The stars are right: Astrologers find favour on YouTube, social media amid turmoil in Pakistan

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

The Kashana-e-Zanjani is a white villa that sits along an ancient trading route in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, set back behind a black gate and barbed wire. It is owned by the Zanjani family, who claim descent from 11th-century saints but gained their current renown in the 1940s by publishing the country’s first magazine devoted to the occult sciences. The villa’s occupant is the astrologer Syed Muhammad Ali Zanjani.

Zanjani, 40, is a stout man who wears a large lapis ring. He keeps his salt-and-pepper beard neatly trimmed and has the mark of devotion on his forehead – a darkened callus gained from praying extensively in prostration. When Rest of World visited on a Friday afternoon in May, he was seated at a hardwood desk in the middle of the large prayer hall in the villa’s basement. A laptop rested before him, loaded with software that generates birth charts in intricate detail. As Zanjani prepared to go live on YouTube, Nauman Malik, his senior producer, sat off to one side, wearing an earring and vaping. In another corner, an assistant fielded call-ins for the upcoming show via WhatsApp. “Final posture, sir,” Malik said to prompt Zanjani to strike his opening pose for the livestream. Zanjani straightened his back at the desk.

The family’s astrology magazine, Aina-e-Qismat (Mirror of Fate), still publishes every month. Zanjani says it has a circulation of between 1,200 and 1,500. But for nearly a decade, his principal interest has been his YouTube channel, AQ TV Knowledge for All, which has over 650,000 subscribers. It features videos on commonplace astrological topics – “Career Vs Love, What To Choose?”; “Who Is Your Enemy?”; “Right Time To Purchase A Lottery Ticket” – as well as those that hint at national anxieties, such as recitations to help obtain a visa to move abroad. Zanjani also publishes daily horoscope readings and instruction videos on the arts of producing a birth chart and interpreting the subtleties of planetary movements.

On Friday evenings, he offers a popular call-in livestream. On the day of Rest of World’s visit, the first caller was 34-year-old Hamna Raja, who was struggling financially and wanted to know when her situation might improve. Zanjani first told Raja that her birth chart showed her to be a motivated person, committed to self-improvement. But he cautioned that a conjunction of the sun and Mercury – the planet of wealth – was proving to be inauspicious. “The sun has combusted Mercury,” he said.

Zanjani’s YouTube channel launched in 2016. Since then, a vibrant network of soothsayers, psychics, numerologists, and palm readers has developed on the platform, with several commanding millions of views and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. These include Samiah Khan, the field’s Lahore-based grand doyenne; Sadia Arshad, who doubles as a hypnotherapist; and Humayun Mehboob, based in Karachi, whose videos often forewarn viewers of coming conflict. In the Muslim-majority nation, the rise of the YouTube astrologers has caused consternation among Islamic scholars and clerics who call the practice heterodox or even a form of shirk, or idolatry, in which predictions about the future are seen as claims to God’s omniscience. Astrologers, meanwhile, have used their growing visibility to reframe the narrative. Zanjani argues that astrology is not a break from Islamic tradition but an essential part of it. Far from claiming omniscience, he contends, astrologers are following God’s will by helping people who are struggling.

Amid a widespread sense of economic, political, and environmental precariousness, many of the Pakistanis turning to digital astrologers seem to be seeking a sense of assurance. Since just 2022, a prime minister has been controversially removed from office and subsequently imprisoned, catastrophic floods have ravaged vast areas, and the value of the rupee has steadily fallen. The astrologers’ audiences are looking for clarity, not about the distant past or the afterlife but about the uncertain present and what might be immediately forthcoming.

But their growing popularity raises the question of whether they’re offering something uniquely suited to helping Pakistanis with their anxieties or creating content with broader appeal but perhaps less depth. As the astrologers work to make their practice more palatable to Muslim viewers, they’re also moving closer toward the realm of the spiritual guides who have long been popular in the country – many of whom have drawn criticism for hucksterism.

On the livestream, Zanjani suggested that Raja, the 34-year-old in financial straits, wear an emerald ring to increase the energy of Mercury to improve her situation. He told Asees, a graphic designer unable to find work, that he might have better luck if he opened a grocery store. Ameer Hamza was having trouble finding a wife. “Forget marriage, what’s the use of it?” Zanjani teased him, hinting at the expenses that this might bring.

