Inside the Muslim Manosphere Policing Women Online

Mariam recently disabled Facebook Messenger. As the administrator of a Facebook group for women in the United Arab Emirates with close to 400,000 members, she’d become accustomed to receiving messages from strangers. But then came a shift in the volume—and nature—of those messages until they were impossible to ignore.

“Being the admin of this group has subjected me to all kinds of harassment,” says Miriam, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears online retaliation. They “either want to advise you to be holy and cover up, or they want to sexually harass you—or both.”

Mariam has run the group for more than a year. And even though intended for women, the group’s size and visibility has meant that Miriam also gets a lot of messages from men. She has received a deluge of unsolicited messages telling her how to dress, not to raise her voice or wear makeup, and to cover her hands with gloves so that no skin is visible.

“I couldn’t take it any longer. It was starting to affect my mental well-being,” Miriam says.

Many women who are conspicuous on the internet have been harassed online. That comes in countless forms, even if the same misogyny underlies it. The particular variety Miriam was subjected to stems from a section of the “manosphere” dressed in the clothes of religion—the Muslim manosphere.

At its core, the manosphere is built around male grievance and antifeminist ideology—though whether that’s entirely organic or engineered to sell supplements and other products is up for debate. Regardless, it has no shortage of subcultures to chose from: Incels, pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, and followers of the Red Pill.

Some nuances may make these groups distinct, but they largely share a common worldview: Feminism has destabilized society, women have acquired too much power, and men must reassert control. And the Muslim manosphere is no different. It’s adopted those ideas circulating through the wider manosphere and rebranded them in the language of faith.

Sarah Kaddoura, a feminist researcher and creator of the YouTube channel Haki Nasawi, examined the Arabic-speaking manosphere in a 2025 report. In her study, she describes some of the most prominent influencers, such as Jordanian relationship coach Kareem Atta’i, who posts online as Coach Kareem or Red Pill Arabic.

Atta’i packages his ideas as relationship advice, but his videos frequently frame interactions between men and women as contests for power. Atta’i’s videos, which WIRED Middle East has watched, describe violence as a means of “disciplining” women or retaliating against sexual rejection.

The Arabic manosphere does more than translate Western Red Pill content. Its creators have adapted the ideology to local anxieties around religion, masculinity, marriage, money, and social change.

Kaddoura says influencers use financial insecurity, political instability, religious identity, and fears about declining morality or social cohesion to build their audiences. Misogyny becomes an explanation for a much wider sense of frustration—and women become its most visible target.

The problem is not religious expression online but the use of religious authority—real or claimed—to legitimize misogyny, harassment, and the public surveillance of women. The Muslim manosphere is also not confined to the Arab world. Like the broader manosphere, it crosses borders, languages, and platforms.

Take prominent UK-based creator Ali Dawah, whose channel features street debates and commentary about relationships, gender roles, religion, and Western culture. In one clip, Dawah says he hates Muslim feminists “the most.” In another video, he approaches women in public and challenges them over clothing he describes as immodest.

“Dawah” is not just this YouTuber’s name. In Arabic, it means to make an invitation to someone to learn about Islam. Ali is just one of many influencers often called “Dawah Bros,” and they’re generally known for being more aggressive than offering an invitation when it comes to promoting their manosphere-esque content.

Kaddoura sees the Dawah Bros as a platform-native successor to an older variety of media figure. During the 1990s, Islamic television programs in Egypt and Saudi Arabia regularly featured sheikhs answering callers’ questions about relationships, clothing, and acceptable behavior. However, unlike television preachers, today’s influencers are not limited to scheduled broadcasts, and they aren’t only interacting with people who’ve chosen to call in.

For many Muslim women—especially those who are in prominent places on the internet—these ideas do not remain confined to podcasts or debate videos. They spill into comment sections and private messages, where strangers appoint themselves enforcers of morality.

A 2026 report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed nearly 14,000 comments directed at 40 prominent public figures and influencers on Instagram in Jordan over a 12-month period. Among comments classified as hate speech, harassment, or abusive language, 72 percent targeted women, 11 percent were classified as religious or moral harassment, and the vast majority of those comments—85 percent—targeted female influencers.

Additionally, all of the comments classified as sexual harassment were directed at women, underlining the pervasive contradictions in how women are policed on the internet—the same online environment that instructing women to make themselves invisible also subjecting them to unwanted sexual attention. That contradiction is visible in the messages Mariam has received.

The manosphere’s reach is shaped in part by the recommendation systems that determine what users encounter in their feeds. “As soon as you create an account on TikTok, YouTube, X, Instagram, and others as a male, it doesn’t take long for the algorithm to start recommending misogynistic content,” Kaddoura says.

Engagement-based systems can amplify emotionally charged and polarizing content, including manosphere videos. Content blaming women for men’s loneliness or financial insecurity can generate reactions from supporters, critics, and the women being targeted. Those interactions may increase its visibility.

That becomes even thornier when religion enters the picture. The relationship coaches and other men preaching religion online often present personal opinions as religious instruction, Kaddoura says. This can make disagreement appear immoral, and criticism can then be presented as evidence that the creator is defending the faith against hostile forces.

But how exactly a user’s behavior tips over from passively encountering the content to actively engaging with it remains an open question. Researchers can examine publicly available videos and identify influential accounts, but they have limited access to the internal data needed to trace how users move between creators and communities. This leave key questions unanswered, such as whether prolonged exposure changes their behavior.

For women such as Mariam, the technical route behind the harassment may be invisible, but its effects are not. A creator publishes a video. Recommendation systems carry it into other users’ feeds. And then, eventually, users repeat its message in women’s comment sections and inboxes. Repeat ad infinitum.

WIRED Middle East contacted Ali Dawah and Kareem Atta’i for comment. Neither responded by the time of publication.

This story originally appeared in WIRED Middle East.