We are all past the conversation of algorithms and echo chambers, because we are now fully and unquestioningly immersed in the dual reality that they’ve been shaped by. And we know the obvious ways it has singed and malformed our politics and society at large, and the subsequent impact this has on our material economics. But what about how meaning and value is determined in more subtle ways. Less is said about how our own internal, unspoken binary code both reinforces, and is reinforced by digital trends. How our intimate sense of faith has been left vulnerable to the tide of internet fetishes. If the internet content we are so compulsively hooked on is a reflection of our impulsive consumption, what does this black mirror reveal about our faith? That invisible measure of religious value that we cannot discern or quantify, but that which is equally left misshapen by the way we interact with the online world.

Enter, stage left, Sneako. Recent excerpts from the popular internet personality’s live streams, purporting to show his wife, have achieved the coveted internet prize of virality. Following in the digital footsteps of Ali Dawah, a more established Muslim social media figure, Sneako chose to portray his wife in what can only be described as a kind of refashioning of niqab, communicating only via a whiteboard and pen. Representing a variation of a minority opinion concerning the female awrah – which includes her spoken voice  – it is clear that he is neither one that supports nor propagates such Islamic legislation where it might exist, nor that he seriously wants to appear to profess to. 

The nature of these clips, which appear both staged and ‘comical’ (in as far as any of these male social media stars lay claim to ‘humour’), suggests that Sneako employs controversial opinions to gain attention and clout. Attention through the rippling of online discussion so predictably caused by such a spectacle. And clout through reference to a kind of alpha Muslim masculinity that we have been plagued with more recently, and that uses a secular kind of misogyny, based on acquisition and subordination of women as a gesture to Islamic authenticity. 

Sneako’s pantomime of ‘Muslimness’ serves as a dog whistle to secular audiences, framing Islam as ludicrous and absurd, while nodding to less digitally-savvy Muslim viewers who seek the kind of paltry validation that comes from mainstream referencing. 

Critically, this content creates a dual coding of Islam; it is portrayed as subversive, yet accepted precisely because of this subversion. This duality is what Mincel’s (or Muslim incels) protagonists bank on when communicating to their audiences. It has become a digital language that we all, as consumers and creators, now unwittingly converse in. 

This digital dialect serves as a useful marketing tool for those wanting to position and sell themselves in contrary ways, communicating to different tribes, in different tones. The common denominator in these pitches is a denigration of Islam, using women as tools in this endeavour. 

What makes this phenomenon unique is how, in an age dominated by user-generated content, Muslim men are actively contributing to this negative impression of themselves. This not only perpetuates harmful stereotypes but also undermines the integrity of the faith they claim to represent.

This Mincel-spiel they craft promotes hybrid messaging that simultaneously addresses two opposing audiences. It is a shadowy double-speak aiming to appear both masculine by secular barometers of masculinity and adequately “Islamically” culturally coded. Here, allusion to a kind of chest-beating, raw masculinity provides a qualifying cover for ‘Muslimness’, the latter of which occupies a different space in public imagination, with far less social capital. This newly forged social economy combining ‘Red Pill’ misogyny with Islamic identity, exposes the contradictions which underpin the meeting of these two constructs. It exposes the algorithmic influences on our private impressions and public performance of faith, creating superficial relationships with social media personalities, leaving us open to obvious manipulation. 

The sum result of such content is that Islamophobic audiences share and falsely affirm it as laudably Muslim, and the Muslim audiences delight in their glow up in the internet age. The proliferation of such content only works to create a drowning Islamophohic noise in the infosphere, and consolidates our erroneous impressions of our own faith.

The popularity of such content, and the fact that cultural entrepreneurs such as Andrew Tate and his other variants, who profit so directly from online controversy, reflects a dysfunctional relationship with our religion and the internet. If the internet is effectively speaking to and directly feeding off our most latent and instinctual self, one that works on millisecond impulses and like a petulant and overindulged child, demands stimuli, then we are effectively creating a living breathing hive of content from the unearthed pits of our minds. Content created by Muslims with large audiences is therefore both a reflection of our collective psychology as Muslims, and can tap into that covert mental space when it develops and sets new norms. This proliferation drowns out authentic Islamic voices and reinforces Islamophobic narratives, distorting our understanding of our own faith.

History tells us that society’s undesirables form the underbelly of dominant notions of respectability – marginalised groups such as Muslims are seen as literal and metaphorical Jekylls to secular liberalism’s Hydes. 

