Middle Nation Book Discussion: No Logo | Session Two

So just to kind of remind everybody, two weeks ago, we began discussing this book by Naomi Klein called No Logo. In part one, there are five chapters. We we talked about the first two. The prevailing theme in this part is how public space has been captured by, you know, international companies to promote their brands and push their product, essentially. And today, we will start by talking about chapter three first, and then move on to the the fourth and fifth.

To kind of give a brief summary of chapter three for those who who haven't had the opportunity to read it, the author basically demonstrates in the in in the chapter how many youth movements in the North in North America, like in The USA and Canada, were co opted by international companies, basically turning youth culture into marketable culture. Brands I mean, not not brands, but companies figured out that if they can harness that, you know, power young people have, they can sell they can sell more products, they can create new brands. The the buzzwords, the keywords during that time were, you know, being cool, authentic, rebellious, etcetera. Okay? And obviously, the book was written, I think the first edition in 2000 and the the second one in 2010.

So a lot maybe has changed or or has not since then. But I feel that, you know, this this particular this particular feeling of being cool has not really disappeared. Like, it it still exists in marketing day in branding, especially with the rise of influencers and social media personalities and such. Okay. So before I ask you guys a few questions about this, would anybody like to comment on chapter three?

And does anybody have any particular reflections to share with the group?

I'll just add a small thing that I observed while reading this chapter, And that's how she started the writer started the chapter, narrating about herself and her life in high school, which was a short paragraph. But also, that's where I realized, like, okay. So I thought she would go into depth about, you know, psychology, about youth psychology or human psychology in general because that's the what well, that's the impression I got that that is the what influences what teenagers or the youth react the way they react and how they, you know, how they tend to feel what she termed as the teenage narcissism and all this. She did touch on it, but there wasn't much about psychology in her book so far, which I thought would have been very interesting take, I guess.

You are absolutely right. So far, that has not really been the focus of of the book. Chapter three was more about the tactics companies used to create brands, you know, using youth culture, using hip hop culture, alternative cultures, etcetera. So which I don't really find particularly interesting to repeat here. I don't think it's particularly relevant.

No. But, yeah, it's it's a good point, Samira. There wasn't much discussion about that, for sure.

Personally, I found interesting the shift you know, the focus on the youth, and it's really been since eighties or nineties, as she mentioned, right, where brands started to shift. And I feel like it's not just about branding, but everything has shifted to the youth. Like because she gave an interesting comparison between, you know, the, like, the shift from the targeting of the the boomers and their duties and their approaches to their parents and so on. And, you know, like, just two days ago, we had this workshop at the university on how, like, teaching innovations for Gen z and so on. And, like, you really see this obsession of, like, how can we, as much as possible, influence the young generation and how should we approach them?

Everything is really catering to them. You know? And I I feel that there's this shift then before. Maybe it's due to some social economic conditions where the previous generations in you know, when they were this young, like, really, all they focused on was somehow, you know, helping the family or something. But nowadays, maybe due to the independence or, like, for the last thirty years of the younger generations and trying to, you know, become independent at the younger age.

It's now like a free prey that you can just capture. You know? Like, the shift from the household needs to be accommodated by another predator or something like that. It feels like that's the approach that they have towards the youth. Right?

Instead of cultivating, instead of raising youth that has some benefit for the society, it's just like, how can I replace the family? How can I replace what was their previous? Right? Like, now there are these wandering lost people,

and

I need to be the one who catches them. Right? And it seems like it's not just in branding, but it's in every area, in entertainment, in social media, in education. Know? Like, we have these young independent people who have not yet been stained too much.

So how can I make them part of my movement, part of my brand, part of my, you know, understanding, part of my whatever? That seems interesting as a shift in the last thirty years to what we have previously known as a method, probably.

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it is like the the big fight for the heart and soul of young young people in general, especially now. I mean, I I really detest opening Instagram or TikTok, these platforms, seeing these influencers with their mindless content, just, you know, promoting these big corporations and brands. And then unfortunately, a lot of the youth have been captivated by that.

And I I feel that I mean, we are kind of digressing, suppose, but I feel that the intellectual capabilities of our children have deteriorated in the last, I don't know, fifteen years, ten years. I can't give an exact number because we're just oh, was I cut off? Anyway

No. I can hear you well.

Okay. Great. Good. Yeah. I mean, I I feel that we're just creating consumers, not really critical thinkers.

