Actor and producer Anwar Hadid, younger brother of supermodels Bella and Gigi, posted photos on Instagram recently of him performing Umrah, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It’s one of the most sacred acts for a Muslim, and it holds particular significance during the holy month of Ramzan (or Ramadan, depending on where you’re from). Hadid’s series of pictures included Sudanese-Canadian artist and musician Mustafa Ahmed, who goes by Mustafa, and content creator Sharky, among other young, Muslim cultural tastemakers.
Seeing Islam being woven into popular culture so beautifully and the swell of solidarity offsetting this climate of Islamophobia is encouraging, to say the least.
The post now has close to a quarter million likes — something unusual for Hadid who, although he has 7.1 million followers, tends to garner likes that hover in the thousands or so. The comments section is flooded with messages (and emoji) of support.
When I first saw the image, it was arresting. Seeing a pop cultural figure so explicitly celebrate their Muslim faith, reclaiming it as their own in the process, always feels surprising and unfamiliar, in a beautiful way — all the more so as we navigate a time that feels “reminiscent of post 9/11 Islamophobia,” as NBC News put it.
The overwhelmingly positive response to Hadid’s post reflects a larger and palpable shift in pop culture around Islam in the U.S. and the Global North, particularly among younger demographics. The reasons are multifarious: a shifting zeitgeist that has more tolerance, appetite or curiosity for minority experiences, including those of Muslims; or, more recently, the swell of pro-Palestinian support that has engendered solidarity for Muslims, particularly among a younger subset of the population here in the U.S. and across the world. But a large part of this shift can also be attributed to how younger Muslims, especially those in the spotlight, are reclaiming the religion on their own terms.
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