Ahmad, born in 2001, inquired about the possibility of moving to Italy for work. Zanjani told him he’d go to jail for 15 years if he opted to be smuggled by human traffickers. Mars was in a particularly unlucky permutation in his birth chart, Zanjani advised, so he should pursue immigration legally.

“It isn’t me saying that,” he said sternly. “It’s in your stars.”

Astrologers have held a place within the South Asian imagination for centuries. They were a fixture at the courts of the Mughal emperors who ruled between 1526 and 1858, often present at the delivery of royal babies for the purpose of creating birth charts. Earlier, in Abbasid Baghdad, writes the historian Ali A Olomi, astrologers highlighting auspicious moments for decisions was part of everyday life: “Medieval Muslims were deeply drawn to this style of astrology, so much so that they scheduled many of their ordinary activities – from haircuts to sex – based on astrological timing.”

Despite this history, critics have argued that astrology is speculative and therefore forbidden by Islam, in contravention of the belief that knowledge of the future rests solely with Allah. Many astrologers in Pakistan also follow the practice’s Vedic branch, which is drawn from ancient Hindu scripture, inspiring disapproval from conservatives and nationalists alike about the perceived influence of rival India on Pakistani culture. ​​Astrologers must operate within an increasingly repressive religious climate, reinforced by the political and social influence of hard-liners who promote an orthodox interpretation of Islam. “It is a suffocating environment,” Zanjani told Rest of World.

Religious-minded opponents often take their case to social media. In a 2022 YouTube video, the cleric Muhammad Akmal Madani, his beard dyed a fiery orange, conceded that there is some truth to astrology, citing an anecdote from the hadith about a prediction made about the Prophet Muhammad. Madani warned, however, that putting trust in astrologers denies belief in the individual fates that God has ordained. In January, the preacher and YouTube personality Muhammad Ali Mirza lambasted the astrologers who appear on the same platform, calling them quacks and frauds with no basis in science. “For God[’s] sake, leave astrology, [it’s] open shirk. May Allah guide you,” one commenter recently posted on the Instagram page of Humayun Mehboob, the oracle of the end-times. “Who are you to make predictions?” another opined under a YouTube clip of the Lahore-based doyenne Samiah Khan. “Only Allah knows about [the] future.”

Khan has spent years pushing back against such critiques. Now in her 50s, she began reading palms when she was 12. In 1996, after her first marriage began to fail, she studied astrology formally with an Islamabad-based Iranian woman versed in the occult sciences. She has since become known for her political predictions. Starting in 2009, she did several stints as the resident astrologer on prime-time talk shows, where she was frequently paired opposite Islamic scholars and clerics who vehemently opposed her practice. Friends warned her that such debates could result in fatwas being issued against her, but she was adamant about defending her practice.

In 2022, she turned to YouTube full-time. Samiah Khan’s Lounge, which has almost 500,000 subscribers, features Khan delivering her analysis of the 12 zodiac signs each week, explaining what might be in store for her followers in the days ahead. The videos are usually shot in her ornately decorated living room. “A drawing room is where you greet guests. A lounge is where you meet your family, your own people,” she told Rest of World during a visit to her home in May.

She was sitting in the study where she sees clients. A painting of whirling dervishes hung on one wall, and a deck of the playing cards she uses for tarot readings sat beside her on a tray, which was painted with the king of spades. A muted television played a broadcast from the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Though the curtains were drawn, Khan wore sunglasses with an ochre tint. A foot, clad in a rhinestone-encrusted slipper, rested on a stool.

She had been conducting one-on-one sessions with clients through the afternoon and was visibly exhausted. She clutched her throat: “I’ve been talking all day.” Part of the work, she believes, is to provide comfort. Meetings and phone calls often turn into informal therapy sessions. “Maybe that’s why people find peace in them,” she said.

Every week, Khan’s cameraman comes to the house to shoot her videos. Khan does hair and makeup herself and picks her own outfits – Canadian tuxedos, fur scarves, kaftans. “I never wear sponsored,” she said. In some videos, her white cat, Pari Gul (Flower Fairy), trails into the shot, furtively snaking her way through Khan’s maximalist decor. “YouTube has kept me alive in the hearts of the people,” Khan said, her voice catching. Asked why she made the switch from TV, she replied, simply, “It’s the age of social media.”