And that that's really the the sad part of it. And even, like, whenever you see some kind of subculture, alternative culture, whatever, you can expect Nike or, I don't know, Adidas or some of these brands to come up with and make a back out of it. So nothing feels genuine anymore. And I feel that a lot of young people have become, you know, not necessarily nihilistic, but pretty disappointed in what is out there. So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't really look look very bright for for our children in terms of how they can engage with the public space.

Right?

I was talking about how as brands started well, focusing on shift first, it started with shifting from production to branding, and now brands are trying to pretty much entrench their tentacles on every surface, every channel, every that's the whole point of no space. And then once they have covered pretty much all the institutions, they wanna get into the minds of our the next generation. They don't wanna sell habits any longer. They wanna build them. They wanna create them, you know, from they are constantly looking for new surfaces, new channels to develop.

They can create habits even when there's something new, something authentic. Like, for example, TikTok is considered I think she said in the book, TikTok is considered some kind of rebellion, but brands have co opted as starting making memes, being in on the jokes. And then the kids of this generation are just being pretty much being given computer devices, electronics, and just left to fend for themselves against all these tactics and all these new strategies. And these brands aren't amateurs. They're hiding hiring, like, child psychologists.

They're hiring like, even if it's not mentioned in the book, they are the the methods they use are probably more wicked than we could possibly imagine, and it's so important that we help defend our kids against this stuff. And I think that's why this book is so important because if we can learn how to start with ourselves, I think we can pass it on to our children.

Thank you, brother. Karim, you had your hand raised.

Yeah. Just to add on to the point, you know, exactly because now brother Abakman, he mentioned, you know, kids. Right? Like, where she's coming from, she's talking about high school campuses and then about academia. But you see the barrier keeps on lowering and lowering.

Right? And, like, as I tried to highlight, you know, like, fifteen minutes ago or ten minutes ago, you know, the individuality or the release from the household was set like, you know, becoming a teenager and so on. But now you feel that the barrier of disassociating from your family is, you know, around seven, eight years. And so you can feel like the capture is being done much earlier than it used to be. Right?

So where will it go next? Right? Like, how much will the lowering of the age of control by external factors go to? Right? So it just seems interesting.

Like, when she said, you know, when talking about products and production and so on, you are targeting basically people who are using these products, right, which are gonna be probably adults. Like, you're not gonna be targeting youth. Right? Then it started with the branding and so on. So you're now targeting younger generations.

Right? And now with what we know, Yorkshire is targeting kids. Right? And they have their own languages and they have their own spaces and their own ways. Like, so many parents who have completely disassociated from their own kids and understanding and whatnot just because of this phenomenon, I feel like.

So it's kinda crazy.

I know. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's it's perhaps a a fitting topic of a sci fi novel or something. Right?

In the future of it all. I I see that Ustad Shahid is here now. I hope the connection is is better. Ustad, would you like to say a few words about this?

Assalamu alaikum. Can you hear me?

We can hear you quite well. Yeah.

I mean, there's a few things.

I've been

as you can see, I've been having some technical problems on my end, so I've been kind of in and out of the conversation. I'm not catching everything that's been said, everything that's been covered so far. But I think that, you know, it all has to be taken within the the the overall

I think brother Karim was talking about the overall sort

of

socioeconomic context of The United States specifically over the last thirty, forty years. And I think that, for example, I think you have to look at how corporations themselves have developed during that period, during, say, the last forty years, the levels that they've reached in terms of their monopolization and conglomeration. And you have to look at the entry of young people into the workforce at a much younger age, meaning that they have some degree of disposable income. I think that reached maybe a high peak in the early nineteen eighties, and then it just be it has become normal for for young people that might expand. And then you have the fact of the emergence of the necessity of the two income household for even the even the the households where they have, you know, the the two parents living at home, which also is in steep decline during that period.

But even you can put that together because you have to have the two incomes, which means less attention being given to the children, a severing of the relationship between family members, and then also the same will apply when you're talking about a single parent who has to work even harder and probably barely sees their kid. And this is when we talk about Gen X, my generation, which is the generation, I think, also Naomi Klein and mostly the generation she's talking about when all of this emerged.

