Muslims are young, online and playing by their own rules
It began by accident. In 2018 Omar Suleiman, a soft-spoken Texan imam, realised that a scammer was impersonating him on Instagram to solicit donations. He decided to create a genuine account. A community of followers began to grow, especially during the pandemic, when he started live-streaming on YouTube every night, talking about how Islam can help with things like uncertainty and grief.
Mr Suleiman now has more than 3m followers on Instagram and a TikTok account with 22.2m likes. His followers hail from all over the world. Many watch him because their local imams do not really grapple with the issues they care about, he thinks. Some followers tell him his teachings have changed their lives.
The world’s 2bn-odd Muslims are younger, on average, than people of other religions: in 2020 the Pew Research Centre, an American public-policy institute, found that the median age for the faith was 24, versus 33 for non-Muslims. They are also very much online. An upcoming survey from Arab Barometer, a research firm, found that 60% of 18- to 29-year-old Muslims in the Middle East are both “heavy internet users” and “highly engaged” on social media. Around 30% ofBritish Muslims use social media a “great deal” for religious information, according to a recent study by the Digital British Islam project…
Read full article at The Economist
