London’s 'Young Imam' Is Changing How People See Islam — One Video at a Time
“I’d never done social media before,” Sabah Ahmedi told me as he carefully balanced his phone between a napkin dispenser and sugar shaker at a chai shop in South London’s Tooting district. “Never done TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,” he said.
“Whatever was out there, I’d never done it.”
These days, you would never guess it. With tens of thousands of followers and multiple viral videos to his credit, Ahmedi — known as “The Young Imam” — is a social media sensation.
His journey started in 2020 when, fresh out of the Ahmadiyya seminary in Surrey, he was assigned to the press office at Baitul Futuh in Morden, one of Europe’s largest mosques. Feeling called to be a faith leader out of a sense of justice, he said he was blessed to be in the role.
But he wasn’t very good at it, he says. “I couldn’t write a presser [press release] to save my life,” he said. His boss told him to figure things out, or he might have to find a new position. So, sitting with a friend at the same chai shop, he decided to start a social media account. The plan was to share the daily life of a faith leader in the UK.
“Here we are now, five years later,” he said as the camera on his phone captured us splitting a slice of banana bread and chatting about his adventures online. “The account has grown into so many things — a book deal, TV appearances, entertainment contracts.”
More than being Instagram famous, the account has also fostered opportunities for inter-religious understanding in a time of increasing polarization in British society. With a rise in anti-religious rhetoric and hate directed at Muslims like him, Ahmedi knows it’s essential to show a different side to the Sacred — and to do it in a way that is accessible and digestible for as many people as possible. Through 15-second clips and day-in-the-life reels, Ahmedi creates a vibe that is honest and compassionate, inviting viewers in a spiritually fragmented and relationally polarized society to adopt postures of love, openness, and curiosity.
A Complex Case for Pluralism
The United Kingdom represents a complex and evolving case for pluralism. Across the country, no one faith claims a majority. Instead, there are Christians of multiple kinds, a sizeable Muslim population of nearly 4 million, along with Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist communities and people of no faith at all.
Though the law establishes Christian churches as state traditions in England and Scotland, it also prohibits “incitement to religious hatred,” as well as discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. And people of faith from various backgrounds generally co-exist well together, said Ahmedi.
Even so, British society faces serious impediments to social cohesion. There has been a rise in xenophobic and anti-religious sentiment directed at people of multiple faiths across the country.
With nearly a quarter of people in the UK holding negative views about Muslims, the UK Home Office reports that they were the most likely target for increasing hate crimes linked to religion in recent years.
In its recent 2025 report, Tell Mama recorded a total of 6,313 cases of anti-Muslim hate in the previous year. Defined as “any malicious act aimed at Muslims, their material property or Islamic organisations,” they included a spate of racist riots in summer 2024, sparked by social media posts wrongly identifying a Muslim immigrant as the perpetrator of murders in the seaside town of Southport. And beyond attacks, Ahmedi said, is the widespread perception that otherwise ordinary Muslims are extremists or foreign invaders.
A Day in the Life
The combined result of all the rhetoric and hate, Ahmedi said, is the dehumanization of people of faith – especially Muslims – in public discourse, both on- and offline.
That’s why, instead of sharing sermons or focusing on the finer details of faith on social media, most of Ahmedi’s content is focused on daily life.
And Ahmedi posts almost every day — on everything from ritual ablution to vacuuming his living room to his favorite coffees. In one post, he’ll be prepping a tuna salad and heading for a haircut. In another, he’ll be en route to visit inmates at a local prison, working on the high-performance Tesla Model 3 he bought at auction, or showing a journalist around the Baitul Futuh mosque.
Much of his content has little to do with religion, per se. “Most of what I post is not about faith,” he said. “It’s like, five percent faith and ninety-five other normal stuff.”
To him, that’s the point. Ahmedi’s content is not just about diet and lifestyle; it’s about humanizing Muslims beyond the masjid and madrasah in the context of everyday life. It’s also about sacralizing the ordinary: making everyday tasks like vacuuming, caring for children, working on the car, or simply enjoying banana bread and chatting over chai with a mate, opportunities for embodying love, connection, and mutual acceptance for a mass audience.
To counteract the hate online, Ahmedi’s social media presence is about telling a different set of stories and letting everyday love and acceptance do the talking, not only about Islam, but what it means to live a life of faith in modern Britain. By focusing on popular “day-in-the-life” content in particular, Ahmedi is leveraging technology to make the Sacred more accessible to all through humanization, acceptance, and community-building.
At the same time, Ahmedi also tackles tough topics in British society, sharing insights and experiences from a faith perspective. He talks to young people about how to navigate the pressures of social media, toxic masculinity, and misogyny. He calls out injustices he sees being perpetrated against Muslims and other religious minorities at home and abroad. Ahmedi also regularly features in the national and regional media, being interviewed by the BBC, ITV, and Metro, and works with the United Nations to tackle violent extremism. For example, at the height of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim riots across the country in August 2024, he invited far-right agitators to visit his mosque and “see what life is like as a Muslim.”