We're sort of famous

as being the generation that raised itself, the generation that really didn't have much oversight from parents and so on. So we really were sort of just out in the world, and corporations had perfected their model. They had monopolized their model very well, streamlined it. And at the same time, you're seeing the technology boom and the boom of cable television and all of these other means of reaching young populations and delivering these messages to them and so forth. All of these things combined together to create sort of this culture and this this new way.

And then also you add to that this, you know, so called globalization with the container shipping and so on and the outsourcing and the cheap manufacturing, and you're you're able to produce more goods than anyone actually needs. So you have to find some way to market it and someone to market it to. And so you come up with this with the whole branding scheme to create value in things that no one needs based on the prestige or the fashionableness of the brand itself. And from the beginning, this is an appeal that would only really work for very young, gullible, you know, foolish foolish young people. The the older generation, the baby boom generation, whatever, my mother's, my parents' generation, they were still raised on practicality.

They were still raised on you buy things because you need them, because they have some utility to you. But when you're young and you have some some money because you're working, you're more inclined to buy things just because you're able to do that, and, it has some kind of a some, you know, a brand appeal, a prestige appeal, a fashion appeal, a coolness appeal. And they also were able to see that young people are struggling with, defining their identities. And so the corporations decided, well, we can actually help determine what your identity is gonna be, and we'll tap into that lack of a fully formed identity so that we can easily deliver to you the lifestyle that a young person thinks is cool and thinks that this is a very easy bumper sticker way of letting the world know who you are and what you stand for and so on. So it's incredibly predatory and incredibly manipulative and it's literally going after, in those days and now, as you said, the age is going even younger and younger.

You're literally going after the most vulnerable and not fully formed people in terms of their psyche, in terms of their identity, in terms of who they are and their concept of themselves. You're going after those people because they're the most vulnerable market that you can go after. And then, of course, obviously, the logic is that once we have established brand loyalty, we'll have them once they become adults and have even more, you know, potentially extra money to spend disposable income and so forth. I mean, you put it all together, and it's it's it's the whole logic of the system just at play. And you have to recognize you can't help but recognize how predatory the whole internal logic is.

It's not necessarily, you know, anyone sitting around deciding that we're gonna just be evil, but the the the whole internal logic of the system is playing out before your eyes, and you can see it's everyone making decisions that make sense within the context of the system, within the the prevailing logic of the system, and the result is, you know, simply catastrophic. I mean, remember also in in the early days, like, I was a teenager or in my early twenties, high school, college age, or what have you, say in the early nineties, we detested anyone who took a sponsorship deal, an endorsement deal. We detested anyone who did this kind of thing and who was always selling and who appeared in advertisements. We always used the term shill. This is a shill.

You're a sellout to the corporations and so on. Now you're an influencer. That's what you call an influencer. Like you said, you can't open any of these apps, Instagram or TikTok or any of them, except that everybody is hawking something. Everybody is a shill for some corporation, for some brand, for some new product that nobody needs.

Like, you've you've now created this whole you know, at this point, we're talking about at least two, three generations of people who are what we used to call complete sellouts. It's it's quite remarkable. The the way that that has shifted from thirty years ago to today, you like, it used to be that if you were a shill, you would not have an audience because you had you lost all credibility in front of the public, in front of young people. You would have lost all credibility. But now it's almost as if you don't have credibility unless you're doing some kind of an endorsement.

Absolutely. And, mean, the culture that has emerged is I don't know how to describe it because, I mean, absolutely dangerous to how we develop our societies and what values we attach, right, to to the future generations. Brother Karim, I saw you raised your hand at some point, and I do want to make another point very quickly. So I don't know do not want to disappoint anybody listening, but our speakers come from the Middle Nation book club. So we will not be accepting any invites to speak.

It is really nothing personal. It's just the policy of with the book club. So, Karin, the mic is yours. Okay.

Yeah. Just interesting with the Schilling aspect. You know? Like, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I know he like actors and these kind of people had to go basically to untapped markets, you know, in China and so on and go in their advertisement just not to be seen by the youngs in America. Right?

Like, they're not exposed as being a shill in an advertisement or something. You know? Like, it went to that extent that they had to basically hide themselves from being seen making advertisements for some company or for some logo and so on. So that really has shifted. Also, what is interesting I feel nowadays is that instead of the focus on selling the product somehow, like, of course, it's there.

I'm not, you know, diminishing the aspect of advertising and branding and whatnot. But I feel like it has shifted into, like, you know, like, how can we make people buy more. Right? That was always the idea. And the idea was, like, let's make it more attractive for them to buy more.

