Muslim media has long been shaped by mosques, charities and da’wah groups, but that inheritance has also limited its ability to function as serious journalism, writes Teslim Adeyemo.
The issue was never sincerity. Nor was it a lack of talent, sacrifice or religious commitment. The problem was institutional DNA. Much of Muslim media inherited the instincts of the structures that created it: sermons, reminders, fundraising appeals and internal community messaging. What it did not inherit was the logic, depth and creativity of a newsroom.
That difference matters because media is not just about producing content. It is about shaping public consciousness, setting agendas, challenging power, telling stories, investigating injustice and helping communities understand themselves and the world around them. For Muslim media to fulfil that role, it must understand how it became what it is today.
Three founding decisions explain much of the problem. The first decision was who built it.
The religious founders
Many Muslim media institutions emerged from religious, charitable or community structures rather than professional editorial environments. That origin point is not a minor detail. Institutions usually communicate according to the logic of their founders. Mosque committees communicate like mosques. Dawah organisations communicate like dawah organisations. Charities communicate like charities.
Their communication style is often built around the reminder, the appeal, the campaign and the sermon. These formats have their place. They absolutely serve an essential and necessary purpose. But they are not the same as journalism. When these institutions built media platforms, they often built extensions of themselves rather than independent editorial organisations with their own mandate, newsroom culture and journalistic discipline.
The result was Muslim media that often functioned as a loudspeaker for existing religious infrastructure rather than a serious institution capable of shaping wider public debate.
Sunnah TV in Nigeria is one example of this model. Founded in April 2013, the channel has built a substantial online presence with more than 217,000 YouTube subscribers and thousands of videos. Its output reflects the wider pattern: sermon broadcasts, Qur’anic recitation, religious reminders and fundraising appeals.
The point is not to dismiss or downplay this important work. The founders and teams behind such platforms are often sincere, hardworking and valuable to their communities. But this is religious broadcasting, not journalism.
The funders
The second decision was who funded it. From the 1970s onward, Gulf state investment helped reshape Islamic institutions across Africa and the wider Muslim world through schools, mosques, universities, charities and media projects.
That support often came with a particular understanding of what Islamic work should look like: theological instruction, dawah activity, religious education and the spreading of the “correct” theological creed. This did not always require direct interference. Funding shapes institutions more quietly than that. It shapes what gets rewarded, what gets renewed, what gets replicated and what is considered worthy of long-term support.
Platforms focused on sermons, fatwas, religious reminders and conversion activity were easier to recognise, fund and sustain. But media projects focused on investigative journalism, governance, corruption, social breakdown, development, poverty, foreign policy or civilisational analysis often struggled to find a funding model that understood their purpose.
The money did not create the problem by itself. But it helped select one type of Muslim media while leaving other forms of Muslim journalism without the oxygen needed to survive.
The audience
The third decision was who Muslim media decided its audience was. Across much of Africa and the diaspora, the assumed audience was Muslims. More specifically, Muslims who already identified with the faith and needed to be reminded, strengthened, instructed or mobilised.
That audience definition shaped everything: the language used, the topics selected, the formats chosen and the stories told. Non-Muslims or the “non-practicing” were often written out of the editorial imagination entirely.
This matters because Muslims are not only called to speak to themselves. Islamic values, beliefs and teachings are supposed to address society. They speak to justice, poverty, governance, family, economics, war, oppression, morality and human dignity. Yet many of the stories most relevant to that wider civilisational mission were made invisible because Muslim media defined its audience too narrowly.
A media institution that only speaks to its own community cannot build civilisational influence. It can strengthen an echo chamber. It can deepen internal identity. It can remind the already convinced. But it cannot shape society if it refuses to speak beyond itself.
Existing Muslim media
These three decisions compounded over time. New Muslim media organisations looked at existing ones and copied their structures, their funding relationships and their audience assumptions. The preaching model became the default not because anyone sat down and decided it should be the permanent strategy, but because it was inherited and repeated.
Journalists who wanted to do something different often found no natural home inside Muslim media. Some moved into secular outlets. Others went independent. Many simply disappeared from the field. That is why Muslim media is not failing because of bad intentions. It is failing because of unexamined inheritance.
This is the real challenge. Muslim media does not simply need better content, better cameras, better graphics or more social media output. Those things matter, but they are not enough. The architecture itself needs to be examined.
Who leads the institution? Who funds it? Who is the audience? What is the editorial mandate? Is the platform designed to preach to Muslims, or is it designed to explain the world through an Islamic lens for Muslims and non-Muslims alike? These questions cannot be avoided.
The solution is not to abandon dawah or religious content. Those remain essential. But Muslim media cannot be reduced to religious broadcasting. It must also produce journalism, documentaries, investigations, explainers, interviews and public-interest reporting rooted in Islamic values but capable of reaching wider society.
That requires journalists and media professionals in leadership from the beginning. It requires funding models that understand editorial independence and long-term institution building. It requires waqf, diaspora investment and community-backed structures that support media as a strategic civilisational necessity, not merely as a religious side project.
Most importantly, it requires a broader definition of audience. Muslim media must speak to the Ummah, but it must also speak from the Ummah to the world. It must explain Islam not only through lectures, but through coverage of poverty, corruption, foreign policy, family breakdown, social injustice, war, development and moral crisis. It must show that Islam is not a private identity or a set of rituals alone, but a complete framework for understanding and transforming society. None of this will happen if Muslim media continues to assume the current model simply needs better execution.
The first step is honesty. Muslim media became what it is because of who built it, who funded it and who it chose to speak to. The next question is whether a new generation of Muslim media builders is ready to make different.
Teslim Adeyemo is a development strategist and the founder of UmmahBuilders, a platform equipping Muslim community leaders with practical frameworks for institutional development and local governance. A former Director of Digital Media at the Dawah Institute, he holds a Master’s in International Affairs and Diplomacy with a specialisation in International Development. His work sits at the intersection of Islamic ethics, media strategy, and community development across Africa and the diaspora. He writes and consults on building Muslim institutions that translate faith into civilisational action. You can follow Teslime on LinkedIn and his Substack.