Piety, profit and the market in Cairo: a political economy of Islamisation

The fashioning of a religious lifestyle through consumption has taken diverse and elaborate forms including what some scholars have termed “Christian consumerism”. See Thomas (2009).

Muslim lifestyles and identities have become increasingly differentiated in and through contemporary consumption processes and practices. For example, the commercialisation of religious rituals has produced different classes of practising Muslims, distinguished by the class of their hajj (pilgrimage) journeys. Some undertake the “business hajj” (also referred to as al-hajj al-sari’or quick hajj) which guarantees travel and accommodation comfort, a shortened stay and customised rituals. Meanwhile those with limited means undertake the economy class hajj. Both the Islamisation of consumption and the commodification of religious practices have entered into the production of social distinction in religious terms.

I interviewed 45 merchants and workshop proprietors using the snowball method. Three local residents assisted me by arranging introductions to merchants and entrepreneurs.

I use a number of criteria such as capital investment, volume of trade and turnover of goods to determine the size of the business. Based on interviews with merchants and extrapolating from the criteria used to define micro and small businesses, I have determined that a minimum capital investment of LE 200,000 for a stock of goods that goes through a turn-over in a cycle of 3 to 6 months are important criteria in defining middle-size trade. Other criteria include the rental value or real-estate value of the shops and the size of warehouses owned or rented by the merchant. As the majority of my interviews were with wholesalers in El-Moski and Harat al-Yahud, their capital investment and their volume of trade tended to be above this threshold. With regard to workshops, the number of workers is an important criterion in my use of “medium-size”, with eleven being the minimum number of workers for a middle-size establishment.

The bulk of the interviews took place in al-Moski market and in Harat-al-Yahud. The merchants traded in children’s toys, men and women’s clothing, light household goods or textiles. Workshop owners specialised in either clothing or jewellery manufacturing. A number of the merchant-wholesalers were importers of goods from China. Others relied on large importers to procure the merchandise they later sold to retailers.

For example, the Moski market trading in manufactured clothes both locally produced and imported includes a large group of merchants from the town of Banga, located in Suhag, an Upper Egypt governorate. Meanwhile, the Hamam el-Talat trade in household electrical goods is associated with the Tawabiyya merchants, originating from al-Tawabiyya village in Qina, another Upper Egypt governorate.

It could be argued that the “full price” which is charged for goods paid on instalment is a marked-up price that includes the equivalent of an estimate of the yield of capital calculated on the basis of the ongoing interest rate. In some sense, it functions in a similar manner to interest charges, serving to compensate for a delayed payment on capital that could be reinvested and potentially bring in further profits.

In addition to the religious credentials used to establish trust, a merchant’s reputation in honouring repayment commitments is integral to the circulation of credit. If a merchant defaults on payments, he risks losing future supplies from other creditors/merchants who operate in the same market.

As noted in the context of Turkey, the interest in social justice and the free market are qualified and informed by the actors’ socio-economic position as owners of medium enterprises who see their economic interests as best protected by free competition and limits on capital accumulation associated with large monopolies. The antagonism is directed at large businesses that benefit from preferential treatment that a wide array of state regulations affords them. There are clear parallels here with the vision presented by the medium entrepreneurs who support the AKP in Turkey (Tuğal 2002: 100).

This ‘Islamic’ department store has now replaced public sector department stores such as Omar Effendi which have been sold to the private sector.

See Elyachar (2005) for a discussion of similar practices by workshop owners.

The signs also indicate the enmeshment of this identity in the global fields of exchange with references to the Chinese provenance of the goods. For example, one shop sign reads “al-Batul for Chinese gold” (al-Batul refers to the Virgin Mary). During my visits to Harat al-Yahud, I noted that along with the use of elaborate lighting on shops to mark the day of launching a new business, shop proprietors hired DJs to play Quranic recitations or Coptic religious lessons that could be heard in the streets.

In Ala al-Aswani’s novel ‘Imarat Ya‘qubian, this is typified in the figure of hajj Azzam who made the seed for his fortune by trading in drugs, but who cultivated all the trappings of piety (al-Aswani 2002). Hajj Azzam’s character is thought to be modelled after the figure of one of the wealthier religious merchants in Cairo who owns a chain of shoe stores and who is a sole agent of a number of international car manufacturers. Azzam’s ostentatious lifestyle, symbolised by living in an opulent house, owning expensive cars and marrying a second wife, is constructed as a confirmation of God’s blessing in conservative religious discourses, while viewed by social critics, both secular and religious, as an indication of a superficial adherence to religion on the part of a social stratum that benefited from the liberalisation of the economy.

See Schielke (2009) for a discussion of different understandings of religion and the ambiguity that arises in articulations of its role in everyday life among young Muslims. Schielke’s (2009: 176) distinction between different registers of religion, in particular between religion as a ‘comprehensive discipline’ as espoused by Salafi-oriented Muslims, and religion as ‘framework of subjectivitiy and action that is neither exclusive nor exhaustive’, as understood by many young Muslims, is similarly suggestive of the different senses of religion that are evoked in everyday life.