But now it seems that it is as if it has shifted to know, for people to buy more, they need to have more money, basically. So let us target, you know, this psychological aspect. Like, let us, you know, keep grinding, keep being successful. Like, if you haven't managed, you know, to like, if you haven't had five companies under your management in your twenties, then you're completely lost case. Right?

All of these aspects, like, it's completely targeting the youth aspect of trying to be successful, trying to, you know, this rat race. Right? Trying to it's it's really not about trying to distinguish the brands from each other, I feel, as much as trying to you know, whatever. If they have more money, they can buy all the brands more. Right?

So let us just try to hype them to be you know, to give up any sort of values. And just, like, let's let us just create business people. Everyone needs to be a business person. Everyone needs to run their own business. Everybody needs to, you know, stack stack up.

And yeah. So I just feel that in the last five to ten years, maybe maybe last really five, this extremely you know, this extreme emphasis, like, on being hyper successful and so on seems to have been the case of propagating somehow. At least that's my personal feeling of what is being pushed by the narrative. Yeah.

Yeah. And and it's also it's also the definition of what success is because what you're really talking about like I said in in a in a recent talk,

for Americans, you're basically just a conduit for money that goes from the company that you're working for out to all of the companies that you buy from, and you don't really keep any of it. It all goes out. And so it became a thing where you're basically bragging about my slave master is better than your slave master. The the the slave master that I'm a slave for is is better and more prestigious than the slave master that you work for because I my slave master is whatever Gucci or I don't even know the names, Louis Vuitton or what have you. That's where all of my money is going.

So even the definition of success is the ability to consume at absurd costs, to be able to have more money that you can waste on things that you don't need rather than you building or creating anything, being particularly good at anything, having any expertise in anything, having any knowledge about anything. It's that I am able to earn enough money to give over to my slave master, and my slave master is better than yours.

So I suppose the the the question arises then. I mean, we we talk about how the youth have been captured in in one way or another, you know, in different parts of the world. What is the path for our, you know, teenagers, children, etcetera, to be true rebels? And I don't mean rebels, you know, in a in a violent kind of way, but just to resist that culture that glorifies so called productivity, consumerism, and so on. I mean, what are the parts that they they can take and how can they resist that if if it is possible at all?

I think it will surprise anyone that my prognosis for the West and for young people in the

West is not particularly good. I think that your your condition is chronic and ultimately fatal. I don't I don't really see a way, not because there isn't a way, but because you don't have the ingredients that are required to do what is what is necessary for you to do in the West. I think for for young people in the global South, young people in the Muslim world, even probably to one extent or another, young people in Eastern Europe, they have they have some options. Because first of all, they're not as infected by the rot of this shillism and this consumerism, this really, really humorism, this slavery to brands and so on, is not as bad in other parts of the world as it is in the West and particularly in The United States.

But, you know, what needs to be done is is disconnect from all of this and to start determining yourself independently what what has value and and basing that judgment upon quality, not upon the social capital that is attributed to something because of its brand, because of its branding, because of its reputation, or what have you. You actually decide what you're going to buy on the basis of the actual actual quality of the item. And this is what I mean. The ingredients for that just aren't there because this is this whole concept is completely foreign at this point. You've created generations of people who don't even know what those words mean that I just said.

They don't even know the difference between quality and prestige or I don't even know if prestige the the brand that they hear the most in the music, the the brand name that they hear dropped. I mean, that's the other thing. We we used to talk about people who would name drop, and they would talk about famous people that they knew, prestigious or influential people that they knew. Now all the name dropping is brand names in all the songs and all the music and all the rap and so forth. And then, of course, it it pervades in the films.

I mean, one of the first things that people noticed about the pictures coming out from when they when they kidnapped Maduro was he was wearing all Nike. That's one of the first things that people noticed was what he was wearing.

This they so we're talking about people whose whose brains, Yanni,

have been completely rotted with this consumerism and this materialism. And I don't know I don't see I mean, it would literally take a miracle for them to get out of that way of thinking. You can maybe do it on an individual basis, but on an individual basis, you're not gonna change the culture. So I think that what needs to be done is are things that can be done, but not by people in the West, unfortunately.

