Imams, Investors and Influencers: A Dissection of Muslim Spaces on Social Media

How do we understand social media? Like most things in life, the answer is...it depends. Also like most things in life, I wish that were not the case.

A linguist might look at social media and be interested in understanding the evolution of language. An economist may want to understand how it has changed the entrepreneurial landscape. A data scientist may want to understand what sorts of data are generated from it and where they can be used.

I, unfortunately, am neither a linguist, nor an economist, nor a psychologist. I am not even a student of the social sciences. I am, however, a consumer of social media; a digital citizen who interacts with its content everyday and is interested in how it is helping Muslims create new spaces for themselves. My journey to understand this landscape took me to four North American Muslims who are all using social media in different ways.

My first interviewee began his social media journey on Facebook in the spring of 2012 when a fellow of his at the New Brunswick Islamic Center in New Jersey created a public page for him. Today, Dr Shadee Elmasry, a classically trained Maliki scholar who has studied various teachers has over a hundred thousand Facebook followers and over ten thousand Instagram followers.

I questioned Dr. Elmasry about his experience with social media, how it began and how it has changed over time.. “Social media,” he told me, “reflects a person’s spiritual and emotional state”. In the beginning, he continued, he posted a lot of refutations to rebut what he called “liberal thinking creeping into Muslims” because he was concerned about the reluctance of elders to address it from an ideological level. Eventually, he moved away from refutations because he felt they were creating divisions and stoking negative emotions between people who should have been on the same side.

A big part of his day, Dr. Elmasry mentioned, is spent answering individuals who reach out to him via social media. “The goal of posting [material] is to talk to people” he said, and that he enjoys it most when an online correspondence leads to a personal connection being established.

It is social media’s ability to traverse geographic constraints that allow such interactions. Live Instagram sessions, for example, are increasingly being used as extensions to traditional study circles by scholars and students alike to dispense and consume knowledge. With Muslim communities dispersed into small pockets in and around large cities in North America, this extension is giving audiences opportunities to learn more about their faith. The utility does not end there. Increasingly, individuals within the community are also using these platforms to go beyond what is taught and learnt in traditional study circles or seminaries to discuss topics which are overlooked in everyday discourse. One such individual is my next interviewee, Zainab Bint Younus.

I had only been following @bintyounus for a few weeks when, after being impressed by the audacity of her content, I decided to reach out to her for this article. Zainab is a writer based in Victoria, British Columbia and has been active on the internet since she was a teenager. Her online content has ranged from book reviews and memes to issues of women empowerment, polygamy, sex, and gender. She focuses on dissecting how the confluence of culture, faith, and modernity often blurs our conception of these sensitive, yet important topics.

Zainab, who used to go by “The Salafi Feminist,” started her online journey on the blogosphere when online discussion forums were the order of the day. Growing up in a household immersed in da’wah (proselytization) had played an important role in shaping her work and her views. At age 16, she moved on to co-found “Muslim Matters,” a blog about all things Muslim, to which she still contributes. Then, with the advent of Facebook and Instagram, she shifted her focus to social media.

Zainab’s father, Younus Kathrada, is a classically trained scholar who studied at the University of Medina. He also runs an Islamic school in Victoria, BC. “Having a scholar at arm’s length helps keep me grounded in faith”, said Zainab, who herself has completed various diplomas in the Islamic studies. “Sometimes, I have sisters asking me for rulings and it helps that I have someone close who can provide them,” she noted, reflecting on how the internet enables her to be the bridge helping provide reliable Islamic opinions to her followers when they come to her with questions.

Zainab’s willingness to speak openly about difficult issues comes with its consequences. She recalled how in the beginning when she wrote about general topics like da’wah her work was acclaimed, but once she started to delve into more sensitive topics, the reactions began to polarize along gendered lines. Men have gone to the extent of harassing her, at times even reaching out to her husband and father in an attempt to “silence her.” In contrast, women generally appreciate her for voicing their shared concerns from a position grounded firmly in the Islamic tradition. “You grow thick skin,” she said, “when you have been voicing unpopular opinions for a long time.”

Zainab’s experience seems to be shared by many other Muslim women who choose to question the norm and challenge established narratives, even when they do so from strictly within the paradigm of Islamic scholarship.

Addressing another taboo topic, albeit one that is less sensitive, that of shariah compliant finance, is Ahmed Jawa. Jawa is an IBM consultant who uses his Instagram page, @thinkhalal_and_growrich, to deliver stock recommendations and financial advice aimed at Muslims.

He likes to tie his work to the broader context of what he feels is lacking in the Muslim community today; we do not seem to have a voice because of a weak economic position. A Pakistani himself, he lamented how “Pakistan isn’t able to stand up to China for its persecution of the Uyghyrs,” he goes, “because China has economic leverage over Pakistan.” The same, he theorizes, is true for other places in the world where Muslims are being persecuted. He also laments how Muslims often overgeneralize the Qur’an’s injunctions on gambling and interest as a denunciation of wealth itself when Islam does not discourage earning by lawful means. “If you look at the Prophet ﷺand the companions,” he told me during our conversation, they “encouraged business, and business is not only opening a pop-shop.”

I then asked him about his plans for the future of his page. “It is a work in progress,” he told me, mentioning that he has started small but as he grows in his career and his investments, he wants to diversify the scope of his advice to newer things such as cryptocurrencies and real estate.

Ahmed represents an emerging category of “Muslim financial advice gurus” delivering halal investing advice in a market that does not cater to them at present.

Another individual who is successfully exploiting a gap in the market is Manal Aman, a UofT graduate who sells do-it-yourself (DIY) crafts for children aged 10 and below.

Manal, who runs the account @helloholydays on Instagram, sells crafts aimed at helping children make their holidays more fun. Her page features, among other things, Valentine’s Day cards, DIY rings, easy to make snacks, and balloons in the shape of the Holy Ka’bah.

Unlike Zainab’s organic rise, Manal had always intended to build a brand and she has done so successfully. “Actions speak louder than words” she told me as we spoke about what she thinks of the community’s reaction to her work. Her success, she tells me, can be gauged by the fact that some of the biggest names in the DIY market, such as Martha Stewart, have collaborated with her. Manal calls herself a “visionary” who has led the way for other aspiring entrepreneurs to come forward and market their products online in order to cater to this niche market.

Manal’s experience is also shared by a host of individuals and local businesses. Just like Manal, other local businesses are increasingly leveraging the reach and scope of social media to promote their products. Having an Instagram account, in addition to a Facebook page and a hip website, has increasingly become the norm for businesses. With targeted ads and paid promotions, businesses are able to target audiences at a fraction of the cost compared to what they would have paid had they gone about doing it via television, radio, or billboards. Manal’s journey from UofT to the world of business is one that resonates with many aspiring businesspeople.

Having read some of Dr. Shoshana Zuboff’s work on how social media enables the surveillance state, I debated at multiple points whether it was even ethical to speak appreciatively about social media. Should Instagram, which sells our data for advertisement, be romanticized as a democratizing force? I have no good answer to this question. Perhaps by talking about social media as opposed to on it, we will find a path that leads us there. Perhaps I am being optimistic. My hope is that our conversations around social media fall like droplets of rain on the dry, barren soil giving rise to the fragrance of hope for it in the end, it is hope we are condemned to.

My hope is that our conversations around social media fall like droplets of rain on the dry, barren soil giving rise to the fragrance of hope for it in the end, it is hope we are condemned to.