German hijab entrepreneur turns far-right attack in parliament into six million views, sold-out stock, and a solidarity movement
Sayed used a phone camera and a sense of timing to turn the attack into the best advertisement her business has ever received
BERLIN (MNTV) — When far-right politician Beatrix von Storch stood up in the German Bundestag on International Women’s Day and denounced a hijab-wearing Miss Germany finalist as a dangerous Islamic activist, the woman in question was not afraid.
She was, by her own account, a little pleased.
Büsra Sayed, a 27-year-old entrepreneur who designs and sells hijabs, had entered the Miss Germany pageant earlier this year and made it to the final round — one of the first two women in the competition’s history to wear a headscarf on stage. The pageant, which has evolved in recent years beyond physical appearance to focus on personality, achievement, and empowerment, gave Sayed a platform for a message she had been building her brand around: that diversity in Germany should be visible and that Muslim women who wear hijab belong in every space, not as a novelty but as an unremarkable reality.
Von Storch, a senior figure in the Alternative for Germany (AfD), took the opposite view. In her parliamentary speech, she described Sayed as a “hijab activist” promoting Islamic dress and concluded that if her participation in Miss Germany was considered progress, the country was living in “a very dangerous Absurdistan.”
The discount code
Sayed’s response, posted on Instagram and TikTok, was disarming in its cheerfulness. She thanked her “friend” from the AfD for doing unpaid promotional work for her brand in the Bundestag and asked her followers to be kind, since it was the politician’s first collaboration. She then played a clip of the speech and signed off with a punchline: von Storch had forgotten to mention the discount code — “AfD10” — which would give customers 10 per cent off all hijabs.
The video reached six million views on Instagram alone. Orders flooded in — not just from Muslim women but from people across German society who wanted to express solidarity. Sayed told DW that Christian women pastors wrote to say they were ordering hijabs too, purely as a gesture of support. A specially created “AfD Blue” hijab, added to the inventory as a pointed joke, nearly sold out.
Her Instagram following surged past 160,000.
From paralysis to purpose
Sayed told DW that the online hate and discriminatory comments are nothing new — she has faced them since she was young. As a teenager, she said, she was paralysed by the hostility and had no idea how to respond. Over time, she developed an approach built around humour and warmth rather than anger, choosing to counter hatred with lightness wherever possible. The line, she said, is threats of violence, which she reports to police.
She has used the attention generated by the episode not to boost sales — she emphasised that commercial gain was never the intention — but to advocate for a more cohesive and equal society. On Instagram, she argued that the stronger the bonds of solidarity in a diverse society, the harder people will fight to protect that diversity.
She was subsequently invited to the Bundestag by Social Democrat parliamentarian Rasha Nasr — a visit she naturally documented in another reel.
What it represents
The episode is a small story in one sense — a social media moment, a viral video, a spike in hijab orders. But it captures something larger about the dynamics of anti-Muslim politics in Europe in 2026: the gap between the power that far-right politicians wield in institutions and the resourcefulness of the communities they target.
Von Storch used the floor of the German parliament to frame a young woman’s participation in a beauty pageant as a national security concern. Sayed used a phone camera and a sense of timing to turn the attack into the best advertisement her business has ever received — and into a demonstration that solidarity, when it materialises, can be louder than the hostility that provokes it.
“It gave me — and many other people as well — hope to see how many people spoke up,” she told DW. “You generally hear just negative voices, because they’re normally louder. We definitely need more of this solidarity.”
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