When Jasmine first started running, her Mum received a phone call from a friend asking, “Why is your daughter running in the street?’ Since launching Sydney’s first Muslim run club in January, she’s created a safe, inclusive space for those in her community. 

Jasmine Al-Zoubi will be the first to tell you that she was never athletic as a kid. It’s hard to believe, given the marathon she has under her belt – a distance that continues to prove daunting to even the most seasoned athletes. 

For Jasmine though, her introduction to running came in the form of Boot Camp, something she joined after finishing school and finding the stress of HSC had come at the expense of her fitness. “They would ask us to go for a short run, just 100 to 200 metres. I don’t think I could even make 20 metres before I was puffed out and couldn’t breathe,” she recalls. 

While most would throw in the towel and swear off running completely, Jasmine’s inability to make the distance only sharpened her resolve. She wanted to do better, to prove to herself that anything was possible with the right attitude and hard work.

She started going earlier to the boot camp classes, then increased her running distance by a couple hundred metres, then by a kilometre. As she ticked off a one-kilometre run, then 2km, and 5km, her running ambitions grew alongside the mileage. “It was a very slow build up over the years of training until suddenly I was running 10km. It felt incredible,” says Jasmine. 

Her newfound love for running unlocked a passion for fitness. Jasmine got into CrossFit and built up her strength, allowing running to take a backseat as she worked on things like pull-ups and squats and deadlifts. But the freedom of running - that arms out, wind-in-your-hair, childlike sense of wonder that accompanies a downhill or sprint down the backroad - lured her back.

Naturally, she made the decision to train for a marathon. With long runs required in training to adequately prepare her for the distance, she began seeking out run clubs to join, knowing they’d not only be able to hold her accountable to her goals but also provide a sense of comfort in shared suffering. 

While she met some life-long friends at the Sydney Marathon run club, it wasn’t without its challenges. “You do stick out like a sore thumb because you’re the only one in a hijab for the majority of the time.

While the running community is excellent - no one makes you feel less than or looks down on you - you do stick out. And they are relatively always so far away; they’re always in the city and whatnot, so you’re less likely to attend them often because you have to go out of your way to get there.” 

With these factors weighing on her mind, Jasmine flirted with the idea of starting her own run club. “The more I started to attend other run clubs, I had the idea of labelling it as a Muslim Run Club. People misunderstand it when they see it, saying, ‘Why do you have to exclude everyone else?’ But they miss the point,” says Jasmine. 

“The aim of it is not to exclude. We’ve run with non-Muslims at our run club, we’ve run with everybody at our run club. It’s not meant to exclude anyone, it’s just meant to provide an environment for people and tell them, ‘Hey, this includes you. This is actually for you as well.’ When you hear the word Muslim, you know you can belong here. You can belong at any run club, don’t get me wrong. But when it’s actually targeted for you, it’s for you. It was meant to say, ‘Hey, this is tailored for you. You will not be the only one in a hijab.’” 

Since launching in January, Sydney Muslim Run Club has grown to become an inclusive space that brings people together. As the running landscape grows more diverse, it’s thanks to Jasmine’s leadership that runners in her community feel supported to hit the streets and chase their own goals in the sport, knowing they can take up space without fear of judgement.

For Jasmine, it’s proved transformational - not just in the friendships made through the club, but in the ethos that has translated to her own relationship with running, one that prides itself on fun and acceptance. Here, she shares her journey to founding Sydney Muslim Run Club and why the very act of normalising running proves extraordinary. 

“Five years ago running wasn’t a big hype and we didn’t have as much access to social media to see running is a thing. Members of the community would have looked at us like, ‘that’s weird. Why is she running on the street like that?’ That did happen to me when I first started running. My Mum got a phone call from one of her friends asking, ‘Why is your daughter running in the street?’ That sticks out in my memory because I just remember being so confused. 

It’s multi-fold. You have to worry about the fact that you’re a woman and then you have to worry about the fact you’re wearing a hijab on your head that screams out what religion you’re part of. You can’t be ignorant and think, ‘Oh no, we look at everyone and everyone’s always treated the same way.’

It’s not the case. As much as we try, there’s going to be underlying thoughts or feelings towards different members of society depending on their race or religion and you can’t disregard the fact. Just going out for a walk on the street, sometimes you have to be conscious about what suburbs you’re in, what areas, and who is around. You can’t just run with your music blaring in your earphones and not have any consideration. Like I said, that’s twofold: it’s as a woman - naturally, running in the dark - but also the stigma from outsiders and within your own community. 

Any run club will be safe, but that safety element was missing. At the NIKE After Dark Tour, after Sydney Muslim Run Club’s launch, I wasn’t at the start line alone or just with one other friend. I was with 30 other girls from my community. When they say ‘that altered my brain chemistry’ - it did.

It is a community now that you’re building and trying to establish and it’s bringing us all together so we can now enter the diverse Sydney running field. You want to diversify it and see people of different ethnicities and religions and see them at our running events. That’s something I think we achieved, especially seeing it at the NIKE After Dark Tour. 

