Rather than post the weekly open thread that is commonplace on many blogs and invite readers to comment, we thought it might be more interesting to post a topic for open discussion. Each Friday, we will pick a particular issue or question and post it up for discussion and debate.
This week, the topic is:
It is often said that Muslims should buy from Muslim businesses. It is better, the argument goes, that our money stays within the Muslim community and we support our co-religionists even if it might mean paying slightly more or settling for less in other respects. However, an opposing argument says that we should buy the product or service that best suits our needs in terms of cost, quality and aesthetic value regardless of who produced it.
So, what do you think?
49 comments ↓
Assalamu ‘alaykum,
I make judgment calls as I go along with a mix of both. If something is good quality but perhaps a slight bit more expensive then insha’Allah I will try and support Muslim efforts and businesses. But if something is not good quality or it’s wayyyyyy more expensive, then I won’t.
If shop A is selling a product for $100 and shop B is selling it for $120 then, ceteris paribus, a decision to buy from shop B means you believe, effectively, that your $20 is better served in the bank account of shop B than it is in your own. Of course, when one introduces religious dimensions it becomes a question of whether one thinks the feeling and/or spiritual reward of shopping with a co-religionist is worth $20 (keeping in mind that there may be additional costs such as travel, etc).
AoA!
You might be onto something here.
See when we compromise on any of the 2 you mentioned i.e. Price or quality, can we look a little ahead and see what else happens apart from a Brother or a Sister benefiting?
We are conciously promoting a culture where the bar is constantly going to be lowered where we accept less and less …all because somebody (who does not deserve it considering that they cannot come up with a quality product) might benefit.
I would plump for going for the best in the market and if there are Brothers/Sisters who can rise up to the challenge and make a product that is better and lower priced why just me, the whole shebang will be buying it off him/her.
I guess it’s all got to do with what we really value. I would argue that what you are suggesting (an incestous relatinship between the Ummah) has already been going on to an extent and the results are there for us to see.
Can we now at least wake up and do the right thing??
As a general rule it is my opinion that the interests of Muslims is served by buying based on quality, price and service alone and only in exceptional circumstances by favouring Muslim business.
My reasons are
1. Buying Muslim is anti-competative, it may even be haram if it is a law as it seeks to impose a regulation on markets beyond the goals and purposes sharia. It also reduces the competitive forces that improve both price, quality service and innovation. Without these there is stagnation and a sense of entitlement amongst Muslims
2. It is discriminatory. we are a brotherhood of principles not of ethnicity. Our Islam is what we do, not who we are as a people. We would be offended if non-Muslim business started to boycott us. This happened in Mecca before he hijra and was a collective punishment to all people
3. The main argument for buying Muslim beyond helping a brother is that one can be certain of its “HALALNESS” this is untrue and preferential buying may encourage the very opposite. This is issue is one of regulation of markets rather than buying Muslim
4. The history of such practices is overwhelmingly negative, a prime example being the halal meat scams run in many eating places in the west.
5. It adds an obligation that is not present in religion (to buy Muslim only or preferentially) and must therefore be resisted. It is not part of the Sunnah as far as is my limited understanding of the Sunnah.
6. It encourages rent seeking in the Muslim mercantile class
7. The precedent is carried over into other aspects of Muslim life
I don’t think one should “buy Muslim” to the point of accepting poorer quality. It basically comes down to: all things being equal (price, quality, etc) buy Muslim for the reasons suggested in the question
Even when Muslim business vs Muslim business, you have many who tend to support the business that in turn supports the community (Islamic Center, etc) with its donations.
Very good comments by Baybers above. I agree 100%.
Nadeem, I’m not sure if those comments are directed at me but I wasn’t suggesting people should ‘buy Muslim’ as a matter of blind policy. Rather, I was simply pointing out the truism that if you choose to pay the Muslim pin maker $120 for the same pins you could have bought from the non-Muslim pin maker for $100 then, ceteris paribus, you have just said that you would rather see this $20 in someone else’s pocket to your own. If not, you would have just paid $100 to the non-Muslim and kept the $20 for yourself.
As for my personal view, then I don’t believe that communities are necessarily strengthened by this idea of ‘buying Muslim’ or trying to somehow keep the money within the community (something I hear frequently). Firstly, it is impossible to keep the money within the community so it’s largely an illusion. The Muslim pin maker is still buying his metal from the non-Muslim metals vendor, buying his electricity from the non-Muslim utility company and buying his tools from non-Muslim tool manufacturers. He may spend some of that $120 with other Muslim businesses but they themselves will also spend some of that outside the community so eventually it just dissipates despite the best efforts of those involved.
