Middle Nation Book Discussion | No Logo | Session Three

Okay. I I guess we could get started. So assalamu alaikum, everybody. Welcome to yet another Middle Nation Book Club session. So today, we are continuing with a part two of no logo, which has to do with no choice.

So the previous part was titled you know, space. And today, we'll explore how, you know, these multinational companies shape our culture, our consumer habits, choices, etcetera. K? So what I will do is give a very brief overview of of these three chapters for the the people who haven't managed to to read it. So, basically, in in chapter six so the the three chapters in question are six, seven, and eight.

In chapter six, the author Naomi Klein talks about how, you know, these brands expand and how they dominate markets. And, obviously, in the process, independent businesses get pushed out. Right? And they do they do that by standardizing chains, turning commercial spaces into, like, very uniform spaces where brand presence is is paramount. And there is really very little room for authentic creativity and and culture.

Then in in chapter seven, she talks about how, you know, they figured out if I mean, these these companies, how if they merge, if they know if a big company acquires a smaller one, they can control the the space much better, and they can also control the choice that consumers have. And, obviously, you know, that affects cultural diversity, ingenuity, creativity, and so on and so forth. And in chapter eight, which is kind of the last chapter in part two, it is about censorship. So the the basic premise essentially is that corporations decide the acceptable discourse around their brands and not only the the brands themselves, but, you know, whether the brands can be associated with any particular sensitive issues, topic, etcetera, which obviously, you know, goes to show the immense power they have in the in the real world. Now that's the the brief summary of part two.

What I'd like to do now is invite any of our speakers to share their thoughts. We we can start with chapter six, but, you know, if if they have any impressions of of the other chapters as well, and then we can move on to some of the discussion questions I prepared. So if anybody would like to, you know, give their two cents on the topic, please please go ahead.

These are very early doors in chapter six. I found it very interesting because I think when we read these sorts of things about, like, corporate culture and branding and marketing, it it can be helpful because when we talk about the OCGFC, we talk about what that means. It can be helpful to understand how these conglomerates, these these businesses, they function, how they think, and then also what they're susceptible to. I know this is something we've talked about in Middle Nation as well. Like, it's not necessarily a cause for despair that things are happening at the beck and call of a national OCGFC because that means that we know the levers that need to be pulled, we know how to influence them.

And in many ways, they're more accessible than political structures. And two parts that I thought were very instructive in just understanding the global models here. One of them was what was talked about with Starbucks, specifically how, as part of their expansion strategy, they would cluster many of their own stores in existing markets, and their new stores would cannibalize sales from existing stores. Now at on the outset, ostensibly, that seems like a very strange strategy. Why would you launch more stores that would then mean that each of your individual stores earn less and cannibalize sales from each other?

But what happens is that they expand their market. And so while their individual outlets lose market share, the parent company of Starbucks, Right? And mind you, these are franchises for a lot a lot of them. Their parent company gains market share. So they end up winning.

And this is not too different from my reading how maybe at the outset, if you speak to someone that doesn't understand the whole infrastructure and you tell them that, you know, there's a destabilization effort in Europe, it can seem very strange. Like, why would why would they do that? Why would they destabilize Europe? How is that helpful to them? Well, of course, then you have that the AE National OCGFC can benefit by having their energy supplies be dependent, for example, on American companies or just, you know, a national OCGFC companies originating from America.

But then also, it opens up market share in other parts of the world that are a bigger market. So that was one thing that I found that was instructive. But what was also instructive was the same thing we talked about, and I know we've talked about some middle nation and she she just mentioned this, that knowing that this is how these are the people in influence empowers you to understand where you can apply leverage and pressure. And a key key example of that was, very shortly after this passage, you know, Michelin mentions how, you know, Starbucks had these predatory practices of finding good locations and then basically pulling the rug out from under independent coffee stores by buying their leases at higher prices. They tried this in a place in Canada, apparently in Toronto, with some cafe called Dooney's.

And, apparently, it was so popular locally that community protest was so strong and had so much pressure that Starbucks had to end up having to sublet the space back to Doonies. And this is an example of how we as consumers or people as consumers and societies and groups can independently or collectively rather apply pressure. So, I know there's a lot more that was said in chapter six, but that was sort of my main takeaway from chapter six was a a mapping onto the global architecture that we see and seeing that one to one correlation.

