Muslim women in Latin America becoming online influencers

In a region where Christianity is still seen as the norm, Islamic influencers face great challenges to succeed in the digital sphere. (File/Twitter)
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In a region where Christianity is still seen as the norm, Islamic influencers face great challenges to succeed in the digital sphere. (File/Twitter)
Muslim women in Latin America becoming online influencers
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Amira Ubaida Sanchez. (Supplied)
Nallely Khan. (Supplied)
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Nallely Khan. (Supplied)
Nallely Khan. (Supplied)
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Nallely Khan. (Supplied)
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Updated 13 April 2022

Muslim women in Latin America becoming online influencers

Muslim women in Latin America becoming online influencers
  • ‘I am combating religious intolerance with my work,’ Mariam Chami tells Arab News
  • ‘Most viewers look for such videos with curiosity and the wish to learn,’ expert tells Arab News

SAO PAULO: With millions of views, videos in which Latin American Muslim women talk about their faith and show their personal lives have become more and more common on social media over the past few years.

In a region where Christianity is still seen as the norm, Islamic influencers face great challenges to succeed in the digital sphere. 

Some of them are managing to do it, with creativity, charisma and humor. One such influencer is Mariam Chami, a 31-year-old nutritionist from the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. 

The daughter of a Lebanese father and a Brazilian mother who converted to Islam, Chami was educated in a Muslim school and only felt the weight of wearing a hijab in a Catholic-majority country in adulthood.

“In the beginning, I made videos for Muslim girls who didn’t have much knowledge about religion,” she told Arab News.

“But then I started to produce content with the goal of explaining Islam and reducing the prejudices that Brazilians have against Muslims.”

On TikTok, where she is followed by 1.1 million people, Chami discusses controversial topics for a very liberal country like Brazil such as burkinis — the clip where she wore one had more than 900,000 views — or why her sister-in-law, who is also Muslim, does not wear a hijab. Chami does all that with humor.

“I’ve been supported by my community and by religious leaders,” she said. “Given that I reach many people, I am — along with other Muslim influencers — combating religious intolerance with my work, and making more people admire our religion.”

One of Chami’s concerns is to show that Muslim women are not the oppressed victims of men, something that comes to mind among many Latin Americans when they see a woman wearing a hijab. Feminist movements in Brazil still cultivate that kind of prejudice, she said.

“I believe feminism is selective: It struggles for a woman’s right to be whatever she wants, but if she decides to be Muslim and wears her (Islamic) garments, she’s put aside and oppressed by those (feminist) women,” she added.

Colombian lawyer and digital influencer Amira Ubaida Sanchez also tries in her videos to deal with the most common misconceptions about Muslim women in her country.

“Me and my sister studied law together. Seeing us with a hijab, people in the university would frequently ask us, with an expression of surprise, if we as Muslim women are allowed to study,” she told Arab News.

In her work as an attorney, the 24-year-old usually represents Christian Colombian women who have been abandoned by their partners with their children and no money.

The daughter of a Colombian man who converted to Islam 40 years ago and became a Muslim leader in Bogota, she received a religious education that she now uses to convey complex messages in two-minute clips. 

On TikTok, her account @conelvelo — “with the headscarf” in Spanish — has 43,600 followers. 

Her father, Imam Carlos Sanchez, said: “I’ve never told any of my daughters to do this or that. Amira decided for herself to talk about Islam, which she does with great competence. I couldn’t be prouder.”

Making Islam known in Latin America is not an easy task, he added. Until the end of the 20th century, Catholicism was the official religion in countries such as Colombia. 

Cultural differences also complicate Latin Americans’ understanding of Islamic concepts.

That is why Amira always uses straightforward language and includes funny elements in her videos.

“Many people want to disseminate Islam in Latin America, but they talk about ‘sunnah’ and ‘hadith,’ and nobody knows what those words mean here,” she said.

Nallely Khan, a 30-year-old Mexican who lives with her Muslim husband in India, said it is not easy to deal with Islamic issues on the internet for a Latin American audience.

“My goal isn’t so much to discuss Islam, but to show the way of living that we have, our daily life. At times I have to explain religious matters, and Latin Americans may disagree,” she told Arab News. “Some people don’t like Islam.”

