Ok that’s it! I’m officially fed up with all the mosque-talk and mass emails ranting about our “duty” to boycott America, Denmark, or whichever nation happens to be the favorite “enemy of the umma” for the season. Before madrassa-educated sheikhs start meddling with the country’s affairs and its economic decisions, they need to understand a little bit about the dynamics of international markets.First of all, there is no longer such a thing as a purely “American product”. A typical hamburger sold at a McDonald’s store in Qatar, for example, is possibly made of Brazilian beef, Jordanian tomatoes, Egyptian wheat, and other imported ingredients sold to you by a Filipino worker at a venue managed by an Indian, and owned by a Qatari businessman. The brand is American alright, but the sandwich hardly is. And most of what you paid goes to the farmers, workers, and business owners who participated in the making of the sandwich, many of whom could very well be Muslims by the way. So boycotting that sandwich really means hurting them more than the brand itself.
Add to that, foreign franchises aren’t really as bad as many people think, and no it’s not the modern form of colonialism. Those annoyingly-identical stores actually help the economy of the host country by providing job opportunities and paying taxes to its government, which in turn is used to improve living standards. It is also within the corporate social responsibility plan of many of those companies to give back to the community and fill in the gaps left by the government.
At a time when smart countries are dying to attract more foreign investment and more international cooperation, it is ridiculous to call for an “independent Muslim industry”. It’s simply not feasible - not even theoretically.
So if you want to stop eating hamburgers do it out of health, aesthetic, or any other number of reasons. But please don’t think you’re fulfilling some kind of a religious duty and then come rubbing it in our faces!