From US surveillance to China’s re-education camps—how both systems marginalise Islam while claiming to liberate
In the contemporary global landscape, we are often presented with a binary choice: capitalism or socialism. These ideologies dominate political discourse, each claiming to offer liberation, equity, or prosperity. But for many communities, particularly Muslim, this choice has often proven illusory. Beneath the surface, both systems have repeatedly revealed a shared tendency: the marginalisation or active suppression of religion, especially Islam, in pursuit of their respective ideological goals.
Capitalism and the commodification of belief
Capitalism is predicated on individual freedom, private ownership, and market competition. While it ostensibly promotes religious freedom, in practice, capitalism often reduces religion to a marketable commodity or a tool of state policy.
In the United States, the separation of church and state did not prevent the fusion of Christianity with nationalism and neoliberal economic policy. Political theorist William Cavanaugh argues that capitalism substitutes consumerism for religious commitment, transforming spirituality into a lifestyle brand rather than a moral compass (“Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire,” 2008). Islamic practices that challenge capitalist norms, such as interest-free banking, modest dress codes, or the communal nature of zaka,t are often portrayed as incompatible with “modern” or “liberal” society.
Furthermore, in capitalist democracies, Islam has frequently been securitised. After 9/11, Western capitalist powers, particularly the U.S., launched a series of wars in Muslim-majority countries under the guise of spreading democracy and capitalism. These military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya decimated Islamic civil structures and left power vacuums that delegitimised both religious leadership and communal self-determination.
At home, capitalist states instituted surveillance regimes that disproportionately targeted Muslims. Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations showed that programs like PRISM collected data from Muslim communities under the pretext of counterterrorism. In the UK, the Prevent strategy has been widely criticised for profiling Muslims and curbing religious expression in schools and universities (Amnesty International UK, 2016).
Socialism and state atheism
If capitalism marginalises religion through commodification and securitisation, socialism has often done so through outright suppression. Many socialist regimes have adopted state atheism, viewing religion as a tool of bourgeois control or feudal backwardness.
The Soviet Union offers a stark example. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the state launched aggressive campaigns to eliminate religious influence, particularly targeting Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Mosques were closed, religious scholars (ulama) were imprisoned or executed, and Islamic education was outlawed. By the 1930s, over 25,000 Islamic religious leaders had been killed, and almost all mosques were shut down (Khalid, Adeeb. Islam after Communism, 2007).
China, though now a hybrid state-capitalist regime, retains its Marxist-Leninist foundations and continues to suppress Islamic identity, particularly among the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party has banned Islamic names, prohibited fasting during Ramadan, and incarcerated over a million Uyghurs in “re-education” camps where they are forced to renounce Islam and pledge allegiance to the state (Human Rights Watch, 2020). This is not merely a national security policy, it is an ideological attempt to erase a religious and cultural identity seen as incompatible with the state’s secular, socialist vision.
Even in secular democratic socialist experiments like Ba’athist Syria or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Islamic institutions were tightly controlled by the state. While these regimes adopted certain religious symbols for political legitimacy, genuine Islamic authority was subordinated to the needs of the authoritarian socialist state.
The false binary
What emerges from these patterns is a troubling truth: the binary between capitalism and socialism is less significant for religious Muslims than the shared structure of power that both systems embody. Whether through markets or state apparatus, both ideologies have historically undermined Islam’s ability to function as a comprehensive way of life.
Islam, unlike Western religious traditions, which are compartmentalised into the private sphere, is holistic. It offers a complete socio-economic and political system rooted in divine revelation, not materialist ideology. Capitalism cannot tolerate this because it challenges profit-maximising logic evident in Islamic finance’s rejection of interest (riba) and exploitative debt. Socialism cannot accommodate it because it demands loyalty to the secular state and central economic planning, whereas Islam places ultimate sovereignty with God (al-Hakimiyyah).
The philosopher Hamza Yusuf once remarked that “Islam is a third way” neither capitalist nor socialist, but grounded in divine ethics and community accountability (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, RIS Conference, 2012). Indeed, early Islamic governance under the Rashidun Caliphate combined social justice, communal welfare, and economic regulation without state coercion or market worship. Zakat functioned as wealth redistribution without bureaucratic overreach; trade flourished under ethical limits; the poor were protected, not surveilled.
Islamophobia as a tool of control
Both capitalist and socialist regimes have instrumentalised Islamophobia to manage dissent. In the West, the “War on Terror” justified foreign interventions and domestic repression. In socialist or post-socialist contexts, such as Russia and China, Islam is framed as a foreign threat to national unity and secular governance.
This reveals a deeper ideological convergence. Both systems, in their modern forms, prioritise the state or market over divine sovereignty. Religion, especially one as politically and socially comprehensive as Islam, becomes an obstacle to controlling an alternate locus of power that must be neutralised, co-opted, or eradicated.
Toward an Islamic critique of modern ideologies
Muslims today must resist being forced into the capitalist-socialist dichotomy. Islamic economic thinkers like Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (Iqtisaduna, 1961) and contemporary scholars like Imran Hosein, Haitham al-Haddad, and Taha Jabir Al-Alwani have articulated frameworks rooted in Qur’anic principles and the Sunnah that challenge both Western economic models.
Reviving these traditions requires intellectual courage and political will. It also demands vigilance against attempts to reduce Islam to either an apolitical personal faith or a political ideology stripped of its spiritual essence.
As long as Muslims accept the illusion of choice between systems that ultimately serve the same hegemonic ends, they will continue to be marginalised, their faith diluted, and their autonomy compromised.
Conclusion
The suppression of Islam under both capitalism and socialism is not incidental, it reflects a structural incompatibility between systems built on materialism and a faith rooted in divine purpose. The choice between the two is, for many Muslims, no choice at all. The path forward lies not in picking sides within a false binary but in reclaiming Islam’s comprehensive vision for human dignity, social justice, and spiritual freedom.
The writer is a research scholar in Sociology at the University of Kashmir
Shahid Bashir
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