This is one of the things that sort of irritates me about Naomi Klein, and you actually hear it. It's kind of paradoxical, but you you you get this a lot from the so called left, the people who would who would identify themselves as being left. And it's paradoxical because one of the things that they like to talk about is, you know, grassroots, you know, power to the

people and all of this sort

of thing from the ground up change and, you know, and whatnot. But when they actually analyze power structures and analyze the power dynamics and so forth, conspicuously absent is usually the agency of the population that the people have any actual power or any actual options. I mean, like this book, we're we're reading it because it's an important book, I think. And, anyway, it was important at its time. I think a lot of it is maybe a bit old information for us now because we've we've already been living with what she was talking about in the early two thousands.

We've been living with it for, you know, almost thirty years, and it has developed and and metastasized and so forth. But this book, she's talking about it as if these brands and these corporations are these huge behemoths about which nothing can be done and that they have so much control and that they just put their plans into motion, and everyone just helplessly, choicelessly follows lockstep in whatever whatever it is that the corporations want to have happen. And there's never I'm not I I don't recall getting any of this from her book, that there's any any notion that that human beings actually, that the population have any agency in any of this, except that they will maybe mention, you know, something here and there about, like, what you just mentioned, a protest that took place or what have you. Rather than talking about, for example and we'll we'll get into I don't wanna talk about it too much here, but we'll we'll get into it later, I think. The idea of of people building alternative structures on their own, and that that that it is actually possible to abstain from participating in their paradynamics.

That's that's an option that people have. It doesn't seem like an option because you you haven't built those parallel alternative structures yet, but you can do that. And rather than sort of just complaining about the power of corporations, there's the fact that, as you said, and as we talked about many times on the nation, the basically, the idea of corporate democratization, and that when the when the private sector is the one that is where the power the real political power actually lies in the private sector, when that's the case well, we know what their incentives are. It's very clear. It's crystal clear what their incentives are, what their modus operandi is, how their system works, and so forth.

And and it's much simpler in terms of incentives. It's much simpler in terms of where the leverage is that the public has and that the leverage exists almost entirely with the public, much more so than with your so called democratic system when you think that the that the power is in the government, where you have multiple competing interests to try to sway policy this way or that way or the other way. But when you're dealing with corporations, you know exactly what the what the bottom line is with them because it's literally the bottom line, and that their bottom line is dependent largely, not exclusively, but largely upon the population and upon consumers. Now, again, I don't wanna get, you know, I don't wanna get too sidetracked, but they have found ways around this through financialization, where now you have a huge sector of the economy is based on financialization, and the the the profits of any given company is is for the for the shareholders is derived more from the financialized system rather than the real productive system and the, you know, the the selling of goods and services and so forth. So that does complicate things in terms of what the public can do, what the population can do.

But like I say, I I the problem with the with these writers like like Naomi Klein and you see a lot. We talked about it before when we were talking about Chomsky's book. They just act like the people don't really have any say. The people are just the rabble. They actually have the same view of the population that the people that they're criticizing have, which is that the that the population, generally speaking, is just sheep, and they will just go this way or that way, whichever way the power brokers want them to go, whichever way the corporations want them to go, or whichever way the, you know, an authoritarian state wants them to go, or a so called democratic state wants them to go.

And the people are just sheep, and they just move this way and that way and corralled whichever way people want whichever way the power structure wants them to go. They have the same view as the power structure themselves of the population. They just package it in a different way, but they they they tend to negate the reality of of people's agency.

Well, you know, that's not off topic at all. It was that when we talk about the the kind of climate these corporations operate in, I mean, it it has been followed by, you know, this kind of propaganda of progressivism, modernity, of, you know, trying to advance technology technologically and and obviously as a society. Naomi Klein, in chapter six specifically, laments the fact that, you know, there is really little diversity and that, you know, this so called multicultural project has, in a way, failed in in the West because, you know, it's all it's already the the same with the Nike brand on it, with the Starbucks, you know, it's they they take bits and pieces from from other other cultures and then the the you know, all those cultures kind of evaporate in that in that hot mess. Right? But if you really think about it, I mean, the kind of propaganda they engaged in and, I mean, I remember growing up, the sign of of or the symbol of progress was actually that multinational corporation.

