Meet Muslim Media’s Senior Editor-in-Chief

At 1 am during Ramadan, Palestinian journalist Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh sits shoulder to shoulder in a crowded coffee shop in Yemen new Yorkthe kind of place that comes alive after evening prayer. Everyone is loud, highly caffeinated, and excited to be outside. His phone rang. Breaking news: Israel strikes Tehran.

He looks at his friends, then writes a post and hits Publish. “Did you just write?” he asks. He apologized and went home to watch the news.

This is how Al-Khatahtbeh, 27, has been for the past seven years. He runs @Muslim, with over 12 million followers across platforms—6.7 million on Instagram alone. You have asked Zohran MamdaniRiz Ahmed, Mo Amer, and Motaz Azaiza.

@Muslim victory goes back to Donald Trump’s first term as president. Now a student at Rutgers University planning a career in entertainment journalism, Al-Khatahtbeh saw the effects of Trump’s Muslim ban through his Yemeni and Iranian colleagues.

When he wrote about the ban’s impact on university students, he failed to find the right way to reach out and warn other Muslims that their universities could not protect them. That’s when he decided to create a Muslim media space.

This comes with 13 hours of display time. He says he finds it embarrassing, but the admission fills him with pride. “I should know. I’m getting the news just like everyone else.”

But everyone else is not the editor-in-chief of the Muslim media.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

CARLA SERTIN: At what point did you realize this was going to be big?

AMEER AL-KHATAHTBEH: When I first launched @Muslim, February 15, 2019, I was already working on social media. I watched every moment of the transition on social media. I was online all the time.

It happened to me: What if I were to cover a story in the same way and create a post for Vice News, the same style, but the story is about Muslims? When I started creating stories like this, Islamic stories, they immediately went away. I think this is the first time that Muslims have seen this style and way of presenting stories to them.

I make sure it’s digestible – so that a fifth grader can read it, and someone with a problem. I’ll make sure to share. I think that by having this formula for every post, it took off very quickly. I started it my junior year of college, and by the time I was a senior, we had already gained 50,000 followers.

When I was older, we went to Covid. It was the first of Ramadan, Lockdown Eid. Everyone was on social media at that time. I took advantage of that time. We cannot pass our mosques. We cannot go to celebrate Ramadan or Eid, so I have to make sure that I build this tower and print, print, print, make sure that we still have this celebration or worship in the month of Ramadan.

This is where @Muslim really blew up. When I graduated in 2020, @Muslim had gained 250,000 followers. I was like, okay, there’s something big here, and I’m going to keep doing this.

Is there a balance between appealing to the younger generations and representing being Muslim?

It was a lot of trial and error, to be honest with you.

We had a lot of fun. We used to make Islamic memes, and discuss the latest news. It was a combination of all these things – whatever happened on Muslim Twitter or TikTok, we were on top of it. It was a refreshing, Gen Z look at our favorite topics. We talked about how Billie Eilish said in an interview that she wears her clothes with respect and is celebrated, but when a Muslim woman wears a hijab she is considered oppressed. We would have had this very sharp discussion. Then it turned around.