Today, an internet built on binaries has created a more insidious and acute impression of this. It has brought to the fore our own binary thinking that cannibalises Islam. The trope of the voiceless Muslim woman as an accessory to a smirking male social media star is new, but follows a long ignoble tradition of internet content that feeds off the very latent idea we all carry as Muslims; our own internal algorithm. 

For a generation of Muslims who are by our very nature of time and place, less familiar with religious scripture and who absorb our religion through the ideological scraps of culture, media and now internet algorithms, this content forms the lion’s share of their Islamic understanding. 

It contributes to the assumption shaped by orientalist and neoliberal narratives. This impression of Islam is sedimented both in how we personally, socially, and culturally perceive and code the idea of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’, creating a feedback loop of  unhealthy assumptions. These unspoken ideas, reinforced by cultural narratives, present Islam as aberrant, causing cognitive dissonance and self-aberration among Muslims. 

The concept that being more Muslim reduces one’s humanity becomes part of our unconscious thinking, exploited by content creators and influencers. As Muslims, if we are fed a narrative that shapes Islam as an illegitimate belief, then illegitimacy becomes a measure by which we define Islam implicitly. 

This is true of adjacent qualities such as misogyny, unlawfulness and distastefulness, and all of the cultural paraphernalia they carry. What is halal and wholesome in Islam becomes a kind of haram according to wider society, and this has the potential to cause a kind of cognitive dissonance and self-aberration. These falsehoods, silently validated by cultural narratives are hard to guard against, but easy to adopt through impulsive social media habits. Oftentimes unspoken ideas have great power, shaping our perceptions and interactions. Creators and influencers exploit this, tapping into our unconscious biases as consumers of such content. 

So how does the algorithm exploit and consolidate this internal training? 

There is something truly stomach churning about Muslim social media figures embroiling our faith in controversy for personal and financial gains, despite basing their entire online personas on faith and dawah. This is worrying as it sacrifices our faith-impressions for self-interest. Younger Muslims develop their delicate understanding of faith on these crude and risible vignettes. This in turn causes our internal measure of religion to become warped as online likes, comments and subscriptions shape the ebb and flow of content that impresses upon it. 

Ali Dawah or Sneako appear to employ Muslim women as props to tap into the false populist understandings of Islam as controversial and subversive. A fully covered woman becomes a symbol, carrying a sense of taboo that leaves an unsavoury impression on the mainstream palate. This performative display of ‘Muslimness’ does not transparently reflect their lives, neither men appear to uphold this religious practice in their familial lives, where they exist. Rather, the aims behind these displays of Muslimness is to employ perfectly legitimate religious traditions – in this case, Muslim women controlling access to their faces and voices, both of which they are well within their religious rights to do, and are part of the beauty of Islamic history – and put them under the garish, isolating light of social media attention. 

This formulaic tactic used by Muslim influencers decontextualises legitimate fiqh and Sharia positions and exploits the illicit view we have of them to farm attention online. This signals to Muslims who feel at odds with popular sensibilities that the lurid display of Muslimness is authentic on the basis that it is sensationalist and contrary to wider notions of acceptability. As an audience we look up to them purely on the basis that they are ‘counter-culture’ and not because they are done for the sake of Allah (SWT). As such, the more they signal deformity to non-Muslim audiences, the more we feel validated and assuaged. We are effectively shaping our understanding of Islam around the verboten black space of the internet.

When content like this is created it further entrenches these negative assumptions in us as Muslims, and creates new norms for the way we perceive and express our faith with lasting and damaging consequences. This much is obvious in how Sneako’s content so directly mimics Dawah’s, with added comic effect. Dawah has created a comical precedent that’s now ripe for exploitation and which adds another derisive layer to our perceptions of covered women. Resultantly, expressions of Muslimness, like the niqab in this instance, are rewritten in our cultural cannon according to these reductive scripts, taking on belittling and shameful cadences. The material impact on the most visibly Muslim demographic – niqabi women – is a shameful indictment of an industry of supposedly pro-Islamic content. 

Crucially, if we become accustomed to dealing in symbols of illicitness when it comes to understanding and practising our faith, we disconnect it from its true origin of scripture and the intent to please Allah (SWT). What the manosphere is ignorant of, is that it is complicit with a wider Islamophobic culture that deforms and delegitimises our faith, creating schizophrenic morality incongruous with true Islam and our fitrah (natural disposition).