Right? I mean, if your city, if your country did not have them, if you did not have those those stores or, you know, those those products, you were considered backwards. And if you cultivate that kind of thinking, then, obviously, you're going to suffer from from your so called success. And, you know, really my thinking about that is that you you cannot have what's the expression in English? You can't have the cake and eat it too.

Right? So you you you can't build build your society on one particular model and then, you know, cry about the lack of creativity and diversity and whatnot. And we explored this particular issue in some of the other book club sessions we've had in the past, how there's really very little freedom of thought, not just expression, but freedom of thought when everything is constrained by, you know, corporate guidelines, by by a a type of culture that considers everything radical that's outside of it. You know? And that's really one of the things I it it it stuck with me while I was reading chapter six where, you know, on on the one hand, like, you will go to, I don't know, Botswana.

You will go to Indonesia. You will go to Nicaragua. That doesn't matter in any of those developing countries. And you will praise your model. You'll praise it so that other people and countries and nations can emulate it so they too can have these, you know, very successful brands and companies and whatnot.

But then when the repercussions of that policy come to bite in the neck, then you you cry back. So there's a level of hypocrisy there that, you know, I I felt when I was reading chapter six and and the other chapters as well that, okay. I mean, you won't change, but you don't really want to change. But you don't want to change your culture. You don't change the way you think about the world.

But, okay, you kind of feel it in your soul that this is all bland and meaningless and whatnot. So I don't really want to take take too much time here. But, yeah, that's really what I wanted to add on top of what you said.

First of all, you know, if if she's talking about, you know, the the multiculturalism and the diversity and whatnot that that all failed, That presupposes that it was ever intended to not fail, and it and it presupposes that they ever meant it when they talked about it in the first place, which obviously they did not. They never did. And in terms of you know, and and that also that's another example, by the way, of how the a Naomi Klein and, say, a I don't know what's an example. I don't know. Anyone on the far right are taking the same position.

They're just pack packaging it differently. Multiculturalism and diversity doesn't work. They're both saying the same thing. The that you you will you will denounce the the far right person for for saying it because they are apparently saying it for racist ideological reasons, but you will agree with a Naomi Klein who says it when she says, functionally, it has failed. It's not something that has worked.

And and you if you lament it, like, well, we really wish that it had worked, but it didn't work. But either way, you're coming down to the same position. This isn't a thing that we can do. The right wing is saying it, and the left wing is saying it. It's not a thing that actually works.

It's not a thing that we can do. Not discussing the fact that, as you said, it's your system in the first place that has already determined or that has has precluded the possibility of that working. And then the other thing I was gonna say is with regards to going to places like Nicaragua or, know, Costa Rica or Indonesia or Vietnam or wherever else and and and touting their system. In fact, that's not what they do at all when they when they go abroad, when they go to the global south. They they actually ban those countries, and they discourage those countries, and they they will punish those countries, in fact, if they pursue same sorts of economic policies that America pursued in order to become an economic success.

They they don't want any countries around the world, especially not in the global South, to pursue the same types of economic policies like sort of isolationism, protectionism, and so forth. That's how America developed as an economic power in the first place, by preferring their economy over all others, whereas the the approach of The United States when they go around the world is to say you have to open your economy to us. So they're not actually saying we're not we're not telling them you should follow our model. They're saying our model should control your economy, and we're we're not really that interested in whether or not you can develop brands. We're gonna do everything that we can to undermine your ability to create your own, multinational corporations, your own ability to create economic powerhouses, your own ability to create your own brands and so forth, and you can just have ours.

We've already made those. We already have those companies, and you need to open up your economies to let our our companies come into you. That's what they do when they go, around the world. And then sorry, brother, Hadeh, for I'm taking too long. But one one last thing I would say, it's very common for like, this is another example.

Around the same time around the same time as No Logo came out, there was also a book came out by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, as I recall, who is basically a, you know, a hack for the government and and right wing. And he he had a book called The Earth is Flat, or I think I think he said is what it was called, which was about globalization and how wonderful it was and how and how great it is that now, basically, you can go everywhere in the world to get McDonald's, you can get Starbucks, you can get Pizza Hut, and so on. And we're all level now. It's all a level playing field now and level, and it's homogenized, and that's wonderful. So a Naomi Klein will also say the same thing and say that you can't go to Indonesia or Vietnam or Nicaragua or wherever else except that you see all the same things that you see in America, and it's all been homogenized.