Secondly, it may actually have the opposite effect and harm the community because people are making decisions based not on what is the most efficient outcome for them and their business but they are constraining that by these religious considerations. To give an example, if the pin maker says he will only buy from Muslim metal merchants then he might end up buying his metal at a higher price than had he decided to also deal with non-Muslim merchants. Therefore, he ends up having to sell his pins at a higher price than his colleague down the road who has a lower cost structure because he has been buying his raw materials based purely on economic considerations. So who gets the most business and therefore who prospers the most? If this is extrapolated out to an entire community then the results could be devastating (assuming everyone actually stuck to the ‘buy Muslim’ or ‘buy Scientologist’ or ‘buy Whatever’ credo).
Thirdly, as Voltaire and others have observed, trade between religious faiths leads to improved relations and peaceful coexistence because it leads to mutual dependency. The Muslim pin maker is unlikely to attack his Jewish metal merchant because they both depend in some way on each other for their livlihood. Therefore, I think the more Muslims deal with non-Muslims (and vice versa) the better it is for all involved.
Lastly, as Baybers has said, competition leads to improvements in quality, price and technology. If people believe they can always depend on the ‘Muslim dollar’ simply because of shared faith then there is little incentive for them to really improve their service or product. If, however, they know that they are, like the non-Muslim vendor down the road, competing based primarily on the quality of their product or service, then they will naturally want to improve it so as to remain competitive in that particular market. One can see the effects of this lack of competition in some areas, such as Muslim food outlets. Although the proliferation of halal food places has forced many places to change, in the past when such places were scarce, they were often of substandard appearance and cleanliness.
When I visited Melbourne earlier in the year I was disgusted by some of the halal food shops on Sydney Rd. It’s like they thought that if a halal sign was hung on the window then they didn’t need to clean the toilets.
We should support our brothers and sisters in Islam even if it means we have to pay more. It’s charity (sadaqah) for you not a waste of money so Allah will reward you for that. There is a lot of islamophobia and so most non Muslims don’t want to deal with Muslims. If we don’t support them then nobody will so I am very disappointed with some of the things said here. It’s not all about money people!!
Hus says,
“There is a lot of islamophobia and so most non Muslims don’t want to deal with Muslims.”
Poppycock! Most infidels couldn’t give two hoots what the religion is of the guy selling them their newspapers or milk. I can’t believe you think this is a real issue. All people care about is that they are getting a good deal and good service, nothing more nothing less.
For me customer service and quality is what I look for when I go shopping, Religion is the last thing I look at. What Baybers said is correct, if we simply shop at a place because they are Muslim then that establishment will never seek to better itself since it sees that it “owns” a section of the market.
I have seen this in some shops that think they “own” sections of the Lebanese community in Melbourne’s Northern Suburbs.
Just go along Sydney road and check out some of the “halal” restaurants.
One word. Tibas.
Baybers,
In resposne to your reasons for not making a Muslim business a consideration in purchasing decisions:
Anti-competitive behaviour generally relates to the behaviour of firms, not to behaviour of consumers. If a consumer prefers to purchase goods/services from a Muslim business, then there is nothing anti-competitive in acting on such preferences. By analogy, one could not argue that buying Mars Bars rather than bananas is somehow anti-competitive if the consumer prefers Mars Bars. Another analogy: some Jewish people refuse to purchase suits from Hugo Boss because the company made uniforms for the Nazi Schutzstaffel in the 1940s. Is this anti-competitive behaviour or the expression of deeply held personal preferences?
Further, to assert that some consumer behaviour is anti-competitive is to invite regulation of that behaviour to enforce an environment condusive to a more “competitive” outcome. That would seem to imply some kind of government imposition on the behaviour of at least some Muslims (e.g. purchasing bans, persuasive advertising, special consumption taxes, or what have you). If that were the case, then one could just as easily (more easily) argue that basic consumer freedoms of a particular subset of the community would be systematically curtailed to achieve a secular end (even if wrapped in a pseudo-religious “justification”).
Again, this is a non sequitur when referring to non-coerced consumer behaviour. (And even if one were to extend the analysis to consumers, as the number of both buyers and sellers grows among a Muslim sub-market, the above benefits would manifest themselves anyway. The outcomes are an empirical matter, not a matter of a priori dictation of consumer behaviour irrespective of the number of buyers and sellers.)
Why are you implicity identifying Muslims with “ethnicity” here? That seems to be a simple category mistake.
As above, you are conflating the behaviour of a business with the preferences of a consumer.
Obviously almost no-one believes that merely because a seller is Muslim this makes it certain the commodity is halal. It thus seems disingenuous to present it as a “main argument” when almost no-one regards it as even a minor, reasonable argument. And given this, the remainder of the sentence (”may encourage the very opposite”) is redunant. (Even if it weren’t rendered redundant by the faulty premise, it is difficult see how one could sustain the evidence-free assertion that Muslims would tend to become congenital liars when dealing with other Muslims if people purchased goods on the mere assumption, as they do now, that the goods were halal.)