I just wanna follow-up on what was saying that it's not necessarily only people in the West that are under threat. Like, I agree that they are I think they are doomed. It's they're past point the point of no return, but we also have to be on the lookout because there are many cases where these western multinational corporations or these brands have also infected the minds of the young and the global South. And, for example, in Japan in the nineteen seventies, Nestle wanted to start selling coffee. They wanted to jump into the coffee mark but the coffee market in Japan was very, very unpopular.

It was considered bitters, western rush. You know, Japan is kind of synonymous with tea. You know? So it's a very, very hard task if you wanna start convincing the Japanese people to start consuming coffee. I think at the time, Japan consumed one quarter of what a country like The United States consumed, 0.5 kilograms of coffee per person per year.

And they tried everything. They tried discounts, vending machines, giveaways, promotions. Nothing worked. The the Japanese people still prefer tea. And this is what I was referring to earlier.

They hired a child psychologist, and he told them that you need to create an emotional bond from early life because that lasts forever. So they started doing things like coffee flavored candy or coffee scented pencils to use in school or advertising showing kids waking up to the smell of coffee. And within thirty years, it grew to a $30,000,000,000 market, and Japan was now consuming four times what it used to do by the 2 thousands. And today, it's in one of the it it's it's the consumption is in steady decline, and its coffee consumption is it just keeps getting higher and higher. So if they can do it with something as precious to Japanese as tea and switch it for coffee, then I think we all need to have our guard up.

But what we have, I think, we have the tools. As was saying, we have the tools and we have the resources because we have slum. Of course, we are Muslims. Like, I think was saying we are not NPCs or something. You know?

We have Islam, and this is our identity for it. It's anything else. So there is this this we have this barrier, you know, that multinational corporations are not gonna touch at any point. So

Regarding that, I mean, there is I don't know if you if you've seen that, and it has been going on for a few years now. These, you know, sports brands, most notably Nike, are trying to kind of tap into the Muslim market as well, I feel. So, you know, they promote hijabi influencers, athletes, etcetera. Like, to what extent do you feel that they will be able to succeed in that? And I mean, I I I do agree with you that, you know, we don't as as Muslims, we are validated by our Lord, you know.

We have the haram halal, like, we we have diff different concepts of of worth. Right? But do you think that these corporations will be able to, you know, spray the center of Islam on onto their brands and succeed in in branding, so called branding the some of the symbols of our religion, not not obviously the essence.

I honestly can say it's some it's an interesting question because now I'm thinking about it from a geopolitical angle because we know that about the Middle East or the Muslim the global South and Muslim countries in general are gonna be, like, the global hub. They're gonna be the host of basically all this Western capital. And it's gonna be interesting to see how this corporate entity basically interacts with I don't know how it mutates or transforms to appeal to Muslims or if Muslim culture and the Muslim identity could actually change it or fix it or cure it. Well, Because let's say it's it's extremely don't think it is something that they can twist or find loopholes. Like, I remember a Starbucks CEO a while back tried to launch, I think, bright flags in The Middle East, something like that, and he got fired because there are certain things, though.

You know, there are certain things we do not just, like, no red lines that you cannot basically cross. You cannot sell it to us. You know? Basically, some things are just beyond cost. You can try however hard you want to.

Yeah. Just to continue with what brother Rashma was saying, I think the main thing here is, as I said in the beginning, the psychology of you know, the human psychology where that's where these corporations are getting all the information that that, you know, that tells them where our weaknesses are, where humans human be humans' weaknesses are, and that's how they target. Because at the end of the day, what they're looking for is profit, obviously. So as young people, you know, young people are victims, you know, of their nerves. Not well, everyone is, but especially young people because of their inexperience, their low self esteem.

So they are prone to, you know, West Wassa and all this, and they haven't developed well their identity, especially in the West. And this is where I'm I'm coming to. So the hijab is an identity event. It has become one of those, you know, diversity diversity threats, like how sexuality, how what is the other one that they yeah. Gender issues, all race, so so is really just the art.

Islam is just one identity, that they are using it to also market those those segment mark segment, which is huge in especially in the West. And so I think it's I don't I don't see it like someone from the staff from the global staff. I don't really know what is so special about Nike's Nike's hijab, what do you call, outfit, except because I can find it way cheaper anywhere I go to or any, you know, tailor can make it for me the way that I want it with a cheaper cheaper at a cheaper cost. I think in the global sales, the majority are conscious of cost cost or price. They are they are price sensitive.

