In Egypt, where religious discourse once fuelled mass political mobilisation and shaped visions of an Islamic state, a quieter revolution is now underway.
It is not being fought in parliament or in public squares, but instead in shopping malls, television studios, private universities, and digital platforms. At the heart of this shift is what Swiss sociologist Patrick Haenni has termed in his seminal book L’Islam de marché: l’autre révolution conservatrice (Market Islam: The Other Conservative Revolution) a form of religiosity that adapts Islam to the moral and cultural logic of the market economy.
In the Egyptian context, this transformation is vividly embodied in the rise of Amr Khaled, whose daawa (preaching) movement in the early 2000s marked a departure from traditional Islamist rhetoric. Khaled did not preach political confrontation or advocate an Islamic state. Instead, his message was tailored to urban middle-class Egyptians seeking a way to reconcile Islamic piety with personal ambition, professional development, and consumer modernity.
Khaled’s lectures, broadcast on satellite TV and YouTube, taught his audience how to be better Muslims by becoming better versions of themselves – ethical, successful, family-oriented, and socially proactive. His language mirrored that of global self-help literature more than it did of classical Islamic jurisprudence. He was not a product of Al-Azhar, nor a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, but something new: a charismatic religious entrepreneur in the marketplace of moral goods.
Haenni’s analysis offers a profound insight into what this phenomenon reveals about the post-Islamist turn in Egypt. The decline of Political Islam, marked by the Brotherhood’s exclusion from political life and the broader state-led campaign to depoliticise religion, has not diminished the public role of Islam. Instead, it has prompted a reconfiguration. Today, Islam thrives not as a revolutionary project, but as a lifestyle ethic mediated through consumption, media, and personal branding.
This model has found fertile ground in Egypt’s neoliberal transformation. Since the 1990s, the liberalisation of the economy, the growth of the private sector, and the expansion of a status-conscious middle class have all created the conditions for a religious discourse aligned with market values.
“Halal” has become not only a theological category, but also a marketing tool applying to everything from finance and cosmetics to tourism and real estate. Preachers and religious figures compete for followers not just through sermons, but also through digital content, television programmes, and slick branding strategies.
In this environment, religious authority is increasingly fragmented and informal. Traditional institutions like Al-Azhar continue to play a critical role in official discourse, yet many Egyptians, especially the youth, derive their ethical frameworks from figures who operate outside institutional control.
Whether on Facebook or TikTok, religious content is now shaped by metrics of engagement, algorithms, and the aesthetics of persuasion. The mosque competes with the screen; the fatwa competes with the podcast.
But this transformation is not without its contradictions. While this Market Islam provides a framework for personal morality and social order, it often bypasses structural critique. It encourages individual ethical reform, but may neglect broader questions of inequality, injustice, or political repression. Its gender messaging frequently reinforces patriarchal norms under the veneer of modesty and virtue. And its economic logic risks commodifying faith itself, turning religion into a curated identity rather than a source of collective agency.
Nonetheless, Haenni’s Market Islam remains one of the most insightful lenses for understanding the evolution of Egyptian religiosity in the 21st century. It explains why, even in a post-Brotherhood Egypt where the political space is tightly managed, Islam continues to animate the public sphere, not through slogans of resistance, but through calls for ethical consumption, positive energy, and self-improvement.
For scholars, policymakers, and religious institutions alike, this shift demands new strategies. Religious engagement today must account not only for theological literacy but also for media fluency and market sensitivity. If Egypt’s young Muslims are encountering religion primarily through motivational clips, branded preachers, and ethical lifestyles, then those seeking to shape the future of religious discourse must meet them there – not with resistance, but with relevance.
Ultimately, Market Islam is not the Islam of revolution, but the Islam of resilience. It may lack the ideological ambition of its predecessors, but in its ability to adapt, mediate, and survive within the structures of global capitalism, it represents a quiet but potent reimagining of the sacred in a neoliberal age.
The writer is a senior adviser to the Grand Mufti of Egypt.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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