Annie Laurie Gaylor is a co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Nineteen is the perfect age to push the parameters of social convention, to experiment with self-expression and rebellion. Young women coming to terms with sexual objectification, harassment and social judgment have a perfect right to protest prudery and patriarchal religion without being threatened with execution.

Amina Tyler, a Tunisian 19-year-old, exercised that right. She participated in a feminist Facebook project in which she posted naked images of herself online, with the words “I own my body; it's not the source of anyone's honor” written on her bare chest.

Courtesy of Annie Laurie Gaylor

Tunisia reacted with revilement and threats of violence. The head of Tunisia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice reportedly called for Tyler to be stoned to death. Tyler and her family faced vicious threats, including the statement that acid should be thrown in her face. Tyler, who reports having been subjected to a “virginity test” and other indignities, appears to be in hiding with the intention to escape to France.

Tyler uploaded the photos of herself on a feminist Facebook page created by Femen, a Ukrainian women’s group dedicated to freeing women. In solidarity with her, Femen declared “Topless Jihad Day” on April 4, holding demonstrations across Europe in which women treated their bared torsos as protest placards. The tactics are reminiscent of Slutwalk, a protest movement fighting rape culture, in which young women (some bare-breasted, others scantily clad) take to the streets to defy conventions that blame victims after rapes.

Arguments for female modesty are sadly familiar, and troubling regardless of their religious context.

I’m proud to be part of the tradition that Femen and Slutwalk have joined. In 1977, after a judge in Wisconsin called the rape of a 16-year-old high school student a “normal reaction” to her wearing a turtleneck and jeans, I engaged in a different kind of street theater. After organizing the first picket of his courthouse, I dressed in a nun’s habit and marched holding signs that said “Shall men be our dress codes?” and “Is this what you have in mind, judge?” We successfully recalled that judge. But the attitudes, unfortunately, persist.

There’s nothing obscene about breasts. What’s obscene is decking women in burqas or face-shrouding veils. What’s obscene is that a statement by a young woman that she owns her own body could still set a world religion on fire.