We are price sensitive, I feel, in the global style. And, also, I I don't think branding affects us as much. I would disagree with brother Abdulashman here as much as it does in the West. He did say that, but it's really not even comparable. I mean, I remember, I lived in, back home for, you know, my my childhood, and then I grew up to university.

And then I I went into university in the Global South. And then I traveled to South Africa. And well, we will maybe we'll come back to it when we go to the university part. But then the first thing that I noticed when I when I went there, coming from a country where education is free and it's all government controlled, there is no such thing as advertisement or whatever, It was really crazy how the students and the university were, like, very conscious of what they wear, how they look. I mean, I don't know why they are even coming to the university for.

Is it really to get their degrees to just show off their their outfit? It's it's I was that confused. And so coming I think global South is still and I do consider South Africa as one of the global South, but the the university that I was going to, the the the that area was was very influenced by Western culture. And so, yeah, I just wanted to add that. But, yeah, Islam is just one of the marketing the identities that the corporations are pushing, and I don't think it will be any effective in the global South as much as it would in the in the West.

Well, I appreciate those words of encouragement, Samir. That's nice to hear. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's see if Ustad is able to rejoin.

I know he's having connection issues. Can you try now?

Assalamu alaikum.

Assalamu we can hear you.

Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I as you know, again, I I keep getting kicked out, so I'm not sure. We're we're on the topic of whether or not the branding and corporations are gonna be successful in appropriating Islam in their branding.

Is that the is that the topic?

Correct. Yeah.

I think I think that will depend entirely on the individual and the extent to which the in for for the individual, Islam itself is decorative, and the extent to which for the individual Islam is based primarily on external appearances and sort of a show and the extent to which their own Muslim identity is based upon the external appearances and so forth. And I think that it also depends on the extent to which you are primarily driven by social acceptance and by the acceptance basically of the kufar and the systems of the kufar, the power structure and so forth, in in that you will feel validated when you get this sort of approval or this nod from the the corporate sector and the the the big brand sector versus it means nothing to you. And I think that there there will be a drastic difference in the success of these types of strategies, again, between Muslims in the West, in the diaspora, and Muslims in the Muslim world. I don't think it is gonna fly very far for Muslims in the Muslim world. Even if it happens even even if we're talking about companies in the Muslim world trying to do that.

We have an example in Malaysia, for example, of a hijab brand that tried to be a very luxury brand called duck scarves by a a Malaysian sister who created this brand. The the the hijabs the scarves were made in different parts of Asia and in I think primarily in China. And she was selling them as a very, very high luxury brand, but you're but you're talking about a Muslim country in the Muslim world where you can buy hijabs, you can buy headscarves at any shop, at any soup, any bazaar for, you know, $10, $5, $7, and you're trying to sell a hijab for, you know, hundreds of dollars. And first of all, people don't have the money for that, and even the people who do have the money for that don't attach that kind of significance to the hijab. There for them, the hijab isn't a fashion.

The hijab is the obligation from Allah, and it has it's based upon the religion, not upon any sort of fashion or any sort of social acceptance or any of these things. And so I don't need it to cost hundreds of dollars in order for me to wear it. I don't need it to cost hundreds of dollars and be very fashionable and fancy in order for that to gain social acceptance, because I'm not doing it for social acceptance. I'm doing it for acceptance from Allah. So I think that these and so that that company has gone down.

It's basically defunct at this point. They had several shops. She tried to do it in she she she tried to franchise out and make partnerships in The Middle East, in Dubai, in Qatar, and so on. And, of course, they've got their own. Now these are people who do care a lot about you know, in the in The Gulf, in the Khaleed, they do care a lot about the luxury branding and so forth, but they've already got their own.

And the reason that they're able to do that is because they have tremendous excess wealth in the first place. So if you're trying to if you're trying to sell to the broader Muslim world, well, we don't have that kind of money, and we also don't we don't need that validation in terms of the material prestige of this or that item. And nobody cares whether or not Nike thinks it's okay that a that a hijabi plays sports or anything. No one no one in the Muslim world cares. It's very normal.

