After more than a decade helping build 5Pillars into one of the leading Muslim media platforms in the West, co-founder and Deputy Editor Dilly Hussain announces a new chapter in his journey, expanding his work internationally while remaining firmly part of the 5Pillars’ leadership.
For over 13 years, 5Pillars has been my home. It is an organisation I co-founded in 2013 with Roshan Muhammed Salih, and one that we built from the ground up into what is now one of the largest English-language Muslim media outlets in the Western world.
I will forever be indebted to 5Pillars, and honoured to be associated with it. It is not just a platform; it is part of my identity. It has shaped me, developed me, and directly contributed to who I am today, both professionally and personally. The relationships, the experiences, the challenges and the growth over the past 13 years are not something I take lightly.
That is why this moment needs to be understood clearly. This is not a departure from 5Pillars, nor a step away from its leadership or direction, but a new chapter that builds on everything we have created.
The work of 5Pillars continues, with the Blood Brothers Podcast returning with a strong start to Season 5, and I will also be contributing to the platform’s new weekly “Editor’s Dispatch” newsletter. My voice, my presence and my editorial role within 5Pillars remain firmly in place, Alhamdulillah.
A new chapter: One Nation Media
I have now entered a new phase in my life and journalism career. I recently relocated to South Africa, where I will be heading up One Nation Media (ONM) as the publication’s Executive Editor, a new Islamic media platform focused on awakening, mobilising and uniting the Muslim Ummah. This move is not about replacing what has been built, but expanding it globally. ONM is not a replication of 5Pillars, but a parallel platform that complements and extends the work we have already begun.
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Over the years, it has become increasingly clear to me that the way global affairs concerning Muslims are reported, analysed and understood remains deeply flawed. Too often, our realities are filtered through frameworks that do not reflect our values, priorities or worldview.
ONM has been established to challenge that. It is not simply a platform for news, but one for analysis, ideological clarity and civilisational empowerment.
It seeks to move beyond reactive commentary and towards helping Muslims think strategically, long-term and at scale about the world around them, because the time to think small has passed. It aims to operate with clarity, confidence and intent, not to follow conversations, but to set them, and to move the Ummah from reaction to direction.
The future of the Muslim world
A central focus of this new phase is Africa. With over 750 million Muslims across the continent, and the youngest Muslim demographic in the world, Africa is central to the future of the Muslim world. More broadly, the shifting balance of power across the Global South, from Africa to parts of Asia and beyond, will shape the trajectory of the Ummah in the decades ahead.
In many ways, the Muslim-majority world, particularly regions within the Global South, represents one of the last remaining frontiers capable of resisting and redefining a global order that has, for decades, been shaped by Western imperial interests, capitalist excess, and political systems that have prioritised profit over people. War, occupation, destabilisation and economic exploitation have not been anomalies of that system; they have been defining features underpinning it.
Yet despite this, many still cling to the illusion of its moral authority, an illusion that should have been shattered entirely over the past two and a half years.
The decline of the Western world order
The genocide in Gaza has not only further exposed the brutality of the Zionist occupation, but also the extent of US-backed Israeli violence carried out with political and military impunity. In doing so, it has stripped away any remaining pretence of a coherent Western “rules-based order”. The language of human rights, international law and moral authority has been exposed not as inconsistently applied at the margins, but as fundamentally selective, deeply hypocritical, and enforced through blatant double standards depending on whose lives are deemed valuable.
At the same time, we are witnessing a wider fracture within the West itself. From growing isolationist rhetoric in the United States, to open criticism of NATO and European allies by the Trump administration, to increasingly hostile and openly fascistic language directed towards Muslims and Islam, the internal contradictions of Western power are becoming more visible, and the pretence that once masked these realities is rapidly eroding.
A global media strategy for the Ummah
In this context, the question is no longer whether Muslims are being targeted or misrepresented, but how long we will continue to remain reactive rather than thinking and acting strategically. If, for the best part of the last 25 years, a global network of well-funded media institutions has waged an ideological and propaganda war against Islam and Muslims, then the response cannot remain fragmented, reactive or short term. It must be ambitious, coordinated, and rooted in a clear understanding of who we are, what we believe, and where we are going.
This is where the role of media becomes critical, not just as a tool for reporting, but as a means of shaping thought, framing narratives and influencing direction. We need to become more media literate as an Ummah, to understand how narratives are constructed, how agendas are pushed, and how public opinion is influenced. More importantly, we need to begin building platforms and ecosystems that can operate at that same level. The objective is no longer to merely respond to narratives, but to define them.
That means thinking beyond individual platforms and towards a broader network of independent Islamic media across different regions, languages and audiences, working collectively to challenge dominant narratives, and confidently present a coherent and comprehensive worldview.
This is the space that ONM seeks to occupy, not simply as a news outlet, but as a platform for deep analysis, civilisational reflection and intellectual empowerment. It aims to awaken, inspire and mobilise Muslims to organise, to think strategically, and ultimately to take ownership of their own future. Because if we do not build platforms that reflect our values and ambitions at scale, others will continue to define us, speak for us, and shape the trajectory of our future without us.
From the very beginning of 5Pillars in 2013, many of you supported this platform with your du’as, by amplifying our work, and by helping us grow from a small grassroots initiative into what it is today. I will always be grateful for that support, and as I enter this new chapter, I hope and pray that I can rely on that same support and those same du’as for the success of ONM.
