stopped next to her in a Miami shopping center and a stranger handed her a card. Within three months of her first scene, ISIS sent her a photoshopped picture of her own head on a beheaded body: "You'll be next." A week later someone posted a Google Maps image of her home and she moved into a hotel. Her family disowned her. She says the whole thing paid her about $12,000. Her videos have been watched hundreds of millions of times, and she says she has no legal right to a single one of them. In the video below she tells it herself, starting with the car. It was a few weeks after her breast surgery. She was walking across a shopping center. A car stopped dead and the window rolled down. "You are so gorgeous. Would you like to model for me?" She took the card home and googled it. It was a porn company. Then they pitched her the scene that changed everything. A hijab. She remembers exactly what she said. "You motherf*ckers are going to get me killed." She did it anyway. The day after it dropped, her Instagram went from 400 followers to about 200,000 in three days. CNN, Fox, USA Today. She says she was banned in countries like Egypt and Afghanistan. She's Catholic. Then ISIS found her. Her own face on a beheaded body. "You Muslim disgrace." She joked about it online. A week later her address was on Twitter. "Utter fear set in." She lived in a hotel for two weeks, then moved. ISIS hacked her Instagram. She quit after about three months. The studio says she worked longer and was paid more. The videos never stopped. A 2020 petition to take them down passed 1.5 million signatures. They are still up. Three months of work at 21. A death threat with her head on it. And a name that still makes money for someone else. She chose to do the scenes. Did she choose everything that came after?