In in the Muslim world, you've got, you know, Muslim women who are athletes and who are involved in athletics and sports and, you know, riding around on motorcycles and skateboards and roller skates. All of this is perfectly normal in the Muslim world, and it's not strange to us, and we're not looking for any kind of acceptance. So it doesn't mean anything to us in the Muslim world. So it's gonna it it it may play out in the West, but that's simply because the state of Islam for many Muslims in the West is already on a kind of life support system, and it's already quite fragile, and it's already quite based upon external validation external appearances and very, very shallow identity markers rather than based upon a real deep ingrained commitment and understanding of the dean. So if you're coming from a place like that, then this kosoda branding is gonna affect you the same way that it would affect any other so called minority group that is being catered to by corporations.

And so it depends entirely on the individual and their own relationship with Islam, the extent to which a strategy like this would work in my opinion.

Thank you, Stan. Brother Karim, I saw your hand raised. Would you like to add a few words?

I just wanted to add, like, I think due to the understanding of, you know, the geopolitical, the, you know, future or the trajectory that we are at, And if we do believe that, inshallah, you know, the region of the the and so on are gonna be the center of the global economy in one sense or another, the export of this soft power will be through the brand's trying to acclimatize to this reality. Right? So I do believe that the brands will start propagating the and we already see hints of this. Right? Like, there is already this normalization of the Arab culture of the, you know, like, Arab lifestyle and these different things that are being promoted and make, like, appealing to people around the world.

And I do believe it will take on even in the, you know, advertising and marketing and branding and so on more and more. Right? Like, you know, Dubai chocolate is just step one. Step two, the male figure hijab. Right?

So I I do believe that, you know, brands will try to ride on that, and it will just be a showcase of the increasing soft power of the countries that we are speaking of. Right? Another thing is that do people confuse, you know, culture with religion, which we have seen, like, in the past twenty, thirty years. Right? Like, numerous examples of that.

So a part of increasing the propagation of the region will be 100% tied to Islamic propagation, you know, because it is intertwined with our lives a 100%. But for them, like, they will not care about promoting Islam. They will care about promoting, you know, the soft power of the region, but inadvertently, they will have to do it with Islam. Right? So I I do believe that some sort of increase of Islamic and, you know, slash Arabic culture in advertising and branding will be the normal in the next decade, for example, right, and what follows, of course.

Yeah. I I completely agree with that. However, I kinda have to move on to the next next chapter. The problem is I I ask all of these questions knowing that we cannot really spend only ten, fifteen minutes answering them, and and then, you know, I'm I mentioned about finishing on time. So okay.

Thank you for the insights about this particular topic. The next one, chapter four, deals with the influence of corporations on academia. But we did kind of talk about this a little bit in the previous meeting two weeks ago where we, you know, discussed corporate presence in schools. So I thought maybe today, could discuss how it is manifested in higher education, like in in academia. There were a few examples mentioned by the author, you know, where she kinda demonstrated that some research projects were shut down because the results were not really aligned with what the the donors, the sponsors wanted.

And I'm not really following that particularly closely. It's been a while since I was a university student. But, I mean, when it comes to the state of academia today, maybe Karim and Samir are probably the the most qualified to talk about that. Do you think that it has been completely captured by the corporate power? Or is it still relatively independent from the funding, you know, necessary to conduct research?

Ladies first, please, sister Samira.

Okay. Right. So regarding oh, it depends because maybe really Karim would talk about that the sponsorship in the West. However, here where I am, where I am working in The Middle East, there isn't such thing as well, sponsorship or grants, especially research grants are highly regulated here. For example, I can't even apply for any grant outside the country for funds from outside the country unless that specific grant is approved by the government.

So here, it's completely different. That's why I cannot speak for this kind of but but I do get what the the writer is is saying. They will have undue unduely, you know, influence on the research for sure if you let corporations fund it because their aim is always going to be profit. So in that case, they would want, obviously, for you to what the reason why they are doing the research in the first place is for you to for them to market it better, saying that, you know, this university has endorsed it and they they found out that it is effective in all this. Imagine if if that product does not have such doesn't add any value and to you doing your research and, you know, being in academia, you you you stand by, you know, the ethics that you have to obviously, you have to follow all the the ethics and follow all the rigorous scientific methodology and prove that it doesn't add any value, whatever the product it is that you're testing.

Imagine how that would influence. And, obviously, they would never allow it to be, you know, publicized published. Now that's the conflict where the conflict comes, where I, as a researcher, would like to publish my my work that I have done over the years or over, you know, on this product and, you know, to disseminate the information that I found out. And then here you have a corporation that is does not the the bottom line or its interest is the profit. So there is an there is a conflict there, and and and and that I can see is problematic when we get it.