But anyone who does travel, anyone who has been around the world knows that if that's your impression when you travel in the Global South, then we know exactly which parts of those cities you live in and which parts of those cities you frequent because you can certainly go anywhere in the Global South and never see a Starbucks and never see a McDonald's and never see a Pizza Hut. It just depends on where you go. If you're hanging out where the westerners are, if you're if you're if you're living in the in the rich areas, in the in the westernized areas where you have either the colonizers or the collaborators of the colonizers, you live in those areas, the elite areas, the basically gated communities, then yes, you will feel like you never left the West. But if you actually live with the normal people, then, yeah, you you you're not going to be going to Starbucks and McDonald's in these in these types of places, and you hardly ever see them because they are clustered in the areas where those types of people live. So if someone says that these these companies have now taken over everywhere and everywhere is the same and everywhere has been westernized, you're seeing what you want to see, and you're seeing what what you only can see when you frequent or you visit only in particular westernized parts of the countries that you're talking about.

And I'm sorry. I'll give it

over to brother. Please please don't apologize. You know, just to dovetail off that last point you made. It's that's very, very valid. Here in Bahrain, we have this place called American Alley, and it's appropriately named because it's very close to the the naval support base, the the American base there.

And if you go there, you will see, like, Fedruckers and a bunch of different American chains. Less so actually over the past five, ten years, but that's historically been where you'll see a lot of these chain restaurants. That's And for a reason. That's because they know that's where those people are. That's what those people like, and so they're catering to that demographic.

They're just gonna make money off of them. But you could drive the whole day and see nothing but your mom and pop product shops and your your coffee, your little little joints, get some chapati, get some shawarma. Never come across one of those chains as well. So just to sort of corroborate that point. And to go back to one of the earlier points you were making about how there seems to be a removal of agency, I found that very very tellingly.

She sort of told on herself, confess in in chapters very beginning of chapter seven when she talked about how her parents had moved to Canada to dodge the draft. And in an effort to save her from brand culture or or whatever this is, they took her to, like, wildlife ex expeditions and real world interaction dealing with the family. But she was only ever in her own head dreaming of fakeness and dreaming of Barbies and and McDonald's and Shell and whatnot. And I just found that very interesting because this is the same thing that you always see. If if they identify the inability in their system, they project that to every system ever.

And I don't know exactly how her parents did it, but just because her parents didn't have the Telbia or the capacity to do it, or she resisted it because of her own nafs, I mean, she was a child. Doesn't mean that, for example, Islam doesn't have the architecture to teach us to have the dunya in our hands and not our heart. You know? And I think it's very important for us as readers and listeners to remember that, that just because their system doesn't work, we should never allow their system to overwrite and literally just white out our system and then think, hey, that means it doesn't work for us either. And the last point I'll make real quick, because I wanna hear from brother Karim, and I think we all do, is another example of the narrative shelf popped up here, and I found that very telling is somewhere in think it's chapter seven.

She mentions after talking about how retail superstores have sort of cannibalized the market and and retail has become an unequal playing field. So it doesn't really matter who you go to. It's almost like, Disney might publish a family friendly movie here, but one of their subsidiary companies will publish an r rated movie somewhere else. She says that this is a strange combination of a sea of product coupled with losses in real choice. And then she says, the signature of our branded age.

So I found that very telling because she restricts it to the branded age, which is that's the narrative that is trying that that is being peddled. But the reality is that civilizationally, architecturally, institutionally, that's how things have always been. There's always been this illusion of choice, but not actual real choice. And every time that the increase of choice has become too onerous to bear, then they've shifted where the power was. Right?

So, originally, they had it as this a setup in the constitution of independence. And then when they they opened up votes, they gave three fifth votes. And then when they opened it up a bit more, they said, well, this isn't gonna work for us. So then let's let's now redirect power to these institutions. So it's just this.

We have to be cautious and wary to shout out epistemological sovereignty of of what we're being told and always filter it against what we do know to be their help.

Yes. They they always like to they always like to put it as if like, I've talked about it many times, obviously, on the channel. Let me talk about it in the discussion group all the time. And I know brother Karimi has something to say, but just quickly, they always like to pretend as if everything has somehow gone horribly wrong, and and no one ever wanted this to happen. And it used to be better than this.

You know? And now just unexpectedly, unpredictably, through no fault of our own necessarily, things have just gone horribly wrong. And this is obviously completely false. As you said, the system has always been this way. Their their civilizational approach has always been this way.

