ABSTRACT
Linking Islam and marketing is not only a technical-managerial issue but also has important discursive functions related to the production of profits, ideology, power and identity. Islamic marketing as an academic field carries authority claims over knowledge. To be legitimate, an authority needs to ground its subjectivity claims upon a discursive source, which in this case is Islam. This brings forth the question ‘What is in a name that we call “Islam”?’ Defining Islam as a semiotically constructed discursive form rather than an ontological entity with essential properties, this chapter critically discusses this question.
This chapter explains the idea of using cultural branding as a consent manufacturing technique to semiotically construct a super-brand Ummah. This chapter demonstrates that Islamic cultural branding could evolve both to become a tool for collaborating Muslim producers and consumers to co-constitute more ethical products or constructing a super-brand Ummah for imposing a conspicuous morality to internally brand Muslim individuals. Linking Islam and marketing is not only a technical-managerial issue but also has important discursive functions related to the production of profits, ideology, power and identity. The chapter focuses on how glocalization and translocalization open the gates for a more dynamic and flexible framing of the brand sign system as a hegemonic discursive form. Post-Islamist identity politics can better be characterized even in its most democratic form as a kind of sectarian identity politics exploiting an authoritarian audience democracy la Berlusconi.