I’ve never seen any serious evidence of this. (I don’t count anecdotal stories as “seious evidence.”) I’m not saying the assertion is not true, I would just like to see some evidence for it. Could you supply titles of some studies that lay bare this “overwhelmingly negative” evidence? Thanks.
Obligation is too strong a word. Perhaps this term is only being used for rhetorical effect. There are certainly imperative concepts that are less strong, such as mandub and mubah.
Really? That X is permissable or possible under law for Muslims does not “encourage” it unless one assumes Muslims to be, at their core, naturally selfish and avaricious. Is this true?
…unless, of course, it isn’t. Again, this is an empirical matter, not something that one could determine with any degree of certainty based on personal speculation.
All that said, I have no objection to informing people of cases where it would be good to purchase from a Muslim establishment if the owners contributed in some good way, with good intenton, to the community (e.g. used the profits to pay for a son’s Islamic education so that in the future he could serve the community as a properly trained hodja who possesses knowledge of the local adaat).
I see no virtue, however, in making niggardly self-centred calculations in terms of price and quantity. To my mind, if one’s primary concern in one’s purchases is “what’s in it for me, me, me,” one’s Islamic intentions are upside down, so to speak. There are almost always more important interpersonal considerations than saving a few cents or getting a marginally better quality lemon for oneself.
This is a good point. People should be allowed to act according to their preferences regardless of how agreeable or how sensible those preferences might be. However, if we accept that a person of faith A has the right to prefer buying goods from other persons of faith A, then does the same argument hold true in employment? i.e. does a person have the right to making hiring decisions based purely on these preferences? In both cases, it is an exchange: the former an exchange of money for goods or services; and the latter an exchange of money for labour.
I don’t have a hard and fast rule about buying or not buying ‘Muslim’. Each situation will generally end up with a different answer.
In most things I’ll probably buy based on quality/service/price.
However, I don’t think there is anything wrong with anyone buying specifically from a Muslim over a non-Muslim. I think people make choices on who to buy from from all sorts of reasons and why shouldn’t religion be an acceptable reason?
Sometimes I pay a higher price based on good customer service. I could go elsewhere and get things cheaper but if I have experienced good customer service I may go out of my way to buy from them because I want to encourage a business that is good to it’s customers. The same goes for the opposite. There are shops I’ll never buy from based on previous bad customer service etc.
One of the main problems I’ve noticed with buying ‘Muslim’ is the idea that things can be of a lower standard than elsewhere for e.g. some of the halal food shops and their cleanliness and service. Or that people will be slack with deadlines because they ‘know’ you. This isn’t just limited to Muslims but basically to anyone you know.
The only places that I do specifically go out to buy ‘Muslim’ would be halal food places and that is because I can only get halal food there
I think who you buy from can become an issue where you can receive reward based on your intention as with any other normal everyday deed. If I buy from a Muslim based on the intention that I want to help this Muslim out then I think that intention is something that can change that act to become something recommended.
Basically, I don’t think anyone should be condemned for who they buy from and their reasons for it unless those reasons are haram.
E, thank you for your detailed response, far be it for me to argue with an economist, but I will give it a shot
I should make the point that a business being Muslim does influence my decision to buy, but it is the lowest consideration when weighed against all the others (quality, service, price etc..). Nor am I saying that Muslims should buy on similar principles, they should be free to buy on whatever whim takes their fancy. For example Hus buying inefficiently from a business and expecting that the inflated prices he is paying is some kind of poorly directed sadaqa, (i.e. sadaqa to Muslim business, rather than strictly trade).
As for your points,
1. Buying Muslim as a strong or overriding preference is anti-competative in the Muslim/Halal market. This is because the market is small and closed in many ways, businesses have disproportionate influence in it, which is further magnified when Muslims feel obliged to purchase from them. The market acts as an oligopoly where sellers collude to increase prices (e.g. halal butchers) where it should be an oligopsony with a small number of consumers and a wide group of sellers. It is pleasing to see that the halal/muslim market is increasingly becoming like the latter as Muslims abandon the principle of Muslim first at almost any cost.
