Islam as Business: The Buying and Selling of Religion

I recently announced a paid course on Iqbal’s Reconstruction. This piece represents a few of my thoughts as I contended with the ethical dilemmas of monetizing knowledge

Unless one is the most unpleasant sort of materialist, it is difficult to imagine the human being as nothing more than a very intelligent animal. Consciousness is not math beholding itself; the human being is not simply an ape with a more advanced processor chip. There is something distinctly spiritual about consciousness. It is as if all of nature stands beyond the walls of the secrets of existence; it is the human being alone, when he advances beyond the primitivity of the animal mind, who gains entry within the gates of being itself.

The human being is an animal; and, yet, he is more than an animal. He is body, heart, and soul – not distinct, not the same, but three parts entangled with one another in a way that makes it impossible to separate each from the other. Of the peculiarities of the human, then, is that emphasis on one part of his nature over others allows it to grow beyond its healthy limit, to obscure all other facets, to imprison them in the dungeons of suppressed vitality.

The core of capitalism as an ideology, which is built on the foundation of reducing the human to animal, to strip him of his mind and relegate his existence to nothing more than a collection of wants driven by need and greed, empowers the animal in man to overcome the spiritual entirely, until he is driven purely by instinct. Capitalism, then, is the most heinous of self-fulfilling prophecies: it suppresses the spiritual and moral, gives dominance to the animal, and, then evidences the truth of its proposition by pointing at the fully animalized human of its own creation.

The reason materialist capitalism sees the world as dominated by animalism is not because that is the only possibility of human consciousness; it is because capitalism has created it.

The theology of European modernity is Materialism; its governance is Liberalism; and its economics is Capitalism. If one does not tear down this triumvirate of Lāt, Manāt, and ʿUzzā and proclaim the rule of the one true God over the heart of man, the world will remain in the grips of idolatry masquerading as piety:

In the West, especially in the Western Hemisphere, we are told that Islam must become a business to survive. Indeed, prior to the complete commodification of Islam, the situation for our religious leaders had become quite bleak. Between board-structured governance, donation-based financing, and the general antipathy of the general populace to fund religious learning, teaching, and scholarship, the average Alim and Imam lived a difficult life – often well within sharʿī conditions for impoverishment.

And, then, a revolution occurred within the Muslim ecosystem that experimented with a terrifying proposition: in a completely capitalized environment, the commodification of Islam is the only mechanism for generating its value.

The initial experiments were modest and well-intentioned. Soon, however, the entire ecosystem became a marketplace of buying and selling religion like a stock traded on Wall Street. What was lost, however, was an important consideration: are there some things whose commodification is inherently immoral and leads to societal degradation?

Before continuing, it’s important to pause and consider the difference between accepting money for a service and turning that service into a commodity. Capitalism only recognizes complete commodification, but there are other models by which services can be rendered for payment. To understand this, let us consider two different scenarios.

Consider Qari One who teaches Quran to young kids. The Qari lives in a locality where $80,000 USD is the median income for him to afford a respectable life. The Qari sets his rate at $45 an hour and teaches eight to ten hours a day, splitting time between group classes in the masjid, teaching in a taḥfīẓ program, and private tutoring. If someone can’t pay, he either teaches them in his spare time or incorporates him into the group classes at no cost. If someone asks for a discount, the Qari has already kept his hourly rate higher than strictly necessary to ensure that he can give discounts where he needs to. And, for a few hours on Saturday, he and his fellow Qaris teach a free class for underprivileged kids.

In this model, the Qari lives a respectable life; he accepts payment for teaching; and he does what he can to ensure that knowledge is not gate-kept behind a paywall. Let’s consider Qari two.

Qari two has a beautiful voice, and he began posting Quran recitation on TikTok and Instagram. Over time, he grew his following and became an influencer. Qari two decided to leverage that influence and monetize his followers. He announces a tajwid or Quran course, but there is no set value limit to how much he would like to extract from his followers. He will make as much money as he can, and he will let the market decide his ‘value.’

