When Americans think of the manosphere, certain figures tend to dominate the imagination. Andrew Tate, the self-styled misogynist influencer arrested in Romania in 2022 for running what authorities described as a human-trafficking operation disguised as a men’s self-help empire, looms large. So does Elliot Rodger, the self-identified incel who murdered six people and injured fourteen others in Isla Vista in 2014 after expressing rage at women for rejecting him sexually and romantically. These figures have come to symbolize the most extreme expressions of male grievance politics online.

Yet since the pandemic, a lesser-examined offshoot of this ecosystem has emerged—one that many analysts still struggle to discuss without falling back on crude or orientalist stereotypes. This is the rise of what can fairly be described as the Muslim manosphere.

What was once a subculture associated primarily with white Western men in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom has increasingly penetrated Muslim online spaces. Over roughly the past seven years—accelerating sharply during and after the COVID-19 pandemic—a constellation of so-called “Islamic” YouTube channels and TikTok accounts has taken shape. These platforms claim to promote family values, traditional masculinity, self-improvement, and physical fitness.

In practice, however, many of them merely recycle the ideological talking points of the alt-right, particularly those associated with incel and red-pill movements, and repackage them for Muslim and Arab audiences. A decade ago, this content largely existed on the darkest fringes of the Internet. Today, it circulates openly and widely, boosted by algorithms and normalized through slick production values and influencer culture. The surge in Andrew Tate’s global notoriety only accelerated this trend, with Tate and his brother Tristan appearing frequently as guests on podcasts and livestreams hosted by Muslim-branded platforms.

The irony is that the manosphere’s deeper origins lie not in reactionary extremism but in the men’s liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. That movement initially sought to interrogate rigid gender roles and examine how patriarchy also harms men by constraining emotional expression and social identity.

Yet as second-wave feminism gained ground in the 1960s and 1970s—culminating symbolically in the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade—a backlash took shape. The men’s rights movement emerged less as a critique of patriarchy than as a reaction to feminism itself. By the 1990s and early 2000s, the modern manosphere had begun to coalesce, though it remained largely confined to the social margins. Its preoccupations centered on fathers’ rights, divorce courts, resentment toward white Western women, and the fetishization of women from Latin America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia as supposedly more submissive and marriage-oriented alternatives.

 

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The 2008 global financial crisis marked a turning point. Millions of men lost jobs, savings, homes, and any sense of economic security, even as cultural expectations continued to frame them as providers and protectors. This contradiction only deepened as women entered the workforce in greater numbers and surpassed men in college enrollment and degree attainment.

Although the economy recovered unevenly during the presidency of Barack Obama, much of the resulting wealth flowed upward. By 2016, the top 1% owned more wealth than the bottom 50% combined.

For men who had long benefited from white and male privilege within Western societies, the collapse of economic stability proved deeply disorienting. Privilege could not shield them from foreclosure, underemployment, or precarity, while billionaires accumulated unprecedented gains.

Into this vacuum stepped the manosphere. By the early 2010s, websites and forums openly promoted the idea that foreign women—particularly from Southeast Asia—offered an escape from what they described as feminized, morally degraded Western societies.

Warning signs mounted. By 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center had begun issuing alerts about the potential for radicalization in manosphere spaces. Subsequent acts of violence—the 2014 Isla Vista attack, the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting, the 2018 Toronto van attack, and the 2021 Plymouth shooting—forced broader public attention.

These events, combined with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe, helped propel Andrew Tate into global prominence. At the same time, the pandemic widened income inequality to levels approaching those seen in pre-revolutionary France, while advances in artificial intelligence displaced workers across multiple sectors. Governments, particularly in the United States, refused to consider a universal basic income. Tate and others exploited this despair, helping radicalize or destabilize an entire generation of young men already adrift.

Within Muslim communities, these dynamics collided with the long shadow of the War on Terror. For twenty-five years, Western media and political discourse portrayed Muslims as inherently backward, misogynistic, authoritarian, homophobic, transphobic, and antisemitic. Some Muslims internalized these caricatures.

Others concluded that alignment with the America First movement during the late 2010s and early 2020s might offer strategic common ground—especially in shared opposition to feminism and LGBTQ rights—with the hope that ideological alliances might eventually facilitate conversion to Islam.

As a Muslim revert who studied the faith for nearly a decade before formally converting in 2021, I view this assumption as profoundly naïve. The alt-right has never been a genuine ally to Muslims, and Islam itself is not monolithic. Muslims span ideological, theological, and cultural spectra: conservative and liberal, feminist and misogynist, straight and LGBTQ, observant and secular, politically radical and politically disengaged.

Yet the Muslim manosphere collapses this diversity into a single authoritarian fantasy.

A number of prominent online figures now populate this ecosystem, including Smile2Jannah, Mateen Mohammed, The Fresh and Fit Podcast, Daniel Haqiqatjou, Ali Dawah, Mohammed Hijab, The Muslim Mum, the Dawah Bros, Sneako, and Andrew Tate himself.

These personalities prey on vulnerable young men, offering simplistic explanations for complex social failures. Feminism and LGBTQ rights, they argue, are to blame for men being single, unemployed, broke, and isolated—living in their parents’ basements while numbing themselves with pornography and video games.

What makes this particularly corrosive is the instrumentalization of Islam itself. A religion already stigmatized in global discourse is repurposed as a theological cover for misogyny. Muslim women—especially those from Southwest Asian and North African backgrounds—are depicted as the final reservoir of traditional femininity and obedience.

Reality is far messier. Muslim women are extraordinarily diverse in belief and practice, and no two think alike. The overwhelming majority have condemned Andrew Tate and the Muslim manosphere outright. A minority, including figures such as The Muslim Mum, initially echoed Tate’s rhetoric before distancing themselves—particularly after his alignment with far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson following the 2024 Southport attack.

These tensions are visible in ventures like NikkahGram, a Muslim matrimony platform that markets itself as Quran- and sunnah-compliant while embedding deeply misogynistic norms, including free membership for virgins under thirty-five and converts.

Accountability is long overdue. These influencers exploit young Muslim men who already navigate systemic Islamophobia, economic insecurity, and social alienation. They weaponize the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad to legitimize resentment and grievance.

Technology companies—including OpenAI, Meta, X, Bluesky, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and TikTok—must also answer for business models that allow such content to flourish unchecked, radicalizing millions of users across religious and cultural lines.

Whether meaningful reform is possible in the current political climate remains uncertain. Still, there are reasons for cautious optimism. In 2025, forty-two Muslim Americans who openly rejected these ideologies ran for office and won. If sustained, that momentum may yet reshape the political landscape ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.