2. Muslim preferential purchasing is discrimination based on religion and if it were applied to us be would be outraged. Can one seriously advocate Non-Muslims avoiding Muslim businesses in favour of Christian or other firms? We would be howling all the way to the anti-discrimination board and the greens party
3. Quite the contrary every halal butcher one comes across makes the claim that their meat is halal because they are upright Muslim and one cannot trust non-Muslims in this regard, although the evidence is strongly to the contrary. Example; The halal food authority in the UK
http://www.halalfoodauthority.co.uk/front.html
for many years stopped firms such as Tescos from selling halal meat because they thought that non-Muslim could not guarantee that halal meat from source to consumer. But after repeatedly finding that halal butchers were mixing meat (indeed they found this to be normative rather than exceptional) the head of the food authority embraced mainstream grocers and has not looked back since. He said that Muslim b utchers overwhelmingly mixed a small amount of halal meat with “C grade” meat (pet food quality).
http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/arti.....oryid=9045
http://www.warmwell.com/hayunes.htm
http://www.warmwell.com/dirtymeat.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_.....294837.stm
This is not anecdotal rumour but rather the opinion of the UK halal food standards authority> I am sorry that you are not aware of this, but this does not prevent it from being fact.
By widening the number of suppliers and by bringing halal meat from the cottage industry to the mainstream it is much more likely that this sort of scandal is less likely to occur.
4. When one supports inefficient sheltered industries with tariffs, trade barriers and in this case an unwritten obligation of patronage it does encourage them to be lax etc. remember how much you paid for your OS telephone calls before telecom was opened up to the market, or how much it cost to travel on government run Qantas. This is not because qantas and telecom were run by bad/selfish people , rather that their unscutinized place in the market protected them from having to think about being more efficient, so my ticket from darwin to adelaide now costs 300 dollars rather than the 1200 dollars it did 30 years ago. Perhaps I was giving the other $900 as sadaqa to qanatas?
5. Although I did not want to mention it, the other aspect of this sheltered workshop mentality is carried over into the masjid where we tolerate Muslim leaders whose income and performance is unscrutinized because their is a culture of supporting ones Muslim brother in whatever he is doing regardless of the quality of his performance, that is as much as I wish to say on this particular point.
I should make the point that I was privileged to pay the extra $900 to Qantas, that it went to the government who were likely to use it better than me. I would have only wasted it anyway on something decadent and self indulgent.
AS
Hope all are well. Thank you for taking blogging to another level make Allah {swt} reward your creative effort.
As pertains to the topic at hand it is one of personal interest so I hoped to build on what was said.
The idea of collective economics, which is what is alluded by the question to according my reading of it is a virtuous enterprise and one that becomes necessary for not only survival but rather for actual cooperative communal effort. In fact, it to some degree although it could be argued not, was the spirit of Adam Smith in that he did see some degree of cooperation to be capitalized on.
Collective economics and late Capitalism dont have to be at odds that is my point as there is a need for communal and individual interests being catered to if we are to see productive economy.
Collective economics is the cornerstone of community building and what we need by necessity as Muslims in the West but and there is a great but have we fulfilled the conditions for good collective economics, conditions which safeguard the right of the individual and well as that of the community?
Many muslims today don’t safeguard contracts and neither do they contribute a value-ridden or respectable product.
So, as all my ranting we have to nurture this idea and preach about it but before doing so we need some Ihsan, we need quality work and goods whether it be plumbing or buying food etc. we need quality. If the Japanese can do it than we can. But before than be aware of the corrupt merchant, Allahu Mustaan.
It all amounts to theory and good practice.
Thanks much
Abul-Hussein
Shaukani.wordpress.com
Thetranslators.wordpress.com
Australia heavily urges Australian consumers to buy goods that are Australian-made. I can understand why, but I do think there’s an element of guilt working there, as though it’s a sin to buy something that wasn’t made in Australia. So many of our goods are made in China anyway.
So blind faith in the marketplace? No thank you. It would be a generalisation to say that a lot of Muslims don’t do things professionally, but from personal experience, that is the case, just as many non-Muslims may be unprofessional. So in the end I look to quality and convenience, not the fact that one seller may be Muslim. Generally, good business people will succeed if they’re doing things the right way, so let his/her product/business speak for itself.
So I don’t think it should be a factor at all. It’s a dangerous way to think, particularly when living in a western society.
This mentality is strongest when it comes to almsgiving, which I can understand, as that certainly is our duty as Muslims, and that is real charity. But even then, I don’t see the wrong in giving charity to non-Muslim organisations when the need arises. Imagine if all those western countries didn’t donate money for the tsunami because they felt that money was better spent on non-Muslims?
There are certainly collective obligations or communal needs. For example, some of the fard kifaya obligations, such as providing Muslim burial services or, perhaps, the provision of halal meat.
However, the question then becomes: what is the best way to ensure these communal needs are met and met in the best and most effective way possible? Although the needs may be communal, I would suggest the most effective way to ensure they are met is through individual action. To borrow from the well known saying of Adam Smith, it is not from the benevolence of the halal butcher that we can expect our halal dinner but from his regard to his own interest.