His first 4-week course is announced at $100, and it fills up. His second is announced at $200, and it fills up. He continuously raises his prices until he finds market equilibrium: with the right marketing language that creates immense FOMO and aggrandizes the offering in the course, he can charge $500 per course. He announces 5 sessions for 25 people each, and they sell out. Qari two makes over $60,000 in the span of a month.

As his fame grows, he is invited to around the country for fundraising dinners and events. He continuously raises his honorarium rate until he is making tens of thousands of dollars per year on reciting engagements. Qari two is making close to a half a million dollars a year by the end of his first few years of monetization.

What differentiates the two? And why is Qari two a profiteer, when both Qari one and two are accepting payments for their service? The answer lies not in the act of accepting payments; rather, it is that Qari one views teaching Quran as an essential communal service while Qari two views Quran as a commodity.

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There are two pillars of commodification: profit motive and pricing mechanics. To argue which comes first is to argue chicken and egg; they are interrelated and connected in such a way where one generates the other no matter which comes first.

The first pillar of commodification is profit motive, which is distinct from the simple act of accepting payment. Profit motive is born from the principle that the product or service I have should be used as a means for extracting as much monetary value as I can possibly gain from it. Qari one does not have a profit motive; he has a subsistence motive. Qari two, however, has no upper limit to what he is willing to make on Quran. He is willing to let the market decide how much value it places on Quran, and he will take as much of that value as he can.

The obvious problems with this are as follows:

1. The intention for teaching Quran must be to perform an essential service to the Muslim community. It cannot be making profit. The rule of thumb for differentiating the two is the reason why someone is turned away from the service.

a. It can be said that both Qari one and two turn students away. This is true, but the motive for turning them away differs: Qari one turns students away because of time constraints; Qari two turns them away because of financial choice. Qari one cannot teach more students without sacrificing the quality of instruction for the rest of the students due to reduction in his energy and concentration; Qari two can teach more students, but he chooses not to in order to maintain his price equilibrium.

2. Religious knowledge is an essential service for the health of society. Scarcity of religious knowledge creates religious illiteracy and spiritual illness. The commodification of essential services creates environments where supply and demand mechanics determines who receives benefit and who does not.

The second mechanism of commodification is the use of supply and demand mechanics to determine price. The basic principle of price equilibrium based on supply and demand is that certain people get priced out of a service, either because they cannot afford it or they don’t value it enough to choose it. This creates three connected problems:

1. It creates a culture of learning where knowledge “belongs” to those who can pay for it while the underprivileged are the recipients of benefaction in the form of “scholarships.”

2. Those who are not eligible for scholarships but can’t afford the programs (either due to other financial obligations or paying for many programs at once) are priced out of benefiting from knowledge

3. Those who don’t value religious knowledge and literacy are the ones most in need of it. Imagine pricing out the sick from medical care and only providing medical care for those who are well. Those who are willing to pay for religious literacy are most often the ones who need it least. Thus, supply/demand mechanics creates an environment where religion becomes a lifestyle brand for those who already value it, and those who need it most are disincentivized from pursuing it.

As I think about my own future, I am struggling to see the path forward. It is true that in a completely capitalized society, only commodities have inherent value. The logic, then, would lead us to a conclusion that, for Islam to have value, it must be commodified. I don’t believe this is accurate, however. Capitalists have learned the art of creating a market for a good or service; the commodification of it, however, is a separate choice detached from market creation.

I believe that it is entirely possible to create a market for without completely commoditizing Islam, sacred knowledge, and religious services. The key is to abandon profit motives and supply/demand mechanics. Religious leaders and institutions must follow all the best practices for developing markets for their services, but the pricing mechanism must shift to focus on cost-based pricing over profit-motive pricing.

It is true that there will be a lot of money left on the table – but that is part of the ṣadaqah of knowledge. Every dollar not extracted from the community is a dollar given by the Alim, Qari, and Imam in ṣadaqah. If the religious leaders cannot give knowledge in ṣadaqah, he cannot complain that his community does not support him through ṣadaqah.

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