Meet the Accidental Editor in Chief of Muslim Media

At 1 am during Ramadan, Palestinian journalist Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh sits shoulder to shoulder in a packed Yemeni coffee shop in New York, the kind of place that comes alive after evening prayer. Everyone is loud, heavily caffeinated, and happy to be out. His phone buzzes. Breaking news: Israel strikes Tehran.

He looks up at his friends, then builds a post and hits Publish. “Did you just post?” they ask. He makes his apologies and goes home to watch the news.

This is more or less how Al-Khatahtbeh, 27, has spent the last seven years. He runs @Muslim, with more than 12 million followers across platforms—6.7 million on Instagram alone. He has interviewed Zohran Mamdani, Riz Ahmed, Mo Amer, and Motaz Azaiza.

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

When he wrote about how the ban was impacting students on campus, he couldn’t find the right outlet to reach and warn other Muslims that their universities might not be able to protect them. That’s when he decided to create a space for Muslim media.

That comes with 13 hours of screen time. He says he finds it embarrassing, but the admission is tinged with pride. “I have to stay in the know. I’m getting the news the same way as everybody else.”

But everybody else isn’t the de facto editor in chief of Muslim media.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CARLA SERTIN: At what point did you realize this could be something a lot bigger?

AMEER AL-KHATAHTBEH: When I first launched @Muslim, February 15, 2019, I was already working in social media. I saw every single transitional moment of social media. I was just chronically online.

It occurred to me: What if I were to cover news the same way I’m making a post for Vice News, that style, but the story is Muslim-centered? When I started creating news in this way, Muslim news, it immediately took off. I think it was the first time that the Muslim community was seeing this style and way of news being delivered to them.

I make sure it’s digestible—so a fifth grader can read it, but also someone who’s a boomer. I make sure it’s shareable. I think by having this formula for every single post, it took off really fast. I launched it junior year of college, and by the time I was a senior, we had already amassed 50,000 followers.

When I was a senior, we went into Covid. It was the first lockdown Ramadan, lockdown Eid. Everybody was just on social media during that time. I really took advantage of that moment. We can’t go through our mosques. We can’t go out and celebrate Ramadan or Eid, so I have to make sure I am building this platform and publishing, publishing, publishing, to make sure that we still have this form of celebration or worship during the month of Ramadan.

That was when @Muslim really blew up. When I graduated in 2020, @Muslim had amassed 250,000 followers. I was like, OK, there’s something bigger here, and I’m going to keep doing this.

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

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

We were doing a lot of fun content. We were doing Muslim memes, and then also having conversations about the latest news. It was a mix of all this stuff—whatever was trending on Muslim Twitter or TikTok, we were on top of it. It was a very refreshing, Gen Z–centered look at topics we cared about. We did a whole conversation about how Billie Eilish said in an interview that she wears her clothes modestly and she’s being celebrated, but then when a Muslim woman wears a hijab, she’s considered oppressed. We would do these really sharp conversations. And then it pivoted.