Twenty-eight year-old Los Angeleno Mohammad is used to getting attention on the internet. As someone in the r/NattyOrJuice subreddit described him, he “has the body of an action star” and the “face of a comedy relief character.” By that, they mean Mohammad is incredibly buff, and also has a Mario-esque mustache, both traits the Iranian bodybuilder and personal trainer shows off regularly on Twitter. It’s a charming look, which may explain why CNN news anchor Don Lemon was “caught” liking half a dozen of his thirst traps in early 2021, sparking one of his earliest entries into viral fame.
And what, exactly, did he do with that newfound attention? He started an OnlyFans, of course.
Over the last few years, Mohammad has taken to Twitter to share both his physique and his political hot takes with the world. Though, he may be one of the few people on Twitter to go viral for both. In addition to the Don Lemon incident, he was in the spotlight last May in response to a tweet about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Tel Aviv, the queer, feminist, egalitarian capital of the Middle East,” a user named Blake wrote. “Jihad will never win against these impenetrable values.” To which, Mohammad, with his shirtless, macho Twitter avatar, responded simply, “Jihad will win.”
By “jihad,” Mohammad was referring to the spreading of Islam by any means necessary, though he was using it satirically. “For so long, it’s been a scary shock word,” he tells me. “So it feels like you’re taking ownership of it by presenting it in a shocking way.” Plus, he wanted to send a little “fuck you” to Blake. “His post really ticked me off considering how [Israel] treats Palestinians,” Mohammad says. “What’s woke about that?”
Immediately, the contrast between Blake and Mohammad drew an obvious comparison: Blake is the virgin, Mohammad is the Chad. Screenshots of the tweets and both of their profile pictures were widely shared on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. “I think people seeing a shirtless muscular guy named Mohammad saying that in contrast to him was what people found funny,” Mohammad tells me.
Mohammad had been contemplating making an OnlyFans prior to this, but the attention the moment brought to his profile and body expedited that decision. Two days after the “jihad will win” tweet, he publicly announced his OnlyFans. In his first few months, he gathered 2,100 subscribers, primarily posting nudes and solo masturbation videos (though he’s recently started making content with women, too). Given that he’d been accustomed to posting nearly naked photos of his workout progress on Twitter already, it wasn’t a stretch to show it all. Though he doesn’t subscribe to any particular label regarding his sexuality, most of his subscribers are men.
“When I started out on Twitter, making any sort of living off of it felt like a pipe dream,” he tells me. “But I decided to lay the groundwork for it anyway by trying to amass followers and adapting an online persona.” Part of that online persona included posting what he calls “cringe shit,” or otherwise ironic extreme posts (his username on Twitter, MargBarAmerica, translates to “Death to America” in Farsi). Mohammad is of a Muslim background, but again, the “jihad” bit isn’t exactly serious — he’s trolling, and most of his followers get the joke. Still, he knows there’s something influential about posing these ideas.
“Something I noticed around that time [of the tweet] was that a lot of people were more comfortable being more extreme in their rhetoric,” he says. “I think there’s some power in it. Even jokingly, people see what I’m trying to get at. For a long time, a lot of Muslims have had to be subdued in our language, and more outwardly like, ‘We’re not extremists; we’re not crazy people trying to blow things up!’ But in the face of extreme oppression, people see that more extreme rhetoric, even as a joke, is a statement of power.”
Having an OnlyFans while presenting these kids of takes — he calls himself a “jihadist” in his Twitter bio — only furthers the controversy. “I brought upon a lot of ridicule toward myself from mean strangers, and I left a poor taste in some people’s mouths about who I was,” he says.
Mohammad’s status as a Muslim male is somewhat of a rarity on OnlyFans, though he isn’t practicing. Most of the people on the platform who advertise themselves as Muslim are women who lean into the identity, promoting themselves as hijabi creators. It’s also somewhat of a rarity to be an OnlyFans creator and so publicly political — many performers keep their stances private, as to not turn off any potential customers. That said, as the success of communist creators like Violet Valentine proves, it’s also possible to lean into a political niche for OnlyFans growth, too. While centrist Don Lemon might be an outlier, many of Mohammad’s followers are pro-Palestine leftists.
Still, just being Muslim and having an OnlyFans is enough to attract criticism from other Muslims. “Salafi Muslim types, U.K. ones in particular, are really are vocal about it,” he says. “They call me a prostitute and an apostate. But it doesn’t bother me at all. I have a personal relationship with Islam and what it means to me, even if I’m not actively practicing. It’s very comfortable for me — just using my full name and not a nickname like some other Mohammads do is a source of power for me.”
Despite his initial success on OnlyFans, the last few months haven’t exactly been smooth. He moved to L.A. from Georgia by himself, and caught a serious stomach bug and COVID in a short period of time. Too sick to post, he lost much of his following. More than that, though, COVID caused him to develop hypertension and arrhythmia, for which he now takes two heart medications he expects to be on for life.
These days, though, he’s back to a semi-normal state of health — and back at it online. “Even now, with all these months of barely getting by, I’ve been able to do what I want with life and nothing has ever made me happier,” he says. “I live in my dream city, I have my dream car (a 1989 E30 BMW) and I work out for a living. It rules. So many kind strangers have allowed me to get to this point, and I’ll give back in the ways I know best.”
Which, of course, is posting political shitposts on Twitter and videos of himself jacking off on OnlyFans.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