I mean, we're literally talking about going back thousands of years. Their approach has always been this way. There's not there's not another way that it could be. You've just been getting frequent updates to the same software over and over and over again. So it's never gonna that software is never gonna process things differently.

It's never gonna come out with a different result. It's just gonna have more, you know, lights and buzzers and whatnot, you know, to make it seem fancier and maybe more complex. But, you know, a word processor is always gonna be a word processor, and the the Western civilizational so called civilizational software is always gonna come out with the same result. The other thing I want to say quickly with regards to her talking about her parents taking her to Canada, thinking that that was gonna save her from brand indoctrination or brand brainwashing or what have you. This is a good example of the the fact that escaping the consequences of your system cannot be accomplished by you traveling, by just getting out of the country or getting out of the land or what have you, because the the the problem is internal.

And this is, again, part of the agency issue of acknowledging or recognizing that human beings have agency, and it's not just, well, the only thing that we can do is to just move them out of here, and that's the only way that they can possibly escape the branding and whatnot. I mean, you do have people. You do have Muslims and others who have escaped even living in the West. It may be a bit of a struggle because you are you are you know, you're swimming in it, but you you can escape that materialism and that mindless consumerism and that brand indoctrination and that advertising and marketing deluge that you are under. You it it is possible to escape that without ever traveling anywhere.

This is a this is a situation in your mind. It's a situation in your heart. And the same goes, I would say, for for Muslims who who want to leave the West, for example, and they think that that's the that that's gonna be the solution to their problems is if they leave the West, and, in their words, make hijrah, even though it's not actually by definition, it's not hijrah if you leave the West and come to the Muslim world at this point because you can observe the the the over there. But your problem is internal, and you're gonna face the same problems no matter where you go. And so just like what she found out or her family found out, she's still thinking about Barbie.

She's still thinking about the brands and the companies and the toys and whatever no matter where you take her because you're not raising her right, and she's not she her mind isn't right. And as you said, they're not doing the tarbiyah that's necessary. This is the this is the solution for most of these types of problems is the tarbiyah and the tazkiah of the of the individual and how we approach these things. And that, again, also is connected to the epistemological sovereignty where we don't just fall into their frameworks and adopt their systems, you know, hook, line, and sinker. We actually have some deliberation and some evaluation of what they're presenting, and we evaluate it according to our own standards, and then we decide for ourselves.

And that's all part of the process of tarbiyah and tazkiya, inshallah. Okay, brother Karim. I'm sorry to made you wait.

Please help us. As as I said, don't apologize. We are always so happy to hear and your, you

know,

insights. I just thought it was a really great point that you all made about this Dona in the heart. You know? Because, like, when she criticizes like, what is she even criticizing? Right?

You know? Like, when you read into it, you suddenly start seeing I know maybe I'm a bit running ahead, but suddenly, you know, her problem is that there is not like, the song by Nirvana, you know, with the r word or there is not the prodigy song or there is not hate against China. You know, like, these are her issues with this system. Right? Like, again, they have nothing to refer back to.

Right? Like, they have nothing to compare it to. Like, their alternatives are even gonna be like, yeah, our problem is that I cannot buy other things. You know? Like, really?

Is that the problem? Like, that's why maybe I feel kinda I don't know how the other chapters are. Of course, we are, you know, on, like, the first third of the book. But, yeah, this is something that irritates me. You know?

Like, she's criticizing something just based on something else that I would criticize as well. Right? Like, it's not some genuine critique of some underfundamental problem that she sees, like, you know, maybe moral problem or any of that problem. No. Her problem is that this limits the choices that she can, you know, materialistically attain or something like that.

So that seems a bit irritating for me personally when I'm reading it. Yeah. Yeah. That's just what I wanted to add. Like, for us, you know, and we don't have a problem with corporations.

You know? Like, I don't know why she's making such a big deal out of it. Like, so what? You know, there are chains. We have chains.

There we have big companies. Like, who cares? You know? It's just the way it is. Like, you're gonna have big companies.

You're gonna have small companies. Of course, the problem is, again, as we see it, is this dunya driven, materialistically driven obsession, profit obsession kind of thinking. That's maybe what our contention is and, you know, what our problem is with it. But other than that, like, so what if someone is successful and he can manage, you know, to sell lots of products and to make lots of chains and to merge with someone like, okay. Good for you.