If a halal butcher is charging too much for the quality of meat he is providing, then eventually other butchers will enter the market too. As the market becomes more competitive, the price of a particular unit of halal meat will approach the marginal cost (although it may never reach it due to the inelasticity of demand in the case of products we are religiously obligated to buy and consume).
One need only look at their local shopping mall to see that this has been largely true in the case of many other products. Mobile phones, for example. However, the situation seems to be sometimes complicated with Muslims because of the religious dimension.
For example, I have heard on many occasions Muslims denounce new Muslim-owned businesses that open up in the vicinity of other Muslim owned businesses selling comparative products as if they are doing something wrong.
This same attitude carries across to religious activities as well where new organisations often suffer from a barrage of hostile complaints from the existing organisations about ‘destroying unity’, ‘causing fitnah’ and so on. Instead people should consider that, firstly, the new organisation is meeting an unmet need or underserviced need and, secondly, that competiton should improve the quality of religious services (including da’wah) as much as it has improved the quality and cost of mobile phones, long distance travel, and LCD monitors.
There are some Muslim businesses that I almost always buy from preferentially but this is because they provide an excellent product, good service at a reasonable price and they pay their workers a reasonable wage and as such I am happy to support them
such as :
http://www.shukr.co.uk/Merchan.....iate=awgs1
(which I have no financial interest in)
Sara’s point is also compelling, part of an integrated world is to buy and sell from one another and to do so with integrity and excellent manners.
I agree up to this point. However, I would think that the very definition of reasonableness is that a worker is willing, without coercion, to work for that price. Therefore, in the absence of slavery, all wages can be considered ‘reasonable’.
There is a lot of complaining but nobody has explained how we get Muslim shops to improve.
Two approaches spring immediately to mind (not mutually exclusive):
1. Offer advice and feedback. If they are behaving unislamically, we can correct them and offer suggestions;
2. Offer feedback by withholding our custom and going to the shops that do offer good value/service.
Gven most shops are driven by the profit motive and are not, despite how some might present themselves when one attempts to bargain with them, purely atruistic enterprises operating only to please Allah, (2) might ultimately prove more effective.
It is also important to remember that things are not as bad as they once were. As I wrote earlier in the comments, there has been a marked improvement in quality and quantity — particularly visible in terms of halal food outlets — and this will improve over time as the usual competitive forces work their magic and business responds.
“I agree up to this point. However, I would think that the very definition of reasonableness is that a worker is willing, without coercion, to work for that price. Therefore, in the absence of slavery, all wages can be considered ‘reasonable’.”
It appalls me that someone would think this way. People struggle and take what they can get, and sometimes are paid less than a living wage for a lot of work. I’m willing to bet you’ve never had to work a low tier job to pay bills in your life with this kind of attitude. I consider “work for this penny I’ll toss you or starve” a form of coercion.
Firstly, employees sell their labour to employers in a market that displays similar characteristics to the market for any other product. As employers use labour as an input in the production of other goods and services, the amount they can pay for a particular employee’s labour is largely constrained by the value of that employee’s labour to their business. Employers will, however, behave like all other buyers and seek out the most value for their money. And prospective employees are free to agree or refuse to sell at that price.
However, as observers, we can only say that if a person freely and without real coercion from the state (such as the threat of violence against his person) agrees to sell his or her labour at a particular price then that is, for that person and given their circumstances, a ‘reasonable price’. Prices convey information and one of the messages they convey in this situation is that, for this particular person, the alternatives are worse than working for this price or in these conditions. It is for this reason that people in the third world continue to seek out sweat shops for employment because, for all their many problems, it sure beats starvation and death.
If it genuinely isn’t a ‘reasonable price’, meaning they are being underpaid, then that means implicitly that everyone else in similar roles and with similar skills is being paid more. If that is the case, then it means that other employers are also willing to pay more for people of equivalent skills. And that, in turn, means that it is only a matter of time before this employee will find alternative and more ‘reasonably paid’ work.
This may all be appalling to you — and I certainly don’t like the idea of people struggling or living in poverty — but what is your alternative?
(And, incidentally, I have worked in ‘low tier jobs’ before so please don’t make assumptions about what I haven’t done or what sort of background I may come from.)
I agree with DA. There are lots of people getting ripped off every day because they are desparate and so they take low pay work. The government should stop companies hiring them but they don’t care about the workers just big business because the workers don’t contribute to there political campaigns. Democrats, Republicans, whatever…
Hassan, what you have just described is a recipe for higher unemployment, more poverty and more suffering. As I said before, there has to be some sort of link between the cost of labour and productivity. You can’t tell companies they have to hire someone for $10 per hour to produce $5 worth of widgets an hour because, given a choice, they would rather not hire the person at all and the person who might have otherwise taken that job (as it is better than his current situation) is denied even that small incremental gain. Therefore, there is a risk that the law or policy you institute to help the people on the lowest rungs of society actually harms them.
