The politics of religious commodification: Representation of power in the Cikande halal industrial zone
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15575/jis.v6i1.52367Keywords:
Capitalism, critical discourse analysis, halal industry, political economy, religious commodificationAbstract
This study analyzes the Banten Provincial Government's halal discourse in press releases, social media, and Cikande Halal Industrial Zone (KIHC) promotions (2019–2024) using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Findings reveal halal discourse as a power apparatus that commodifies religion, blending religious lexicon (“halal,” “shariah,” “blessing”) with economic metaphors (“global hub,” “qiblat”) to legitimize industrial modernity. At textual and discursive levels, the state circulates narratives via institutional channels, fostering inevitability around halal industrialization and replacing coercion with persuasion. Socially, it forges a state-religion-capital triad, yielding “dual legitimacy”—moral via religious symbols, economic via investment promises—while crafting market-oriented pious consumers, sidelining justice, labor, and ecology. The study advances scholarship on religious commodification, state hegemony, and halal political economy, portraying halal discourse as governmentality merging morality and markets in Indonesia.
References
Afifi Ab Halim, M., Salleh, M. M. M., Ahmad, A. A., Rahman, S. A., & Nusran, M. (2022). Economic growth of halal industry. In Good Governance and the Sustainable Development Goals in Southeast Asia (pp. 140–154). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003230724-13
Afolabi, O. O., Ojo, S. A., & Ayoola, O. P. (2024). Commoditization of God in religion: Marketing ‘Pentecostalism’ in the Nigerian public space. Journal of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, 44(2), 131–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/27691616.2023.2279324
Al-Ghazali, A. (2011). Ihya Ulumuddin. Al-Ma’arif.
Ali, A. F., Shunmugam, K., & Alhebshi, S. H. (2023). Paraphrase and Definition: Two Translation Techniques in Conveying Islamic Economic and Financial Terminology in Arabic-English Dictionaries. Linguistics and Literature Review, 9(2), 74–97. https://doi.org/10.32350/llr.92.04
Ali, J. A. (2022). Modernity, Its Crisis and Islamic Revivalism. Religions, 14(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010015
Alotaibi, K. O., Helliar, C., & Tantisantiwong, N. (2022). Competing Logics in the Islamic Funds Industry: A Market Logic Versus a Religious Logic. Journal of Business Ethics, 175(1), 207–230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04653-8
Auda, J. (2008). Maqasid al-Shariah as Philosophy of Islamic Law: A Systems Approach. The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).
Bai, Q., & Nam, B. H. (2023). Symbolic power for student curators as social agents: the emergence of the museum of World Languages at Shanghai International Studies University during the COVID-19 era. Museum Management and Curatorship, 38(3), 317–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2023.2188473
Bauman, Z., & Magatti, M. (2007). Homo consumens: lo sciame inquieto dei consumatori e la miseria degli esclusi. Erickson Gardolo.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press.
Bozonelos, D. (2021). The political economy of religious and spiritual tourism. In The Routledge Handbook of Religious and Spiritual Tourism (pp. 36–52). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429201011-4
Cheong, P. H. (2021). Authority. In Digital Religion (pp. 87–102). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429295683-7
de Bruin-Wassinkmaat, A.-M., de Kock, J., Visser-Vogel, E., Bakker, C., & Barnard, M. (2021). Religious identity commitments of emerging adults raised in strictly Reformed contexts in the Netherlands. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 42(2), 149–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2020.1782612
Driessen, M. D. (2014). Religion and democratization: Framing religious and political identities in Muslim and Catholic societies. Oxford University Press.
EFE, A. (2023). A Multidisciplinary Assessment Of Cyber Capitalism As A New Mode Of Production. Uluslararası Ekonomi ve Siyaset Bilimleri Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi, 7(16), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.58202/joecopol.1190942
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315834368
Fealy, G. (2008). Ulama dan Politik: Keterlibatan dan Ketegangan. In G. Fealy & S. White (Eds.), Expressing Islam (pp. 90–92). ISEAS.
Fischer, J. (2016). The Halal Frontier: Muslim Consumers in a Globalized Market. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137348982
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, 18, 170.
