For many Muslim women—especially those who are in prominent places on the internet—these ideas do not remain confined to podcasts or debate videos. They spill into comment sections and private messages, where strangers appoint themselves enforcers of morality.

A 2026 report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed nearly 14,000 comments directed at 40 prominent public figures and influencers on Instagram in Jordan over a 12-month period. Among comments classified as hate speech, harassment, or abusive language, 72 percent targeted women, 11 percent were classified as religious or moral harassment, and the vast majority of those comments—85 percent—targeted female influencers.

Additionally, all of the comments classified as sexual harassment were directed at women, underlining the pervasive contradictions in how women are policed on the internet—the same online environment that instructing women to make themselves invisible also subjecting them to unwanted sexual attention. That contradiction is visible in the messages Mariam has received.

The manosphere’s reach is shaped in part by the recommendation systems that determine what users encounter in their feeds. “As soon as you create an account on TikTok, YouTube, X, Instagram, and others as a male, it doesn’t take long for the algorithm to start recommending misogynistic content,” Kaddoura says.

Engagement-based systems can amplify emotionally charged and polarizing content, including manosphere videos. Content blaming women for men’s loneliness or financial insecurity can generate reactions from supporters, critics, and the women being targeted. Those interactions may increase its visibility.

That becomes even thornier when religion enters the picture. The relationship coaches and other men preaching religion online often present personal opinions as religious instruction, Kaddoura says. This can make disagreement appear immoral, and criticism can then be presented as evidence that the creator is defending the faith against hostile forces.

But how exactly a user’s behavior tips over from passively encountering the content to actively engaging with it remains an open question. Researchers can examine publicly available videos and identify influential accounts, but they have limited access to the internal data needed to trace how users move between creators and communities. This leave key questions unanswered, such as whether prolonged exposure changes their behavior.

For women such as Mariam, the technical route behind the harassment may be invisible, but its effects are not. A creator publishes a video. Recommendation systems carry it into other users’ feeds. And then, eventually, users repeat its message in women’s comment sections and inboxes. Repeat ad infinitum.

WIRED Middle East contacted Ali Dawah and Kareem Atta’i for comment. Neither responded by the time of publication.

This story originally appeared inWIRED Middle East.