The outdoors club bringing faith and nature together for Muslim women
At Sisters Countryside Club, women are taking up the reins and exploring activities such as horse riding that can often feel inaccessible
A line of horses and riders make their way along a woodland trail in Ruislip Woods, north-west London, on a bright morning in late September. Until today, 29-year-old Mallika Hoque had never ridden a horse.
“When do you normally get the chance to go horse riding?” she says. “Growing up in east London, there weren’t many opportunities to do something like this, so I thought, why not try it?”
Hoque is part of Sisters Countryside Club, a group founded by outdoors enthusiast Ayan Abdullahi in May 2026 to bring Muslim women together through sunnah activities such as horse riding.
“It’s not that Muslim women don’t want to try these activities or sports,” Abdullahi, 31, says. “Sometimes they don’t feel safe, don’t know where to start or simply don’t want to go alone. It’s about creating a space where they feel confident to try, and know I want them to know that it’s OK for us to take up space too.”
Sisters Countryside Club has held 20 events since its launch, including walking with alpacas, archery classes and hikes in the Lake District. There are now around 4,000 people in its network.
The events being solely for women “makes these experiences much more accessible”, says Hoque. “You see an activity in the group chat and can just sign up and try something you might never have thought of doing.”
The events are ticketed and Abdullahi organises the transport, prayer stops and halal food options, making sure that the activities are suitable for modest dressers. For horse riding, that meant confirming women could ride safely in abayas and wear hijabs beneath helmets.
“I pick venues based on whether they can accommodate our needs. It’s not about whether they’re Muslim-owned or not,” Abdullahi says.
Meeting her horse at Ruislip Park Stables, Hoque says: “I was nervous at first, but seeing so many other women trying it for the first time too made it less intimidating.”
Abdullahi adds that building confidence is one of the main aims of the club. “Sometimes we decide we won’t be good at something before we’ve even tried it,” she says. “I want women to leave thinking, ‘Actually, I can do this.’”
Another attendee, Sabiha Tarafdar, says she has long been fascinated by the women she sees in videos online riding horses in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. She had heard them describe the bond between horse and rider, but never fully understood it until now.
“You slowly build a connection with the horse. After a couple of minutes, I felt myself relax and you begin to understand each other’s movements until eventually it feels like you become one. I’d heard people describe that connection before, but today I actually felt it,” Tarafdar says.
For Tarafdar, that connection also has a spiritual significance. Horse riding had appealed to her partly because of its association with the sunnah. “As a Muslim, I’ve always seen horse riding as a sunnah sport, and I’ve always found horses really majestic,” she says.
“I did so much dhikr while I was on the horse. I was amazed that you can sit on this animal and it knows what to do, that it can feel and react to your body, feel your heartbeat. I would never have experienced that connection if I hadn’t actually got on the horse today.”
Being outdoors offers Tarafdar a different way of experiencing her faith. “I don’t think we spend enough time in Allah’s creation. It’s important to connect with it rather than simply walking past it.”
The relationship between faith and nature is also central to Abdullahi’s vision. “There is a verse in the Qur’an that asks us to look at the sky and the mountains and reflect on how they were created,” she says. “When you live in a city, surrounded by buildings and screens, you can forget to stop and look at Allah’s creation. Being out in the countryside brings you back to that.”
Horse riding brings those elements together. “You step into the woodlands, into the forests, and you’re immersed in nature doing a prophetic activity with a horse,” Abdullahi says. “It’s so quiet in there, your nervous system just feels regulated again.”