Ahmedi’s honest, funny, self-deprecating style not only helps people understand more about Islam; it brings a sacred lens to problems shared by young Britons of all stripes – reclaiming digital space that can so often divide as sacred ground where people can connect.
For his work leveraging social media to spread love rather than incite hate, Ahmedi won a Community Person of the Year Award at the British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs, in March 2022.
Pressures and Persecution
But with increased visibility has come an array of pressures, both personal and professional.
While walking around Tooting, an area where one-fifth of the population is Pakistani and Muslim, Ahmedi is often recognized by passersby. As we look for a seat at a local kebab restaurant, he searches for a seat in the back so we won’t be disturbed. Deciding it would be safer to get a sandwich to go, we end up eating on rickety stools across from a fish stand tucked into the corner of a local market. Even there, someone stops to say they’re a fan of the Young Imam.
“It can be a bit of a pressure cooker,” Ahmedi said.
There is, he said, the usual vitriol directed at Muslims online — a range of cyber harassment and hate in the form of incendiary “banter,” racist jokes, and anti-religious threats. Ahmedi gets a range of hate mail from non-Muslims and Muslims alike, which he showed me on his phone.
In this, Ahmedi embodies the experiences of many Muslims in Britain who face hate both online and offline. Multiple studies have shown how Muslims not only face high prevalence and severity of online hate but, according to researchers Imran Awan and Irene Zempi, they also suffer from depression, anxiety, emotional stress, and fear “because of the possibility of online threats materialising in the ‘real world.’”
Ahmedi also receives negative feedback from fellow Muslims, accusing him of not acting “how an imam is supposed to act” or attacking him because he is a member of a persecuted Muslim minority.
Among Britain’s diverse Muslim communities, the Ahmadiyya are a minority within a minority. Founded as a messianic movement in the late 1800s, Ahmadiyya consider themselves a Muslim reform group with a mandate of revival and renewal, with a commitment to the peaceful propagation of faith.
But the estimated 12 million Ahmadiyya around the world, including over 30,000 in the UK, are rejected by many Muslims as heterodox. In Pakistan, it is illegal to call them Muslims and for them to use Islamic symbols. They are also often blocked from voting and subject to vicious attacks. Due to this state-sanctioned persecution, the Ahmadiyya relocated their global headquarters from Pakistan to South London in the 1980s.
Though the wider British public regards Muslims as relatively homogenous, researcher Rory Wade found anti-Ahmadiyya discrimination in the British Muslim community can be potent, often expressed through social and economic boycotting against Ahmadiyyas, as well as online hate speech. At times, that rhetoric has translated into violence, with Ahmadi shopkeeper Asad Shah’s murder in Glasgow in 2016 and leaflets calling for the killing of Ahmadis found in a south London mosque the same year. Especially in a place like Tooting, where many are antagonistic toward Ahmadiyya, Ahmedi tries to tread carefully.
Once, when out to dinner with his wife, he heard someone calling out “Oy! Young Imam!” from a distance. “Where I’m from in Manchester, that kind of address means you’re looking for a fight,” Ahmedi said. Getting ready to defend his wife and himself, Ahmedi relaxed once he realized it was only a fan who wanted to take a selfie.
His relationship with his wife, his connection with the local community, and his sense of calling as a faith leader have all come under question because of that pressure. Early on, as Ahmedi’s network and notoriety grew, his wife of nine years left him for a time, moving back to Manchester. His life, he said, wasn’t in balance. “I was too caught up in the content, not the life I am called to lead,” said Ahmedi.
Mending the relationship with his wife took time. It also took revisiting how his faith taught him to honor his family and the sense of justice and love that drove him to become an imam in the first place. “Islam teaches us that the family is the core of society,” said Ahmedi. “Treating family with kindness, respect, and commitment is a virtue.” Leaning into a saying of Muhammad — “the best of you is he who is best to his family” — Ahmedi recommitted to his wife and their two kids, dedicating more time to his faith and family than to social media. “It was the best decision I ever made,” he said.
The Strongest Sermon
The process, as painful as it was, helped remind Ahmedi that as he was trying to live a life of faith and love online, he lost sight of living that love in the context of everyday, flesh-and-blood relationships.
He shared his story and struggles in his hallmark relatable way, reminding followers that those relationships are far more important than any accolades or attention.
While he may not be a “normal” imam, that might be the strongest – and most effective – sermon he can preach. With a posture of love and relatable faith, a Sacred presence infuses his content, whether he is calling out injustice or just sharing about his day.
“Look, I’m not doing this for me, mate. I’m doing this for the community,” he said. “This isn’t about making me look good. If my content can show people the importance of values, traditions, and beliefs, they can better understand and relate to others.”
He believes that with the correct information, it is easy for people to connect, which leads to more tolerance, acceptance, and understanding.
“If I can do that, then I’ve done my job,” said Ahmedi.
By Ken Chitwood