Khan was born in a Catholic family but converted to Islam as a teenager. She said it was difficult to find materials about it in Mexico, but “now we have many organizations working on the dissemination of Islam in the country.”

Her YouTube channel Nana India Vlogs has 147,000 subscribers. She mainly portrays her life in India with her family, with a focus on the cultural differences with Mexico. But the Islamic dimension can be seen in many of her videos. 

Her biggest hit until now has been the series “India and my love story,” in which she describes how she converted to Islam, how she met her husband, and how she discovered that he had a first wife only after their marriage (the woman ended up divorcing him). The three videos have had more than 2.5 million views. 

“I don’t consider myself to be an influencer because I know I’m not a perfect person. I always try to become a better Muslim,” she said.

“I just hope to keep showing my life, my family, and the fact that Muslims lead normal lives.”

According to Arely Medina, a professor of social sciences specializing in Islam in Latin America at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico, the emergence of Muslim women as digital influencers in the region is part of a “strategy of presence in the public space.”

She told Arab News: “Over time, women developed different ways of making themselves visible on the street. This way, people would know them and see that they aren’t repressed women only because of their religion.” The same dynamic is happening now online.

“Of course the audience can stigmatize them, but I think most viewers look for such videos with curiosity and the wish to learn,” she added.

Medina said the internet has been a fundamental tool for young people interested in Islam in Mexico and other Latin American countries that until recently did not have large Muslim communities. 

“Twenty years ago, many young people who wished to learn about Islam were only able to do so by chatting with Muslims from other countries and searching for online content about it,” she added.

Some would even convert to Islam this way, with the help of Muslims by phone or online chats — a process Medina calls “autonomous conversion.”

Now, she said, “women who discovered Islam with the help of the internet are using it to talk about Islam to large audiences.”


2018 Musk tweet unlawfully threatened workers’ union organizing efforts, court rules

2018 Musk tweet unlawfully threatened workers’ union organizing efforts, court rules
Updated 01 April 2023

2018 Musk tweet unlawfully threatened workers’ union organizing efforts, court rules

2018 Musk tweet unlawfully threatened workers’ union organizing efforts, court rules
  • Also upheld was the board’s order that Tesla reinstate and provide back pay to an employee who was fired for union-organizing activity

NEW ORLEANS: A 2018 Twitter post by Tesla CEO Elon Musk unlawfully threatened Tesla employees with the loss of stock options if they decided to be represented by a union, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a March 2021 order by the National Labor Relations Board, which ordered that the tweet be deleted. The case arose from United Auto Workers’ organizing efforts at a Tesla facility in Fremont, California.
Also upheld was the board’s order that Tesla reinstate and provide back pay to an employee who was fired for union-organizing activity.
Musk tweeted on May 20, 2018: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets health care.”
The ruling said that “because stock options are part of Tesla’s employees’ compensation, and nothing in the tweet suggested that Tesla would be forced to end stock options or that the UAW would be the cause of giving up stock options, substantial evidence supports the NLRB’s conclusion that the tweet is as an implied threat to end stock options as retaliation for unionization.”
The UAW, and Richard Ortiz, the worker whose reinstatement was ordered, praised the ruling. “I look forward to returning to work at Tesla and working with my co-workers to finish the job of forming a Union,” Ortiz said in a UAW email.
“This a great victory for workers who have the courage to stand up and organize in a system that is currently stacked heavily in favor of employers like Tesla who have no qualms about violating the law,” said UAW Region 6 Director Mike Miller.
Tesla had not responded to emailed requests for comment Friday afternoon.


‘Only journalism can save journalism,’ FII Priority panel told

Faisal Abbas, editor-in-chief of Arab News, talks to Justin Smith, co-founder and CEO of global news platform Semafor at the FII
Faisal Abbas, editor-in-chief of Arab News, talks to Justin Smith, co-founder and CEO of global news platform Semafor at the FII
Updated 01 April 2023

‘Only journalism can save journalism,’ FII Priority panel told

Faisal Abbas, editor-in-chief of Arab News, talks to Justin Smith, co-founder and CEO of global news platform Semafor at the FII
  • News subscriptions grew by nearly 58 percent between 2019 and 2020
  • Social media platforms have grown up and are now being held responsible by governments and regulators, panel discusses

MIAMI: Trust in news has fallen in almost half of 46 countries surveyed by the Reuters Institute. Other studies show that only 8 percent of people in the US trust what they read, see and hear.

