THE West Midlands has provided the biggest number of participants in Muslim Hikers, a group that made national headlines after pictures of its Christmas Day hike in the Peak District were trolled on social media.
Now Coventry-born founder Haroon Mota is defying the haters by planning a hike during Ramadan, which begins next month.
There are hikes scheduled every month for the rest of the year, including to Snowdon in June, the Yorkshire Three Peaks in July and Scafell Pike in August.
Muslim Hikers began as an Instagram page in September 2020 to create a sense of community and inspire people to get outside during the pandemic.
“There was so much appreciation of people connecting with the page that we started organising events on demand,” says Mota.
When pictures of the Christmas hike to Mam Tor, Derbyshire, were posted online, some cruel trolls abused the hikers as ‘not proper walkers’ and compared them to migrating animals.
The abuse became national news and well-wishers rallied round the hikers.
In just two weeks in January, the group gained 16,000 Twitter followers and recent hikes have been sell-outs.
Mota made the decision to leave his full-time job at a British Muslim humanitarian charity to focus on building up Muslim Hikers and other projects through his own social enterprise, Active Inclusion Network.
He is a Natural England ambassador for a campaign to promote and update the Countryside Code.
Separately he’s working on a Sport England-funded programme to champion health and activate green spaces in Foleshill, where he grew up.
Coventry-based Sanna Ali, who created the Instagram stories for the Muslim Hikers February expedition to Stanage Edge in the Peak District, is a recent convert to hiking, partly due to a desire to explore her surroundings during the pandemic.
Ali said: “Muslim Hikers is about trying to normalise the idea of having people who look slightly different outdoors.
“We prayed together after lunch, it was nice because you felt solidarity in numbers, you didn’t feel too alone.”
The social media abuse has spurred Ali into wanting to do more hiking.
“The more somebody tells you you can’t do something, the more you want to do it,” she says.
Muslim Hikers are hiking in Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales on Saturday 12th March, and are exhibiting at the National Outdoor Expo at the NEC on 19-20 March
Non-Muslims are warmly welcomed on all the hikes.