Khan wants astrology to be seen not as a shrouded, fringe discipline but a science based on the study of the moon and stars. She does not claim to alter anyone’s destiny, she said, but to help people understand how they might navigate challenges in their lives: “That doesn’t fall into the category of shirk.” Since her predictions are based on the study of planetary movements, she added, the practice should be seen as scientific.

This is an argument echoed by other astrologers and also rooted in history. Throughout the premodern world, the historian Olomi notes, astrology was associated with the educated classes and considered a science. Zanjani compared them to doctors – prescribing remedies that can help lessen or strengthen the power of the planets in an individual’s life. “We aren’t magicians,” he explained to one impatient caller during a livestream. Arshad, the hypnotherapist, argues that astrologers should educate viewers with a logical approach – a discussion of celestial bodies and their effects rather than something paranormal. She opposes any conflation of religion with astrology. “We should keep the two separate,” she told Rest of World.

Yet others have attempted to blend the practice with aspects of Islam. Videos uploaded to Zanjani’s channel suggest which of Allah’s 99 names can be recited to guarantee the birth of a baby boy. Mehboob advises his audiences about certain Quranic prayers that help to alleviate the effects of black magic.

Khan tells viewers to give sadaqa (alms) by distributing green-colored fruit, pomegranates, and milk to the poor on the first day of spring to coincide with the sun’s transit in Aries. She quotes from the hadith and displays verses from the Quran in her videos. (“Sufficient for us is Allah, and [He is] the best disposer of affairs.”) In one recent upload, clad in a pair of Gucci sneakers, she issued her usual disclaimer to audiences: that her work is merely a road map for how one might deal with the challenges of life, not a wholly accurate prediction of the future, of which only Allah has knowledge. “I can’t change your fate,” she said. “I can only help you learn how to deal with it.”

YouTube has allowed Khan and others to make a direct case to viewers about how astrology can be reconciled with religious tradition. The embrace of light elements of Islam also blends with a more ubiquitous New Age spirituality that seems to respond to the impulses of the algorithm and its tendency to flatten global culture into something more marketable.

A passion for graphic design led Zanjani to art school – first in Lahore and later in Manchester, where he pursued a master’s degree. The family name was known even in England, though, and the proprietor of a local Pakistani TV channel hired Zanjani to participate in a weekly astrology show, Sitare Kya Kehte Hain (What Do The Stars Say?). Originally meant as a short-term side hustle, the gig pushed him back toward the family vocation. “I tried to explain to people that I had studied media, that I was a good graphic designer and content creator, that I knew how to do good lighting,” Zanjani said, laughing. “But everybody I encountered only wanted me to tell them what their future would look like.”

After returning to Pakistan in 2013, Zanjani began to think about launching the family’s practice into the digital age. YouTube presented tantalising prospects for publicity. In 2016, when Facebook debuted its live feature, Zanjani pounced immediately, drawing an audience of thousands. That first session was makeshift: A piece of paper taped to the wall behind him displayed the phone number that viewers could use to dial in. But it was a hit regardless. In the Kashana-e-Zanjani office, Zanjani keeps the iPhone he used for that initial foray into social media behind a glass case.

Despite their popularity, YouTube isn’t a major source of income for Pakistan’s astrologers. Advertisers on YouTube generally pay far less for views from Pakistan compared with views from Europe and the United States. Instead, it provides astrologers a platform to advertise their services. They might charge between Rs 15,000 and Rs 35,000 ($50-$100) for a reading over WhatsApp, depending on whether a client is local or living abroad. YouTube has been shut down in Pakistan before, so Zanjani also maintains Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts. (X has been banned in the country since February.) “I use all platforms,” he said, “so we can stay engaged on all fronts.” A phone session with him usually lasts around 30 minutes. In a given week, he might have between 50 and 300 phone clients, with whom he speaks throughout the day, in addition to occasional walk-ins.

The family magazine’s website advertises items that Zanjani might prescribe to a client: gemstones, oud perfumes branded Misk Al Zanjan, books on spirituality and the occult that are published in-house. One line of products, Zanjani Spirit, includes a talisman that promises to make you a magnet for love, along with a “power product” for men that is said to ensure relief from impotence and erectile dysfunction for a mere Rs 999 ($3.59).