You know? Just go ahead and do it if you are able to. Why not? Right? So I don't know why she like, these leftists, right, have this problem.

I don't know if it's, some commie stuff that they have. But for us, that's not an issue. You know, like, capitalism is not an issue. Why would it be an issue for someone to be successful and to have a big company and to have to manage lots of chains and manage lots of, you know, shops or whatever. Okay.

You know, good for you. I still don't see what she is specifically criticizing. Right? I I feel both what she's talking about is empty and her critic is empty. Right?

That's my feeling.

Yeah. And, you know, in in in in what you were talking about here with, you know, her complaints, not about not about corporations specifically, but about the other issue, this this, again, goes back to the idea that human beings don't have any agency, that that the population doesn't doesn't have any agency. And that, for example you know, okay. Like like like, again, with with Hijra, if I'm not if I'm not mistaken, brother can can correct me, but I believe that there is a hadith which says that the the best hijrah or something along those lines is going making hijrah from the haram to the halal. This is a human choice.

So, like, for example, when something when when something is being pushed on you, they make it seem like you have no choice but to accept it. You have no choice whatsoever. If they're showing trash on television, if they're playing trash on the radio or whatnot, or if you're if you're on one of these one of these apps and you're scrolling and you see garbage, well, you just have to watch it. Obviously, you don't. Mean, I this is the difference.

We were talking about it in chat the other day. This is a difference in character. It's a difference in in civilizational, cultural, spiritual instincts where, for example, you have Kufar, a when they see something that is horrendous, when they see something that is lewd, when they see something that is scandalous, they'll share it, and they'll tell everybody about it, they'll point to it

and say, look. Look. Look at that. It's unbelievable. Oh, what are that what are that?

Look at

that terrible thing that's happening over there. Muslims see it, have read their eyes, and say, It's a it's a completely different instinct. It's a completely different character, civilizational impulse that has that you have to be trained in. Yes. But this is about agency.

Human beings have the agency to choose what they will comply with, to choose what they will go along with, and to choose what they will obey. But but they act like there's no there's no option, that everyone the that the general public, the general population, as I say before, are just sheep, and they will just they will just be corralled helplessly. So we need to have some sort of a a power structure that will corral them in a way that we think is more ethical or or or better because otherwise people are incapable of making moral choices on their own, which again goes becomes a much deeper conversation about why the West never did actually evolve, and we won't get into that now. For your patience with me continuously interrupting everyone. Brother?

Now there's there's a hadith in that in in which the prophet mentions after a companion, I believe, which is the best, and he said, one who shuns that which Allah is forbidden. The translation of that is is that. So that that is a very important concept as well for us to keep in mind. And I just sort of wanted to also dovetail off of what our brother Ken even had mentioned about just again, puts epistemological sovereignty and understanding the framework that the author is working from. So when they talk about the harms of big box stores and retailers, what that is is unfairly they're cannibalizing competition and other people aren't able to now compete.

But that's because as is a very they they they tell on themselves just like their forefather, Shaitan, that they tell on themselves with. On their dollar bill, excuse me, they have in god we trust. Right? That's because their dollar is their god. And so that's their primary motive.

That's their primary motive in things is in life, I need to make money. And so if maximalized maximum money is being restricted from some element of the population, even though that's what you've always that's what your system is set up to do. So is it really any wonder that these big box retailers are doing that? That's what you've pushed the system towards. But now when you can't do the same thing, that's when you get up in arms.

And I mean, we have to contextualize it because in our deen, for example, in Al Angr hadith, our Nabi does warn us, do not do. Like, what is? Is in selling to intentionally raise the price of something that you have no intention to buy, to harm the buyer, the purchaser, or to benefit the seller. In other words, if there's somebody haggling on a product, right, I come over there and I I start pretending that I want to buy it, but I'm actually in league with the buyer with the sorry, with the seller to raise the price unfairly. Similarly, there's also, like, do not buy do not undercut in selling the the the transaction of another person.

In other words, if someone sold textile for 100, you should not go to that same guy that bought the textile and say, hey. I can sell it to you for 80. But what undergirds all of this is what the prophet says next. After all of these rules, he says and he points to his chest three times. Meaning that without that belief in Allah, without that undergirding system of Islam, that's not gonna fly.