If we look back at the beginning of Mincel, and a very specific male dominated online Muslim space, we can see the early currents of this thinking in the tide of our internet waters. Yesteryear’s popular social media personality Hassanat formed an early part of this contemporary trend. Using his polygamous relationship and the niqab to attract attention, Hassanat fostered an audience of both loyal Muslim men and outraged Muslim women. His content appeared to be a more rudimentary example of this purposeful attempt to borrow the controversy from these symbols, to earn his stripes in the puerile ‘Islam is offensive’ school of thinking.  

While the niqab and polygamy have undeniable legitimacy in Islam, their portrayals on platforms like Instagram reduces them to shock-factors.

The curiosity of both Muslim and non-Muslim audiences meant that Hassanat’s content thrived, always maintaining high engagement through perverse intrigue. This approach invalidates the practice of polygamy and contradicts what the Muslim influencer complex claims it sets out to do. Indeed, it could be argued that seeking social media validation for religious norms is antithetical to Islam itself. Both the metric by which their relationship was celebrated, secular concepts of male dominance, and the mode by which its celebrated, fickle social media approval are hostile grounds for true faith and practice.  

Hassanat’s popularity was rooted not in his personality, but in the shock value of his content. He took complex, deeply nuanced Islamic positions, extrapolating them and used superficial social media attention to gain exposure. His humourless genre of slapstick relied solely on the comical premise of having two wives alone, dependent entirely on this single-use appeal which meant he was bound to unravel as he ultimately did. His persona was built on misappropriating a religious practice which deserves more attention and space than social media allows, and which we know he privately mocked.

Indeed, today’s Muslim manosphere dresses up Islam in undeniably secular concepts, often without realising it. They present piety, which is considered an emasculating trait according to alpha male “chad” logic, with aggressively masculine window dressing. Their conceptions of faith and masculinity are based on secular models, with lewd, locker-room talk defining the latter. 

It is desperately pitiful to see grown Muslim men, sitting around a microphone, claiming to own their religious identity but being so fragile and insecure in it that they resort to distasteful displays of secular masculinity at the expense of women. And all without any self-awareness. 

Wider Incel movements which view Islam with disdain, just about tolerate their popularity amongst Muslim audiences, and treat their Muslim counterparts with such obvious bemusement. This marriage of convenience suits both sides because Islam is tragically associated with misogyny, applauded or criticised on that false basis alone. Muslim male influencers, following their Incel buddies, falsely equate misogyny with religious legitimacy. Muslim men are learning their religion through secular constructs and embracing these fabricated elements as a response to a culture that reviles them. 

And as we fall deeper into the matrix, we witness surreal discourse that subjugates Muslim women and revells in a shallow masculinity incompatible with Islam. This trend, driven by a quest for engagement, distorts our faith impressions. More recently, we’ve seen a juvenile and chortling debating of the topic of McDonalds as Mehr and one minute nikkahs. Naturally, this further denigrates Muslim women and exposes a new generation of young, impressionable Muslim men to the supposed religious legitimacy of temporary marriages with fast-food pay outs. This content neglects to acknowledge women as possessing any religiously intellectual appetite, and actively sacrifices our iman for secular Incel approval, repelling women from a religion in which they are unequivocally equal as believers. 

When Muslim men and women weigh up their options, these flippant anecdotes  shape our understanding of Islam, both in terms of fiqh and culturally influencing  perceptions of proper and improper conduct and engagement. 

Mincel fodder also contradicts its supposed ‘ghairah’ for women by stripping away safeguards and dignity, harming women individually and collectively. Muslim men are depleting by the very standards by which they claim to uphold.

What this means for us as an audience of believers first and foremost, and consumers only secondary, is that we need to be more discerning about who and what we give our time and thought to, let alone our adulation and praise. The effects of the algorithm on our faith is manifest in a kind of Newton’s Cradle impact, which feeds back on itself; our illicit impressions of our own faith are mined and sold back to us in a perpetuating cycle. An entire industry built on propagating false assumptions about Islam and using Muslim women as targets to use as its own personal punching bag. 

We wittingly and unwittingly contribute to a machine that propagates misconceptions, creates internal divisions, and forges culture wars that act as a smokescreen for more punitive policy making. The algorithm acts as a mirror for the Muslim community, a living breathing beast that reflects back our most base impressions, which exposes those instincts unknown even to ourselves. How might we wrestle back our own personal impressions and the outwardly perceptions of our faith? The writing is on the whiteboard – if the commodity of our attention is traded for a cheapening of our religion, then it is time to withdraw that attention entirely.