Foucault, M. (2008). Seguridad, territorio, población (Vol. 265). Ediciones Akal.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers.
Hasan, F., Tu, Y.-K., Yang, C.-M., James Gordon, C., Wu, D., Lee, H.-C., Yuliana, L. T., Herawati, L., Chen, T.-J., & Chiu, H.-Y. (2022). Comparative efficacy of digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 61, 101567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2021.101567
Heryanto, A. (2016). Identity and Pleasure: The Politics of Indonesian Screen Culture. NUS Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1qv2nv
Islam, A. Y. M. A., Rafi, M., & Ahmad, K. (2024). Analyzing the impact of technology incentives on community digital inclusion using structural equation modeling. Library Hi Tech, 42(3), 826–848. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-07-2021-0226
Isti’anah, A., Suhandano, & Winarti, D. (2025). Metaphors in Promotional Discourse of Indonesian Tourism: Ecological Discourse Analysis. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures, 17(1), 181–204. https://doi.org/10.47012/jjmll.17.1.9
Izberk-Bilgin, E., & Belk, R. W. (2025). Religion in neoliberal times: The global spread of marketization, implications for religion, and future research directions. Marketing Theory, 25(1), 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931241261000
Izberk-Bilgin, E., & Nakata, C. C. (2016). A new look at faith-based marketing: The global halal market. Business Horizons, 59(3), 285–292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2016.01.005
Jain, A. R. (2022). Spiritualizing the Other: Appropriating and Commodifying Practices in Metaphysical Religion (pp. 89–108). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79903-8_5
Jamil, N. (2025). Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore. University of Illinois Press.
Jessop, B. (2016). Territory, Politics, Governance and Multispatial Metagovernance. Territory, Politics, Governance, 4(1), 8–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2015.1123173
Jong, A. (2025). The Post-Secular Cosmopolitanization of Religion. Religions, 16(3), 334. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030334
Kalan, A. (2023). Genre as a Product of Discursive Fusion. In Interdisciplinary Practices in Academia (pp. 9–27). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003263067-3
Kazanoğlu, N., & Ketola, M. (2022). Understanding the moral economy of state-civil society relationships: Islam, women’s NGOs and rights-based advocacy in Turkey. Turkish Studies, 23(4), 600–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2033118
Kok, S. K. (2021). The branding of religious financial institutions in the UK: conversations with market actors within the Islamic financial sector. Journal of Islamic Marketing, 12(4), 900–917. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-01-2020-0016
Kotanko, A., & Winchester, D. (2025). Making a Martyr?: Scandal, Symbolic Power, and the Controversial Death of Evangelical Missionary John Chau. Qualitative Sociology, 48(3), 381–411. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-025-09593-1
Kunzlik, P. (2013). Neoliberalism and the European Public Procurement Regime. Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, 15, 283–356. https://doi.org/10.5235/152888713809813666
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
Liang, F., Pan, Y., Gu, M., Liu, Y., & Lei, L. (2022). Research on the paths and strategies of the integrated development of culture and tourism industry in urban historical blocks. Frontiers in Public Health, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1016801
Lofland, L. H. (2024). The Urban Milieu: Locales, Public Sociability, and Moral Concern. In Social Organization and Social Process (pp. 189–206). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315547169-15
Maham, R., & Bhatti, O. K. (2019). Impact of Taqwa (Islamic piety) on employee happiness: A study of Pakistan’s banking sector. Cogent Business & Management, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2019.1678554
Mandel, I., & De Mink, S. E. (2016). Merging binary black holes formed through chemically homogeneous evolution in short-period stellar binaries. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 458(3), 2634–2647.