As a practitioner of Vedic astrology, Zanjani employs a system of knowledge that is thousands of years old. Distinct from its contemporary Western counterpart, which focuses on the placement of the sun and the solar system at the moment of a person’s birth, Vedic astrology puts a stronger emphasis on the moon and the constantly changing impact of stars and constellations. (Khan does not describe her approach as Vedic, though it is also based on an examination of lunar phases and cycles.) Many astrologers, like Zanjani, use software to generate birth charts, each with a unique combination of planets and intersecting transits that are legible to the trained eye. Palmistry, numerology, and tarot cards can also form part of the process.

An oft-used slur against astrologers in Pakistan is that they are dabbling in a “Hindu” tradition. One of Zanjani’s motivations for starting his YouTube channel was to help make his family’s long-running case that astrology is a natural part of Islam. The Quran, he argues, contains evidence for the validity of astrology, where the idea of taking guidance from celestial bodies is indirectly mentioned in several chapters.

As the astrologers broaden their appeal, however, the rebranded mélange of the religious and the astrological – whether simply expedient or a reflection of a genuine belief – means they might be perceived by viewers as more than just interpreters of the stars and planets. There is a long and often unfortunate history of all-encompassing and purportedly clairvoyant gurus in the country, who are often referred to as pirs, a title originally given to a spiritual guide in the Sufi Islam tradition. In contemporary Pakistan, a pir might be called upon not only for religious instruction but also to reverse the effects of the evil eye and black magic. Some claim to communicate with and control jinns.

In 2022, a 33-year-old Pakistani-American working in finance in New York, who asked to go by the pseudonym Sarah to protect her privacy, began turning to local astrologers in desperation after going through a bad breakup. “I just needed answers,” she recalled to Rest of World. She had extended her search for answers to astrologers in Pakistan – some of whom she came across on YouTube – when a friend introduced her via WhatsApp to a pir in the country. Sarah paid the man Rs 700,000 ($2,512) for remote consultations over two years. He told her which Quranic verses to recite to help her romantic life, advising that she read one chapter 313 times. He read various chapters of the Quran himself over the course of 40 days to rid her of the evil eye. Then he said she’d have to leave the country to find a husband more quickly.

Sarah followed through, moving to London for three months. This proved that the pir could not have been more spectacularly wrong. “I had the worst dating stories in the UK,” Sarah said. She now surmises that the whole thing was a scam. The pir had played on her desire for reassurance that she’d find love – building from her encounters with astrologers who promised that a good man would soon come along. “I think those words are just, like, soothing for the moment, right?” Sarah said. The experience has put her off pirs and astrologers alike, both of whom appear to her as engaged in the same business of soothsaying. “Whoever claims to know the future, I’m just putting you in that category.”

Arshad – the YouTube astrologer who takes a secular approach – questioned the ethics of mixing religion with astrology, as many of her colleagues on the platform do. “Why do you [have to] bring religion into everything?” she asked. “You can sell anything in the name of religion.” She added: “If I put a dopatta on my head and had rosary beads in my hand, you’d see my following increase.”

Zanjani claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad. His 11th-century Zanjani ancestors were mystics who came from northeast Iran and preached Islam among the Hindu natives of Lahore. This distinguished heritage still yields dividends: The family offers its followers, both virtual and in-person, the opportunity to offer tribute to their lineage, which can involve taking the bayah, a pledge of allegiance that includes accepting the Zanjanis as spiritual guides. A claim to religious authority bolsters Zanjani’s credentials as a digital astrologer ­­– a shepherd leading his virtual flock toward salvation.

Pakistan’s YouTube astrologers saw an uptick in early 2020, when some began to post videos of predictions verging on the apocalyptic. In a video uploaded to YouTube in December 2019, Khan spoke of difficult times in the year ahead, caused by a solar eclipse visible in the subcontinent. “All I could see was darkness. Curfews and lockdowns. Just darkness everywhere,” she recalled. She didn’t know this would be precipitated by a global pandemic, she claimed, but she felt that the world was entering a dangerous period akin to wartime.

The ominous vibe persists four years on. In more recent videos, Khan urges her followers to strengthen their relationship with Allah, warning that many of the signs of the end of days have already appeared. In June, Mehboob highlighted a potentially impending outbreak of the bird flu, while warning his viewers of flooding in coastal areas. Earlier, he’d pointed to a conjunction of Mars and Rahu, a shadow planet in the Sanskrit tradition, that could create the context for great cultural and political strife – hastening the arrival of the Mahdi, the messiah of the end-times in the Islamic tradition.