Amir, that may be agreed upon, but doesn’t it say something unethical about us as Muslims that we participate in unethical practices - didn’t the Prophet say: ‘ py your workers before the sweat dries on his forehead’ and didn’t he treat all of his slaves, and enjoin other muslims to do so, as members of his household?
And is his practice not our Sunnah and paradigm, if you will, not Hayek?
Of course muslims should be practical and pragmatic, but not where that decision means exploiting people - and a hadith says that stinginess is a sign of hypocrisy, ie an unwillingness to pay a ‘living wage’ is not kindness, and someone who blamed market forces would be no different than the disbelievers who say, as the Qur’an says they say in Surah Ya-Sin: “Let Allah feed them.”
“and verily they are in great error.”
Amir,
A reasonable question. To accept the analogy as valid, one would first have to accept that the buying and selling of one’s ability to work is just the same, both ontologically and morally, as buying and selling a Mars Bar. That is, one would have to accept that ‘labour’ is a commodity like any other. I’m not convinced, and most labour market economists (even ‘mainstream/orthodox’ ones) aren’t convinced either, that this is the case. Ontologically, labour is inextricably ‘connected’ to its seller (the person of the worker), how the labour is treated (or mistreated) directly impacts on its seller, and the seller has a personal moral and psychological interest in this treatment, etc. Morally, it is generally held that there are certain norms of behaviour (associated with ‘dignity,’ ‘decent treatment,’ ‘respect,’ and ‘fairness’) that should be adhered to by the buyer in the purchase, use and disposal of labour (precisely because of its special ontology).
But leaving aside these mildly philosophical issues and instead assuming labour is merely a commodity like any other, then to my mind, the “employment-patronage” of Muslim employees by a Muslim employer would make sense and be reasonable if it intentionally aimed at the common good of society (maslaha) or served as an act of charity. For example, one could argue that it provides for the Australian common good if Muslim children are properly taught their deen, and that that requires properly qualified believers to teach them. In that case, discrimination on the part of an employer would not merely be practically necessary but morally desirable.
As I implied in the second last paragraph of my previous post, I see “buying Muslim” as a conditional practice - if a moral condition is met (and these days that involves some knowledge of particular circumstances and personal, on-the-spot ijtihad), then “discrimination” (or in other words, “selective” or “discerning” exchange) may in fact be a virtue. (
All that said, as far as I can tell, no-one here is suggesting “blind following,” so really this discussion is about details rather than fundamental differences. Discrimination for the sake of discrimination, as far as I can tell, is not advocated in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, or the traditions. The general principles that I am aware of regarding transactions are, briefly, (a) the leaving of those things which are forbidden, and then: (b) fairness, (c) mutual agreement, and (d) transparency in (i) exchange and (ii) dispute over exchange for all parties involved irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion.
Firstly, nobody has argued for stinginess, delaying payment to workers, or defended it. It’s self-evident that it is in the interests of a company to pay its staff well and look after them. Nor has anybody argued that Muslims shouldn’t feed the poor.
Secondly, the only points raised here are that prices convey information and that some people may prefer to work for less than the government-determined minimum wage than to be unemployed and be excluded from the labour market. Neither points are entirely controversial.
The only idea mentioned here (but please correct me if I’m wrong) that has its pedigree with F.A. Hayek is the observation that the price system communications information. What part of that observation goes against the Sunnah and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)?
People struggle and take what they can get, and sometimes are paid less than a living wage for a lot of work.
Don’t you see the irony of what you have just written here?
Dawud says, “……and someone who blamed market forces would be no different than the disbelievers who say, as the Qur’an says they say in Surah Ya-Sin: “Let Allah feed them.”
Is there another way of setting prices other than the market? Did The Prophet set a minimum wage for everyone in Medina?
This has been an entertaining and informative thread. It’s a pity it got derailed onto discussions of the minimum wage (an issue which even economists disagree on).
I find it more appalling that you would make assumptions about a person’s background like this. It all smacks of class bigotry and reverse snobbishness to me.
All Amir said was that we shouldn’t assume that people’s wages are unreasonable just because they are low. If people freely agree to work for a wage then why would you assume they are being ripped off?
Have you seen Bengalis cleaning the streets in Saudi for 300 SR a month (less than 80 dollars) ? Indonesian maids locked inside a home, with bars on the windows - when I asked about the bars, one told me: “Our workers will run away if we don’t have those?” - and when I asked him “If you treated them fairly, why would they want to run away?” - gave me silence as an answer….
