Privacy is a legacy feature. We gave it up years ago in exchange for free cloud storage and the ability to see what people we hated in high school had for breakfast. Now, the final frontier of the private self—the spiritual life—has been officially absorbed into the content machine.

Zaid Darbar recently posted a photo from Medina. In it, he’s with his wife, Gauahar Khan. They’re celebrating Iftar. The caption is simple: "My Pyaari." It’s a sweet sentiment. It’s also a high-performing asset in the attention economy. For the uninitiated, "Pyaari" means "beloved" or "lovely." In the world of Instagram metrics, it means engagement.

We’ve reached a point where the sacred is just another backdrop for the Grid. Medina is a city of profound quiet and historical weight. But through the lens of a smartphone, it looks suspiciously like a very expensive lifestyle set. The lighting is perfect. The outfits are curated. The intimacy is broadcast to millions before the date has even been swallowed to break the fast.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn't a critique of faith. It’s a critique of the hardware we use to document it. There is a specific kind of friction that occurs when you try to balance a $1,200 iPhone 15 Pro Max while performing a ritual that is supposed to be about shedding worldly ego. It’s the modern paradox. You travel thousands of miles to find a connection with the divine, but you spend half the time checking if the 5G signal is strong enough to upload a Reel.

The tech industry has spent the last decade convincing us that if a moment isn’t captured, it didn’t happen. If the "Pyaari" isn't tagged, does the love even exist? Darbar and Khan are professionals at this. They know how to play the algorithm. They understand that "authentic" moments are the most valuable currency on the market. But authenticity is a funny thing when it’s framed by a social media team or filtered through a platform designed to trigger dopamine hits.

Let’s talk about the cost. Not the spiritual cost, but the actual overhead. A luxury pilgrimage package to Medina during Ramadan can easily clear $5,000 per person. Add in the roaming data charges—because God forbid you wait for the hotel Wi-Fi to share your devotion—and you’re looking at a very expensive digital footprint. It’s a niche market: the Halal Influencer. It’s a billion-dollar industry built on the idea that piety can be aspirational.

The "Coffee Shop" reality of this is grittier than the polished photos suggest. Behind every "My Pyaari" post is the stress of a dying battery. It’s the annoyance of a stranger walking through your shot. It’s the frantic hunt for a power bank in a crowded courtyard. We’ve turned the holiest sites on earth into content farms, and we’ve done it because we’re terrified of being alone with our thoughts for more than ten seconds.

The algorithm doesn't care about your soul. It cares about your retention rate. It wants to know how many people lingered on that photo of Zaid and Gauahar. It wants to know if "My Pyaari" triggers more comments than a standard "Ramadan Mubarak." The platform is a hungry ghost that needs to be fed every sunset.

There used to be a wall between the public and the private. Tech didn’t just break that wall; it ground it into dust and sold it back to us as a feature. Now, our most intimate terms of endearment are used as SEO-friendly captions. We’re watching a couple celebrate a religious milestone, but we’re also watching a brand activation for a lifestyle that 99 percent of the audience can’t afford.

It’s all very pretty. The architecture of Medina is breathtaking. The sentiment of calling your partner "beloved" is genuinely nice. But there’s a cold, silicon reality underneath the warm glow of the filter. We are increasingly unable to experience anything without wondering how it will look on a screen.

As the sun sets over the desert and the data packets fly across the globe, you have to wonder about the trade-off. We’ve traded the mystery of the internal life for the validation of a blue-check comment section.

Does a prayer still count if the upload fails?