Mazzoleni, G., & Schulz, W. (1999). “Mediatization” of Politics: A Challenge for Democracy? Political Communication, 16(3), 247–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/105846099198613
Mende, J. (2024). Substance- or legitimacy-oriented (de)legitimation of global governance institutions. The double-edged role of complexity. Globalizations, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2330171
Miller, L. J. (2024). Claims-Making from the Underside*. In Challenges and Choices (pp. 92–119). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003571841-6
Miskiyah, K., & Hidayat, S. E. (2020). Sertifikasi halal di Indonesia: Antara perlindungan konsumen dan komodifikasi agama. Jurnal Hukum Ius Quia Iustum, 27(2), 342–363. https://doi.org/10.20885/iustum.vol27.iss2.art6
Monticelli, L., & Frantzen, M. K. (2025). Capitalist realism is dead. Long live utopian realism! A sociological exegesis of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. The Sociological Review, 73(3), 583–606. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261241261452
Muhalim, M. (2023). Neoliberal ideology, faith-based higher education institutions, and English in Indonesia: negotiating English teachers’ ideological formation. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 21(3), 353–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2022.2033614
Mukherjee, H. B. (2020). The Religion of Man. In Education for Fullness (pp. 99–108). Routledge India. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367853105-12
Mustapha, I., & Mustapha, A.-H. (2025). Sustainable Halal Management, Branding, and Marketing Strategies for Blue and Green Products. In Green and Blue Economy Frameworks for Halal Industry Sustainability (pp. 171–204). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-1729-6_10
Nurhayati, S., & Suryana, A. (2022). The development of halal industrial estates in Indonesia: Opportunities and challenges. Journal of Islamic Monetary Economics and Finance, 8(1), 131–150. https://doi.org/10.21098/jimf.v8i1.1423
Olsen, D. H. (2003). Heritage, Tourism, and the Commodification of Religion. Tourism Recreation Research, 28(3), 99–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2003.11081422
Osella, F., & Rudnyckyj, D. (2017). Religion and the Morality of the Market. Cambridge University Press.
Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods. SAGE.
Rahman, M. M., Razimi, M. S. A., Ariffin, A. S., & Hashim, N. (2024). Navigating moral landscape: Islamic ethical choices and sustainability in Halal meat production and consumption. Discover Sustainability, 5(1), 225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-024-00388-y
Rudnyckyj, D. (2019). Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226650052.001.0001
Saal, J. (2021). The Dark Social Capital of Religious Radicals. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32842-9
Safi, O. (2009). Memories of Muhammad: why the Prophet matters. HarperOne New York.
Sandikci, O. (2021). Religion and Everyday Consumption Ethics: A Moral Economy Approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 168(2), 277–293. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04422-2
Sandıkcı, Ö. (2011). Researching Islamic marketing: past and future perspectives. Journal of Islamic Marketing, 2(3), 246–258. https://doi.org/10.1108/17590831111164778
Sans Zurita, J. E. (2023). Is the Middle Kingdom on a path to hegemony? Realism through alLiberal façade.
Sirnes, T. (2024). The pandemic state of exception: restrictions, subjectivities, and authority. Subjectivity, 31(3), 217–242. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-024-00193-y
Snider, L., & Bittle, S. (2022). Corporations, class and the normalization of risk. In Risk and trust: ethnomethodological orientations to risk theorizing (pp. 143–162). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788972260.00018
Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalization and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton & Company.
Su, X., & Lim, K. F. (2025). Urban state venturism: On state-led venture capital investments in the urban process of capital accumulation. Dialogues in Human Geography, 15(2), 259–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206231220724
T. Good, L. (2022). Power, Hegemony, and Communication Theory. In Cultural Politics in Contemporary America (pp. 51–64). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003326427-6
Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies, 8(1), 159–177.
Vanany, I., Soon, J. M., Maryani, A., & Wibawa, B. M. (2020). Determinants of halal-food consumption in Indonesia. Journal of Islamic Marketing, 11(2), 507–521. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-09-2018-0177
Wang, T., Gao, J., Jia, Y., & Wang, C. L. (2022). The double-edged sword effect of adaptation strategy on performance: The mediation of legitimacy and synergy. Journal of Business Research, 139, 448–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.10.004
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Yang, Z., & Li, L. (2021). Positioning Religion in International Relations: The Performative, Discursive, and Relational Dimension of Religious Soft Power. Religions, 12(11), 940. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110940
Yolles, M. (2024). Diagnosing Market Capitalism: A Metacybernetic View. Systems, 12(9), 361. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems12090361
Zaman, A. (2019). Islam’s gift: An economy of spiritual development. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 78(2), 443–491.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Ikhsan Ahmad, Asep Abdul Sahid, Agus Ahmad Safei
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).