And so that's the problem that you see arise over and over here in the book, and I thought that was just very interesting to note. And when when brother Kareem was mentioning, we don't have a problem with it per se, but what stops us and guides us is this overarching and undergirding truth, the the epistemological sovereignty that we have, which is why here, for example, I will see and this just goes back to, again, shadowed epistemological sovereignty. You will see people here in The Gulf who have very, very nice cars. All bless their their risk and and their wealth. BMW or a Porsche or even like a Bentley, let's say, or, you know, whatever it is.

And yet those same people will be the people that you will see in the first row in Fajr every day. So what does that tell you? Right? That tells you that it's not about that product itself. It's not about that brand or that logos necessarily that they've got in their heart.

It's just a means for them, and they are just enjoying that which Allah has blessed them with. So that doesn't become the end goal. But in much of what we read here, we see that the end goal here, either from her perspective or their perspective, is this, like, free market economy is earning money, and it's more about leveling the playing field from her perspective. Because, again, earning that wealth in this dunya is the primary purpose, and it doesn't go beyond that.

I just I just wanted to, annoyingly interrupt again. I know brother Nilo wants to move on, and rightly so. But what you're talking about is also obviously the, but one of the one of the byproducts of the is contentment with sufficiency. And this is why also we talk about sufficiency and sufficiency zones because this is this is how practically speaking, structurally speaking, this is what you need to start with focusing on in building parallel structures, and you have to get rid of that whole mentality of I need to make as much money as possible. I need to make as much money as humanly possible and more than everyone else.

This is obviously not an Islamic mentality. It's not an Islamic mindset. And I just wanna give you an example real quickly. It's very normal where I am in Malaysia. It's very normal for you to find a shop that closes incredibly early and and even that they don't have a set closing time because the shop owner will just close when he feels he's made enough money for that date or or or, say, a bakery that only makes one one batch of, say, pastries or donuts or what have you, and they're not gonna keep baking throughout the day.

When those ones are sold, they close. It doesn't matter. It could be 06:00 in the evening. It can be 04:00 in the afternoon. Once everything is sold for that date, this is all we need to sell for this date.

So they they have a they have a set basically, a sort of a set daily revenue that they're content with. If we make this much every day, which is if we sell every one of the pastries that we bake today or most of them, usually, it's if we've sold all of them. If we sell all of them, we'll close. We've made enough. And that's not even a Muslim shop that I'm talking about.

That's a particular bakery I have in mind. That's not even a Muslim bakery, but they're influenced by the Muslim culture in Malaysia where they have this contentment and the idea of sufficiency is sufficient. What what is sufficient for you is literally sufficient. That's what it means. It's enough.

There's the idea of enough, which is not a concept that the West understands at all.

That that was amazing. I don't really worry about skipping questions or anything like that. As I as I wrote in the in the Telegram group, those are just the guidelines. However, I would like to move on to another very important point, which is selling commercial utopias. Right?

And, you know, that's something okay. In 2026, we really know a lot about that, you know, especially in the online world, in the digital world. Right? So it's not groundbreaking news what the Naomi Klein wrote in the early two thousands. Essentially, I mean, the idea is that these corporations will create physical and now, obviously, now digital spaces where consumers can lose themselves in this magical fantastical world.

Right? And, obviously, what that means is buying buying buying, spending money consuming. I mean, as a as a non native speaker of English, I've always been baffled by the the the phrase to consume content. You know? That's something I I really managed to understand quite recently what what that means because, you know, like, growing up, I didn't really think of of the things I was enjoying as content, whether it was, you know, the book I was reading or the the football match I was watching or something along those lines.

But, you know, as as as I get more and more in touch with the the realities of the world, okay, now I understand it's all about spending. It's all about, you know, generating profit for these multinational corporations. So okay. I mean, my question is then, we are faced with this reality where people are entertained to death. Right?

So, you know, these powerful corporations now hire psychologists, now hire experts from various fields to lure consumers into their worlds to spend money. Right? And, obviously, it can be all sorts of different content. Okay? I don't really want to repeat ourselves, but how can we as consumers in the modern world resist that and not totally lose ourselves in that?

And is it possible for, you know, small businesses to offer something that, you know, I don't wanna say a utopia, but, you know, to to offer valuable services and goods that do not necessarily mean you have to sell your soul to to enjoy it.

Everyone's quiet. I'm a little bit shy to to to jump on the microphone again because I've been talking too much.