So no, it’s not clear or obvious to everyone that treating your employees fairly is sound economic sense. The number of sweatshops, semi-legal workplaces in industrial countries, and the number of ‘work zones’ where environmental and workplace law don’t apply in Mexico and elsewhere increasingly suggests that the a significant number of employers don’t give a s*** about their employees.
If we purchase the materials made at such shops and factories, even though they may be of the best price quality (or may even be ‘muslim-owned’) we’re still participating in the haram… and I don’t care if the owner, muslim or not, excuses their “need” to move their factories there, pay their employees less, and ignore their rights, on the basis of ‘market forces’ - I think there will be a higher Judge.
See Sindbad’s page for a video on Indonesian sweatshops, for only a small picture of what takes place in the global “South”
Amir,
Any hope of restarting this debate on Muslim business has long vanished. The only avenue for amusement is to sink the slipper into Amir and his free market zealotry.
If there is absolute freedom to make contracts in respect of wages, then conceivably an employer may offer a very low price for labour. The worker who has to choose between unemployment and a very low wage is forced to that wage. Whilst it is not coercion, it may well be exploitation.
i.e. oppression through ones strengthened position in the marketplace .
In an Islamically run society the government would be required to intervene.
Awesome idea, dude! Let’s shut down the sweat shops because the workers don’t get paid American wages, have access to 501K plans and work long hours. Sure that will mean that these darkies have to go back to eating garbage and drinking drain water but hey that’s a small price to pay so Dawud doesn’t have to learn about economics.
There is a big problem with Muslim businesses giving you b-grade service when they find out you are a Muslim. If they stuff you up then you can’t do anything about it. If you sue them you will be accused of causing problems in the community. Unless you know for certain that the guy is 100% honest and good don’t go near them. Sad but true.
And in the example you have just provided what form what that intervention take? Would the government force the company to hire the person at a wage which the government arbitrarily decides is ‘appropriate’ even though the company might not want to hire the person at that rate?
I am not sure how the government could possibly intervene in this particular case without ending up oppressing the company by forcing it to do something that might not be in its best interests or the interests of its owners/shareholders.
Baybers,
As I said before, the “anti-competitiveness” of a market - in your example here, halal butcheries - does not lie with the preferences of the consumers, but rather with the lack of rival firms. In fact, you effectively pin-point the source in your next line:
Given that this is the case, the “solution” does not lie with Muslim consumers changing their preferences, but with eliminating artificial barriers to entry (if there are any). If barriers are removed, or if it comes to be known there are no serious barriers, then the “problem” would “solve” itself because more competitors will be attracted to the market and so prices will naturally incline towards a productively and allocatively efficient level.
Incidentally, I have no idea whether there is explicit collusion in, say, the Sydney halal butchery market. I wouldn’t have thought so, but that’s an empirical question (and a notoriously difficult one to prove beyond reasonable doubt). In explaining higher prices for halal meat in Sydney, rather than appealing to collusion, one could just as easily say it is due to a combination of (i) some degree of market-power (due to slight product differentiation and natual limits to demand) and (ii) higher total costs due to it being a bit more labour-intensive than non-halal meat production.
I’m not so sure about that, esp. in a benign form. For example, I don’t feel outraged when strict followers of Judaism feel obligated to make their homes kosher, which entails buying foodstuffs and various items from stores owned by observant Jews. Nor do I feel outraged by Greeks who insist on drinking only Greek coffee made by Greeks (because that’s the best type of coffee). Nor do I feel outraged by the “Buy New Zealand Made” campaign. Etc. Maybe I’m just not easily outraged. What would be offensive to me however, would be where a seller of an ordinary commodity refused to serve someone based purely on religious affiliation, race or ethnicity.
I was thinking more of Australia than the UK. Is there any evidence of this in the case of, say, Sydney halal butcheries in general?
And anyway, for the practices you have cited, depending on the criterion one is using for “halal,” one might well say the businesses themselves (which thus includes their products) are not halal at all because they are violating clear and basic rules of Islamically acceptable business practices. [Cf. al-Qur’an, 4:29, 5:8, 7:85, 83:1-6; Bukhari, Book 34; Muslim, Book 10; Abu-Dawud, Book 22.]
Precisely … which is why the issue of the discerning preferences of Muslim consumers is a moot point in the long-run.
Agreed, but as noted a few times now, consumers’ preferences are not barriers to entry per se. The consumers’ preferences in no way prevent new firms which produce better quality products at lower prices from entering the market. If anything, it encourages new firms to enter if preferences for good quality at low prices are not currently being met!
Well, that’s a whole other can o’ worms with its own particularities. Incidentally, this might be a case where some degree of government support (not control) might not go astray. For example, the Turkish community in Australia is far better organised than any other in this regard largely due to support from the Turkish government (…although some think the T. govt goes a bit beyond “support” into “regulation”, but that’s for another thread).