Such predictions dovetail with a national mood colored by domestic turmoil. “These are troubled times,” Seemin Ahmad, a literature teacher in Karachi and avid viewer of the digital astrologers, told Rest of World. “Everybody wants to know what’s going on, what our future is going to be like – especially in Pakistan.” Mohammad Sohaib, a journalist based in Islamabad, occasionally tunes into videos of Khan and other astrologers with his mother, who is a regular viewer, and tries to direct her away from more alarmist content. He believes their appeal stems from the anxiety of living in a place where a new crisis always feels imminent: “You don’t even know what might happen tomorrow.”

The astrologers have often been proven right in the eyes of their followers. Ahmad watches Mehboob’s weekly horoscope readings every Sunday. Earlier this year, Mehboob predicted that fire and water would be major problems in the world. “And whatever he said, it kind of turned out to be true,” Ahmad said, noting recent flash flooding in Dubai.

And then there are the smaller, more personal concerns. The weekly horoscope videos, though tailored to a broad zodiac sign rather than an individual’s birth chart, often feature useful advice for Ahmad, such as taking care of her stomach or driving carefully. Sometimes, Mehboob might hint at a potential back problem or an issue in the joints. “I just try to be careful,” Ahmad said, adding that she sees Mehboob’s warnings as useful guidance. She’s unconcerned with the religious taboo surrounding the practice. “I’m not a very fundamentalist kind of person where religion is concerned,” she said. “People say it’s haram, so I say, yes, if I listen to my horoscope, what wrong is it doing?”

But Suhana Sami, a casual viewer, agrees with Sarah that they’re another iteration of the pirs, mystics, and soothsayers that have entranced and manipulated audiences in the subcontinent for centuries. Social media has simply allowed them an open forum to prognosticate and self-advertise. Sami believes their popularity signals a weakening of trust in the divine. “Why would you be going to someone who’s just as human as you are?” she asked. “Only God can change your destiny.”

Zanjani has learned that an essential part of the role of an astrologer is to offer clients a kind of therapy. A birth chart can tell you if someone simply needs reassurance and positive reinforcement, rather than concrete guidelines, he said. The stories that people share, he added, are a kind of amanat – a treasure given to him for safekeeping: “People tell us things that they wouldn’t even share with their spouses.”

Every Thursday evening in the Kashana-e-Zanjani basement, he holds a prayer meeting that is also broadcast live on the AQ TV YouTube channel. Before the start of one in early May, around 50 devotees were gathered in the hall, sitting cross-legged on the floor. They waited intently for Zanjani to appear, their faces fixed in sanguine expressions.

Zanjani descended down a staircase, dressed in white, with a red scarf and a blue skullcap. Electrified, the devotees stood up, chanting “Allah hu akbar” and “Ya ali” and clamoring for a moment with the astrologer, who shook each person’s hand before finding his spot at a cushioned dais on stage. His producer Malik adjusted the cool white hues on some spotlights, zeroing in on Zanjani’s face, while other members of the team worked behind their computers on the livestream. A large television to the left of the stage displayed the video, with a small lag. On the screen, the spotlights gave Zanjani a beatific glow.

He prayed for the unmarried, the childless, and the jobless. He asked for forgiveness, for protection from tyrants, for rulers who would make better decisions, for the successes of emigrants working abroad who were remitting income to their families in Pakistan. After each exhortation, the congregation repeated “Ameen”. At points, Zanjani appeared to wipe away tears, his voice cracking. “We are sinners. We are helpless. We are weak. We don’t see the blessings that You bestow upon us,” he said. When the prayer concluded, one of the followers undertook the bayah oath-taking ceremony. Zanjani wrapped an orange scarf around the man’s shoulders and kissed his forehead, indicating that he had been accepted.

The congregation was then directed to a room at the back of the prayer hall, where a purported strand of the Prophet’s hair, acquired by Zanjani on a recent trip to Karachi, was displayed in glass. The group formed a queue, heaving back and forth as one of Zanjani’s staffers dragged people forward to keep the line moving.

Later that evening, Zanjani held a free horoscope reading for the same congregants. On his laptop, he punched in each devotee’s date, place, and time of birth into his software, producing an individualized birth chart. It was now up to the congregant to ask specific questions – about marriage, employment, immigration abroad – to which Zanjani could apply a more personal reading. He started most sessions with the same question: “Tell me, how can I help?”

MZ Adnan is a freelance journalist based in London.

Photography by Saiyna Bashir for Rest of World.

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.