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5 Muslim Influencers Worth Following in 2026
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
"Influencer" is an awkward word to attach to any of the people below, which is why we put it in quotation marks the first time we published this list.
The job description, as the platform understands it, is to make yourself the product. The people worth following do close to the opposite — they point away from themselves. That tension is real, and it's worth naming before recommending anyone at all.
But the mechanism is neutral. Somebody's voice is going to fill the gaps in your day. Better it belongs to someone who reminds you of something true than to whatever the algorithm was going to serve you instead. And there's a second thing these accounts do that's easy to miss: they're often the only Muslim a non-Muslim colleague ever really encounters, which makes good character in public a form of da'wah whether or not anyone intended it that way.
These five are worth that space. All were checked and active in August 2026.
1. Imam Omar Suleiman — the bridge-builder
@imamomarsuleiman · 3M followers
Imam Omar Suleiman is the founder of the Yaqeen Institute and, more to the point here, one of the few Muslim public figures equally at home in a khutbah and on a picket line.
His work sits at the meeting point of scholarship and justice — civil rights, interfaith work, refugee advocacy — and he does it without the sharpness that usually creeps into that territory. He is, by most accounts, relentlessly warm both in person and online, which is not a small thing given how much of his work involves people arguing with him.
If you follow one account from this list for character rather than content, make it this one.
Follow if: you want to see what engaging with the wider world looks like without hardening.
2. Hamza Andreas Tzortzis — for the arguments
@hatzortzis · 97K followers
Hamza Tzortzis is a British-Greek convert who has spent close to two decades in public debate with atheists and philosophers, and who founded the Sapience Institute to train other people to do the same. His book The Divine Reality is the one most people know him for.
His feed is where you go when the question is intellectual rather than spiritual — the problem of evil, the moral argument, why the Quran claims what it claims. He works in arguments rather than reassurance, which is exactly right for a certain kind of doubt and no use at all for others.
Two things make him more interesting than the debate-clip genre suggests. He talks openly about his own periods of uncertainty rather than presenting faith as a settled matter. And he runs a mentoring organisation and trains in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is a reminder that a life of the mind is meant to sit inside an actual life.
Follow if: you have questions you can't answer, or you're the person others bring theirs to.
3. Mikaeel Ahmed Smith — the heart and the head
@mikaeelahmedsmith · 268K followers
Shaykh Mikaeel Ahmed Smith grew up in a devout Christian home in Buffalo and took his shahadah at eighteen after reading the Quran alongside the autobiography of Malcolm X. He memorised the Quran, studied Arabic in Damascus, took a degree in Islamic studies in Ontario — and, unusually, a degree in psychology as well.
That second qualification is why he's here. His book With the Heart in Mind reads the Prophet's ﷺ life through the lens of emotional intelligence, and his teaching consistently lands where most Islamic content doesn't: on why people behave the way they do, and what the sunnah actually prescribes for anger, envy, grief and the rest of it.
He now teaches tafsir, seerah and hadith at the Qalam Institute. What comes through the feed is a teacher who takes both the tradition and the human being in front of him seriously.
Follow if: you want the inner life addressed by someone with training in both directions.
4. Ahmad Bostani — the one who doesn't fit
@abostani · 538K followers
Ahmad Bostani's own bio reads: racecar driver, author, educator, artist. Canada-based. The tagline underneath is "polishing your views on Islam."
That combination is the entire point. Between the cars and the travel — Türkiye, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan — he'll take on marriage, gender, doubt, and the questions people are usually too self-conscious to ask in a masjid. He wrote The Seeker's Etiquette, and he runs fundraising campaigns with Islamic Relief USA.
The reason he's on this list rather than a bigger name is reach of a different kind. A lecture clip finds people already looking for a lecture. A racing video that turns into a straight answer about the deen finds the ones who weren't.
Follow if: you want Islam discussed by someone who doesn't look like an Islamic account.
5. Andrea — the ordinary week
@andreainegypt · 11K followers
The smallest account on this list by a factor of a hundred, and the one most likely to change what you actually do this week.
Andrea moved her family to Egypt and posts what came after: homeschooling, learning Arabic, building a household from scratch in a country she wasn't raised in. Her bio describes it as helping other mothers do the same, "simply" — and the simply is doing a lot of work there. The content is DIY, practical, and noticeably unpolished in the way that things people are genuinely doing tend to be.
There is a whole genre of hijrah content that functions as an advert. This isn't that. It's someone in the middle of the thing, showing the parts that don't photograph well, which makes it far more useful to anyone weighing up something similar — or just trying to run a Muslim household with more intention than they managed last month.
Follow if: you want practical rather than aspirational, especially if you're homeschooling or raising kids away from a Muslim majority.
At a glance
Who | What they're good for | Followers |
Character, justice, community | 3M | |
Doubt, philosophy, answering hard questions | 97K | |
Emotional intelligence, prophetic character | 268K | |
Everyday questions, travel, reaching the unreached | 538K | |
Family life, homeschooling, hijrah in practice | 11K |
One more thing — about that word
When we first published this list in 2023, it included Aisha Rosalie, a British revert who found Islam after a trip to Turkey and built a large following telling that story.
In March 2026 she stepped away from social media. The account is still there, renamed, running a community project for Muslim women that she supports from the background rather than the front. Her own grid is nearly empty.
We could have quietly swapped her out. It seems more useful to say it, because it's the best argument in this article for the point we opened with.
The platform's logic is that reach is the goal and more of it is always better. Someone with a hundred and seventy thousand followers looked at that and decided the trade wasn't worth it. Whatever her reasons — and they're hers — it's a reminder that the follow button is not actually a measure of anything. Which is worth holding in mind when you notice that the account on this list most likely to change your week has eleven thousand followers, and the one you've already heard of has three million.
Follow good people. Take what benefits you. And keep an eye on the ratio between how much of the deen you're consuming on a screen and how much of it you're actually doing.
More like this: 5 Islamic Instagram Accounts Actually Worth Following · 5 Best Islamic Apps to Use Every Day · All resources
Frequently asked questions
Who are the best Muslim influencers to follow? It depends what you're after. For character and community work, Imam Omar Suleiman. For intellectual questions and doubt, Hamza Andreas Tzortzis. For the inner life and prophetic character, Mikaeel Ahmed Smith. For everyday questions asked plainly, Ahmad Bostani. For family life, homeschooling and hijrah in practice, Andrea.
Is it permissible to follow influencers as a Muslim? There is nothing wrong with the medium itself. What matters is what you're exposed to and what it does to you — whether it increases you in good, and whether it's displacing worship, study or your responsibilities rather than fitting around them.
Are Muslim influencers a good source of Islamic knowledge? They're a good source of reminders. For actual knowledge, go to qualified teachers, published books and structured study. Some of the people on this list are qualified scholars, but a short post is a doorway, not the room.
How can I make my social media more beneficial? Follow accounts that remind you of Allah, unfollow what pulls the other way, and engage with the good so the algorithm brings more of it. Then set a limit on the whole thing, because a better feed is still a feed.
Are these accounts still active? All five were checked in August 2026. This list is reviewed periodically — accounts change hands, go quiet, or step away, so if a link here has gone stale, let us know.
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