These numbers do not surprise Faisal Abbas, the editor-in-chief of Arab News. Speaking at the FII Priority conference, he said: “We’re living in an era where we are bombarded by information left, right and center so for people to distrust the information that they are receiving is not unusual.”

Abbas said there was a silver lining in this situation, which is the increase in subscriptions.

“People, for the first time since the expansion of the internet, are willing to actually pay money for professional, quality journalism.”

There was a median increase of nearly 58 percent in active subscribers between 2019 and 2020, according to data from analytics firm Piano.

Given anyone now has the “ability to disseminate and receive information unfiltered instantly,” professional quality journalism is more important than ever.

Faisal Abbas, editor-in-chief of Arab News, and Justin Smith, co-founder and CEO of global news platform Semafor discuss falling trust in news media

Justin Smith, former CEO of Bloomberg Media and current CEO and co-founder of global news platform, Semafor, who moderated the panel, said that Semafor believes the best way of “attacking trust is to rethink the actual format”.

Semafor’s articles are therefore broken down into sections featuring the news, analysis, different perspectives on the topic, and other articles on the topic.

In the Middle East, unlike America, there isn’t a first amendment that protects the free speech of the press and people. However, and particularly in Saudi Arabia, “we’re living in a positive climate of reforms,” said Abbas.

While he acknowledged “we’re not there yet,” he added that since “the whole vision is focused on setting targets, KPIs, and transparency for government officials and bodies, it is unthinkable that we will not get there in the end.”

Arab News itself has seen 500 percent growth in traffic and audience and a large rise in newsletter subscriptions, so “we must be doing something right,” he added.

Moreover, when it comes to quality journalism, Saudi media continues to dominate the media scene, Abbas said.

This is, in part at least, due to the diligence and responsibility of media outlets to maintain editorial integrity, which “can’t be promised or pledged, it has to be proven with every story.

“Reputation arrives on foot and leaves on horseback, so it only takes one mistake. It’s not a responsibility we take lightly and neither does our management.”

Abbas pressed on how social media is impacting the truth and discussed the recent pressure social media companies are facing from governments and regulators.

He likened social media platforms to someone entering their teenage years — “whatever they did before was cute,” or “they were too young to know what they’re doing,” Abbas said.

But now, regulation is catching up and platforms are being held accountable, and treated as publishers who are liable for the content on their sites, he added.

Beyond news dissemination, Abbas drew attention to the problem of commercialization.

“We’re a victim of a situation whereby you are penalized to do professional journalism, and rewarded if you do lazy fake news.”

News media organizations incur multiple costs from commissioning a story, to legal reviews, to copyediting. They then end up sharing revenue with social platforms or Google, which is unfair, Abbas said.

Often, fake news stories go viral on social media platforms garnering millions of clicks, “and that is just a classic model of how easy it is and how social media will reward you if you are publishing fake news.”

It is important to remember that “big tech companies weren’t founded by journalists or publishers; they were founded by engineers who didn’t quite understand the impact that fake news has,” Abbas said.

Ultimately, he concluded, “it’s up to us, only journalism can save journalism.”


Nobel-winning Russian editor: “I know Gershkovich, he’s no spy“

Nobel-winning Russian editor: “I know Gershkovich, he’s no spy“
Updated 31 March 2023

Nobel-winning Russian editor: “I know Gershkovich, he’s no spy“

Nobel-winning Russian editor: “I know Gershkovich, he’s no spy“
  • Dmitry Muratov told Reuters the case against Gershkovich was part of a wider trend to make journalism a "dangerous profession" in Russia
  • More than 260 publications have been closed, blocked or de-registered since then, he said

