LN pointed me at this fascinating interview, courtesy of the Leatherati Youtube channel, with slave Alia who is a devout Muslim woman who is also the slave of Master Skip Chasey. She comes from a cultural background quite different from most people in the greater BDSM world, and there are interesting parallels between her life as a devout Mulsim woman and her life as a slave.
She did remind me a lot of the religious devotees in the Middle Ages I read about, and also of Hannah Cullwick, who had a similar quasi-religious devotion to her labours. (Arthur Munby once directly compared her to religious women of old.)
…she was to become, and she has become, a noble and gentle woman, not only without the aid of technical helps, but in spite of ignorance and lowly isolation, and by means of that very toil and servile labour which is supposed to make a woman contemptible and vulgar. Physical degradation was to be the channel, and even the source of spiritual beauty. It has often been so, among religious women of old: but, with an English maid servant, how would it be?
Arthur Munby’s diary, 26 May 1863. (Emphasis in original)
Incidentally, her headscarf is actually not part of her BDSM submission, but part of her Muslim practice.