Even though I’m not supportive of the situation of Bengali workers in Saudi, the fact is that they choose to come to Saudi to work because the conditions in Saudi are better than back home. No-one has pointed a gun at them and forced them to go. The conditions of work for them are well known to them when they choose to go work there. After all they have been coming for 40 years. It is sad that their own countries employment situation is so bad that working the way they do in Saudi is preferable than going back home. I’m sure the Bengali bosses back in Bangladesh are not much better in their treatment of their workers either. The whole situation of poor workers is something that is sad.
The same goes for the maids. I know you think that just by treating maids well it would have a different outcome but I have heard way too many stories (including from Western expats (non-Muslim) who hired maids and thought by treating them well it would be better ended up with maids stealing from them, running away with a man etc. I remember reading a forum once about maids (I forgot where I think it was in UAE or was it Malaysia) the expats were talking about how they don’t let their Philipino maids go to Church on Sunday because this is where they get together and learn from each other on what to do to their employers. One man installed cameras in his house and caught his Indonesian maid boiling her underwear in water (this is a common magic that Indonesian maids do because apparently by having your employer drink it they will be good to you and be under your spell). There are people who abuse their rights as employers but there are just as many maids who have abused their situations and even people who would want to treat their maids well have ended up being scammed because they are perceived to be easy targets if they are nice.
It’s a sad situation overall.
The bars were probably there for security to stop people breaking in and he was just joking with you. Most Saudi homes don’t have bars on their windows or the windows of their worker’s homes.
These Bengalis are happy to clean our streets for 80 dollars because that 80 dollars is a LOT of money in their country and it’s more than they could earn if they cleaned Bengali streets. They might get treated badly by a minority of Saudis but apparently not badly enough to keep them away because each year so many of them apply for visas! How do you explain that???
Wow…After looking at this page, you people make me sick. You;re hypocrites with no compassion who gleefully glad-hand to give more excuses for the rich to exploit the poor. But hey, if we buy at “halal” businesses, it’s all cool then, right?
I hope you all find yourselves starving someday so you can appreciate just how black your hearts are.
Abdul Aziz al-Shammari wrote: “The bars were probably there for security to stop people breaking in and he was just joking with you.”
I agree. Bars on windows are common enough worldwide, and their usage is to keep people out, not in. My flat has bars on all our windows, including the back windows (despite the fact that we’re 8 stories up) and, no, we don’t have a maid.
“These Bengalis are happy to clean our streets for 80 dollars because that 80 dollars is a LOT of money in their country and it’s more than they could earn if they cleaned Bengali streets.”
Absolutely. Come to S’pore, and you’ll see similar scenes. We have tremendous numbers of men from South Asia who work in construction and housing estate maintenance. They work for a few years here to support themselves and their families back home, earning a wage in a country with a standard of living higher than what it is back home.
The problem with Dawud and DA is that they are driven by emotion not facts. They see pictures of people in sweatshops and think that the alternative is a nice air conditioned office or factory with good wages and a pension plan. Unfortunately, for most of these people the only other option is something like prostitution if the sweat shops close down. For the poor of the third world, western sweat shops offer the sweetest deal in town.
No, I’m driven by watching the people around me often toil like crazy to keep above water and I see you heartless fools saying they shouldn’t even be able to count on that.
You make excuse after excuse for the rich to explout the poor MORE than they already do, and I hope you all burn in hell for it.
DA,
Maybe you should lie down and get some rest. You obviously have missed the entire point. No one is saying it’s right to exploit people. What they ARE saying is that in some parts of the world, workers will accept minimum wage because it’s much better than what they would receive at home.
The point is that if someone accepts a wage without compulsion, it can be considered ‘reasonable’ for the purposes of the original argument. It may not be reasonable in comparison to other wage rates, but it’s not slavery.
It’s not right to exploit anyone, but unfortunately these people you’re accusing of being heartless aren’t in control of these sweatshops. They’re not making excuses, they’re showing you the reality. That is, people can be greedy.
What comes next? Accusing people who buy things made in China of advocating minimum wage and sweatshops? Where do you purchase your clothing and shoes from? Are you certain someone didn’t produce that at minimum wage? If you can, then I commend you.
Now, would it be possible to actually get back to the original topic at hand?
I hope you all find yourselves starving someday so you can appreciate just how black your hearts are.
I hope you find yourself sober someday so you can appreciate just how stupid your comments were.
I would like to thank those people who participated in this debate as a contest of ideas, its there for people to read.
As for those who got carried away with their emotions I would say that you should re-read carefully what other people have said.
I wont try to defend those who you have attacked, but I suspect that when you have calmed down you will be ashamed of your efforts, and if you are not then that itself speaks volumes.
This thread is now closed