MOSCOW: A Nobel prize-winning Russian journalist said on Friday he did not believe that arrested American reporter Evan Gershkovich was a spy, and that he hoped diplomacy could bring about his quick release.
Dmitry Muratov told Reuters the case against Gershkovich — a Wall Street Journal reporter facing espionage charges that carry up to 20 years in jail — was part of a wider trend to make journalism a “dangerous profession” in Russia.
“I know Gershkovich. I’ve met him two or three times over the last year. I know the practice exists of using journalists as spies, intelligence officers and ‘illegals’ (undeclared spies) — this is not that kind of case,” Muratov said.
“He was no kind of so-called deep-cover operative — using being a journalist and his journalist’s accreditation as a cover for espionage ... Gershkovich was not a spy,” said Muratov, a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for his efforts to defend press freedom in Russia.
He was speaking outside a closed court hearing in Moscow on Friday in the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opposition politician facing charges including state treason and spreading false information about the armed forces.
Muratov also cited the case of Ivan Safronov, a former journalist sentenced to 22 years in jail for treason last year.
“At every turn, we’re being charged with espionage and treason. It’s a trend — to show that journalism is a dangerous profession ... both for Russian and other journalists.”
Muratov was editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which has seen several of its reporters killed in the last two decades, and had its registration revoked last year after Russia went to war in Ukraine. More than 260 publications have been closed, blocked or de-registered since then, he said.
“I don’t really understand how, given that trend and the lack of media competition, you can hold the elections that President Vladimir Putin announced for 2024,” he said.
“Does it mean they’ll go ahead without difficult topics, discussions, candidate programs? I’m starting not to understand how that can work.”
Muratov said he was aware of the “popular theory” that Gershkovich had been seized as a bargaining chip for Moscow to use in a prisoner exchange with the United States, though he did not say if he believed that himself.
He said he very much hoped that “through back-channel diplomacy,” Gershkovich would soon be freed.


Meta rolls out long-sought tools to separate ads from harmful content

Meta rolls out long-sought tools to separate ads from harmful content
Updated 31 March 2023

Meta rolls out long-sought tools to separate ads from harmful content

Meta rolls out long-sought tools to separate ads from harmful content
  • System offers advertisers three risk levels they can select for their ad placements

LONDON: Meta Platforms Inc. said on Thursday it is now rolling out a long-promised system for advertisers to determine where their ads are shown, responding to their demands to distance their marketing from controversial posts on Facebook and Instagram.
The system offers advertisers three risk levels they can select for their ad placements, with the most conservative option excluding placements above or below posts with sensitive content like weapons depictions, sexual innuendo and political debates.
Meta also will provide a report via advertising measurement firm Zefr showing Facebook advertisers the precise content that appeared near their ads and how it was categorized.
Marketers have long advocated for greater control over where their ads appear online, complaining that big social media companies do too little to prevent ads from showing alongside hate speech, fake news and other offensive content.
The issue came to a head in July 2020, when thousands of brands joined a boycott of Facebook amid anti-racism protests in the United States.
Under a deal brokered several months later, the company, now called Meta, agreed to develop tools to “better manage advertising adjacency,” among other concessions.
Samantha Stetson, Meta’s vice president for Client Council and Industry Trade Relations, said she expected Meta to introduce more granular controls over time so advertisers could specify their preferences around different social issues.
Stetson also said early tests showed no significant change in performance or price for ads placed using more restrictive settings, adding that those involved in the tests were “pleasantly surprised.”
However, she cautioned that the pricing dynamic could change, given the auction-based nature of Meta’s ads system and the reduction in inventory associated with any restrictions.
The controls will be available initially in English- and Spanish-speaking markets, with plans to expand them to other regions — and to the company’s Reels, Stories and video ad formats — later this year.


Italy data protection agency opens ChatGPT probe on privacy concerns

Italy data protection agency opens ChatGPT probe on privacy concerns
Updated 31 March 2023

Italy data protection agency opens ChatGPT probe on privacy concerns

Italy data protection agency opens ChatGPT probe on privacy concerns
  • ChatGPT is accused of failing to verify user age

MILAN: Italy's data protection agency said on Friday it had opened a probe into OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot over a suspected breach of data collection rules.
The agency also accused ChatGPT of failing to check the age of its users, which should be reserved to people aged 13 and above.
It said it had provisionally restricted chatbot's use of Italian users' personal data.