Social media maven aims to inspire Muslim women
Noha Sahnoune could be a fashion model if she wanted to. She’s got a bright smile, and the good looks that could make anything from a glamorous couture house look sharp. You often can find her on Instagram posting photos with lengthy captions about her life and Islamic faith.
Keeping up with high-end fashion is definitely not her thing. The 25-year-old Clear Lake High School graduate, who wrapped up undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Houston with business degrees, is more about plain living and being humble — even though she’s something of a local Instagram celebrity with more than 30,000 followers.
“I write about material minimalism to learn what you can live without,” she said over coffee one evening. Her goal at the time was to reduce her closet to less than a dozen items.
Sahnoune started on Instagram in 2012, partly to create her presence on social media during business school. Sahnoune, who lives in The Woodlands, didn’t know at the time that she was entering a world that was growing with female Muslim representation.
“You’ll find that there’s a lot of Muslim women on Instagram right now who have different professions, in medicine, in fashion, style, interior design, journalism, who are using the platform in order to kind of spread their message, saying hey, ‘We are here, we’re American, we’re Muslim, we represent ourselves, our faith, our culture in a myriad of ways, but we’re also wanting to show you how we live our lives,’” she explained.
“We’re wanting to show you the way that we incorporate faith into our lives, the way that we incorporate being normal, going to the mall, shopping, taking cute photos, visiting coffee shops.”
And now, she’s celebrating Ramadan, the holy month where Muslims all over the world fast from dawn to sunset to show their faith in God. Ramadan ends on Thursday. Sahnoune doesn’t discuss religion too often in her posts, with much of her social media output used to uplift and encourage people.
Sahnoune isn’t the only Muslim woman inspiring thousands of
people on Instagram. Halima Aden, a popular model who wears a hijab, has more than a half-million followers. She mostly posts about her travels around the world and different modeling gigs.
Fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad last year became the first U.S. Olympian to also wear the traditional headscarf, and is the first Muslim female Olympic medal winner. She has more than 257,000 followers on Instagram. Muhammad often posts inspirational quotes from her upcoming book about being black and Muslim in America.
Sahnoune entered the University of Houston with a goal of becoming a writer or journalist. But that didn’t work out for her. “It wasn’t going to be the career for me because it didn’t fulfill me in the way that math did,” she said. “I went straight for a business degree.”
The first Instagram account Sahnoune created happened around the time she got an internship at the Johnson Space Center. She worked in accounting, focused on procurement for NASA, while just a junior business school student. Her creativity kicked in when she would post on Instagram. She shares her thoughts for the day, or an uplifting quote or two.
Working at NASA had been Sahnoune’s dream since grade school. She attended school with kids whose parents were astronauts.
Later, when she joined ExxonMobil, she said seeing another Muslim woman, who wore a hijab, working a senior role motivated her. It was a surprising sign that it was a great place for her to work.
As an intern two years ago at ExxonMobil, she learned that even the staunchest of corporate environments could be a place for tolerance and cultural understanding. On the final day of her summer internship in 2015 she gave a presentation in front of the company’s former general auditor.
“It was the last day of Ramadan. And I had gotten up at 4 o’clock that morning, ate my food, drank my coconut water and then gone to work and practiced the entire day, and was freaked out the entire day,” she said.
Even though her throat was dry (no water is to be consumed during Ramadan fasting), she gave a relaxed presentation. Knowing she nailed it, she joined the presentation group and the senior executive for dinner. She remembers sundown being at 8:30 p.m. that day, the time she could begin eating. She passed up hors d’oeuvres and appetizers. It was only 8:15 p.m., and she waited for the alarm she set on her phone to sound.
“Everyone is sitting across the table, waiting for him to pick up his fork,” she said about the executive, who she could tell knew she was fasting for Ramadan. Finally, her alarm sounded. “He didn’t lift his fork until I lifted mine.” The memory still chokes her up. “I appreciated that a lot. I still think of him every now and then. It meant a lot to me.”
“If anything, fasting during something so important is even more special,” she said. And, of course, she got the job at the end of summer. Her downstream audit presentation won everyone over.
Sahnoune, who is now a corporate financial analyst at ExxonMobil, said her family has a lot to do with how she approaches life.
“I come from a family that survived that revolution in Algeria in the ’60s,” she said. “A lot of my family back then didn’t have the opportunity to go to school, didn’t have the opportunity to do nice things. My parents came here not knowing the language, not knowing how to interact with people, not knowing how to break out of the insecurity of being new in a country.”
Sahnoune said her job and sole priority is get through life “being badass as hell.”
“I’m paying my dues, you have to think of yourself as a legacy to those behind you who didn’t have the opportunity, who are pushing you forward,” she said. “My parents were fortunate enough to be invested in by their parents to come and do the things that they’ve done to set it up for us to go even farther.”
Her Instagram posts are reflective and inspirational in ways that a lot of social media personalities and life coaches are as they try to build brands. The allure of her messages are her vulnerability and sincerity.
Posing for a photo in McGovern Centennial Gardens in Hermann Park she writes: “To be focused and smart and empathetic and honest is remarkably more powerful than to be pretty.”
The June 3 post was a reminder of how beauty fades, while other facets of a person endure. “Learning is endless, sparking change can be forever, and to be the girl who walks into a room knowing herself and her mind and what she’s capable of doing, that is absolutely priceless, and the world needs it.”
Sahnoune met Emma Armer during their undergraduate Ted Bauer Leadership Certificate Program. Armer, 22, also is from Clear Lake, but wasn’t aware of her classmate until she started following her on Instagram back when Sahnoune was posting a lot about her cat.
But it was during a presentation in 2015 that Sahnoune gave about misconceptions of Muslims in media that made Armer connect with her. Armer said she approached Sahnoune — who was visibly emotional in front of the class and enthralling the group with her storytelling — and the two began to talk.
“I learned a lot from her that I never really knew, and I never really understood what it was like to face discrimination. It opened my eyes,” said Armer, who is white and doesn’t consider herself religious.
Since that connection, Armer and Sahnoune have become best friends, sharing a love for photography and coffee shops, among other things. Armer finds her inspiration reaches across cultural boundaries.
“Noha inspires people around the world, she connects with young Muslim women who want to know what it’s like being a young Muslim woman working in corporate America,” she said. “There are a lot of people who maybe struggling with wearing a hijab. Noha makes being a Muslim woman something that’s inspiring, classy and representable. She puts her carefree spin on everything.”