Fast forward five years later, you launch a Muslim run club and people are joining it. It took off. Thousands of followers within not even a month. We just keep trying to find ways to make it accessible, to help people, and make sure we can reach all groups. We’ve got people who are running their first half-marathons and people who are back to running and ran their first 1km non-stop. 

We have a mix of everything. Some women would prefer not to run around males which is totally justifiable and within our religion, not crazy to us at all. So we cater to those women with a run on Wednesday mornings at 6am and a Thursday at 11am for anyone who has to drop their kids off at school and can’t make the early morning. We also have the runs open to everyone, males and females, on Monday evenings which is local to the Western Sydney community in Bankstown. Everyone loves Bay Run, so we also do that every Saturday morning at 6 am.

We also have a males-only one on Thursdays, for people who don’t want to mix gender-wise. I think run clubs have developed that stigma of being the new Tinder and a lot of people are hesitant, especially if they’re married or don’t want to lean into that stigma. We’ve done really well at showing it’s not about that at all. I’m really proud of how we’ve been running things and the community’s response to it. 

I never would have started Sydney Muslim Run Club if I didn’t have a village behind me. I will never take sole credit for this club because there’s no chance I would have started it or it would have continued running without the village that’s supported me. My good friend Nina, who I met through the Sydney marathon, she is my right-hand. I have my family in my corner at every type of major event, too. 

My parents were so supportive of my running from the get-go. My dad at first was like, ‘What do you mean you want to run in the street? Are you sure?’ Culturally, my Dad growing up in Jordan, you don’t have that where you just go for a walk in the village. Even though he’s been here most of his life, he sees it but it’s something new. But when it came to signing up for a marathon, he was like, ‘Yeah, you should do it!’ They were supporting me the whole time getting ready for that marathon, showing up on the start line and finish line. They were always supportive. And when I wanted to launch the Sydney Muslim Run Club and went through a few mental breakdowns as you do with something new, they were always in my corner telling me I could do it. 

Something that’s very common within our community - not necessarily Muslims, but ethnic communities and families of immigrants - we don’t grow up with parents that are active. We don’t grow up climbing mountains or going on hikes. Most of the time, it’s us as the adults taking our parents on a hike for the first time. With Sydney Muslim Run Club, it’s kid-friendly.

At our last event we had a jumping castle and a face-painter. I want people to bring their kids so they can come and see that being active and running and moving is the norm. Show them that a trail run is normal, that a hike is normal, that a healthy lifestyle is the norm. 

I’m having so much fun with running. I always loved it, but running to me was hard. It was not something I was not naturally good at. Let’s say every Ramadan we fast and I have to choose between weight training and running. I'll choose weight training because it’s easier to me.

Running is hard and for a long time, I would be too embarrassed to run around people because I was like, ‘I’m too slow, I run wrong.’ I was nervous to go to that run club thinking I’d be too slow, everyone would realise I’m running wrong. I was going through this imposter syndrome with running and my fears alleviated a little bit after that run club and running a marathon. 

There’s that imposter syndrome: I’m not doing it right and I’m doing something wrong. Some parts of it were intimidating to me. The thought of signing up for a race was intimidating to me; it means I have to commit to something and then there’s a finish time that everyone’s going to see and people are going to judge me on that time, everyone’s going to have an opinion on it. I feel like over the years, slowly I fixed my relationship with food in terms of being able to train properly and run sustainably. 

As much as I love running, there was all this background noise. Starting the run club, everything went away. I don’t care if I’m slow at the run club today. Who cares? I don’t care if I sign up to a race and don’t hit a PB. Suddenly I went from signing up to just one race this year to, ‘Oh my whole community is going to these events, Ok I’ll go with them just for fun.’ I’ve had the most fun in such a long time. Running is an individual sport but it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be you against the whole world. Having that community around you when you’re running takes out that boring part of it and you’re inspired now as much as you can be inspiring other people. 

I did a trail run for the first time in my life last week but my community wanted to do one, so we went on one. And it was the most incredible experience, I loved every minute of that run. It’s made me love it even more. This, to me, is the most fulfilling part of my life right now: running with my community. It hits a spot that I really needed and I didn’t know was missing from my life. It’s really wholesome and I want to go to these events. I might be the slowest person there but it’s fine because I’m having fun and at the start and finish line, there’s a group of us and we’re together, we’re talking and there’s energy. 

I never would have thought that going to one club would lead to it all. I was not good at running. Even starting the run club, I’m not something who has run 50 marathons. It’s not like I had all these crazy qualifications that gave me the right to start a run club, but it’s just about the community. It’s not about me being the best or fastest person out there, it’s just something to bring runners together and people that want to get into running or even people just interested in running. 

I want people to feel like they’ve walked away more confident in themselves for whatever reason. Whether that’s because they’ve made more friends now, met other people like them, or suddenly realised that they can actually run. I just really hope that it continues to grow enough to reach the people who are interested in running who are just a bit curious. 

I want to be able to know that it helped somebody. I want it to continue to be a safe space, continue to be an inclusive space, a welcoming space, and I want people to feel fulfilled when they come. Fulfilled with the things they’ve achieved. It’s not necessarily the finish line feeling. I want people to walk away with that self-satisfaction that you can do hard things, you can survive hard things, you can challenge yourself, and you’ll grow from it and you’ll love it.”