In modern day culture, religion is specifically a business, rather than a faith. After European renaissance, religion is seen as derivative of changes between effect and resistance which had forced social scientists to think about religion from different perspectives. Then with some formal mixtures of capitalism and religion, religion became a component of business, rather than just a belief. From an individual perspective to social, political, economic perspectives, it's true. Even from individual to national and international perspectives, religion is just a business concept in the geo-politics at the international, super-national, and even supra-national arena. Nothing has changed the religions; rather international geo-politics has transformed religions into their own interests sometimes as an evil and sometimes as a “divine angel,” which can benefit their interests.
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Religions are unique to their own values and qualities and as a culture, it has second to none. To some people, it’s bad and even worst as a devil and at the same time to some people’s, religion is the core belief to live on earth. There are fundamentalist religious groups as well as fundamentalists among the nonreligious groups, atheists, common mass as per their believe systems and even among every groups of peoples of every society. There is an on-going debate among social scientists, economists and political scientists regarding the role of religion. As per our understanding, the core is economy: truly saying- “He who controls world economy controls the world”. There might be difference of views and opinions regarding such saying, still we are fundamentalist, rigid and strict on this line. Due to such view, modern-day powerful states have concentrated more on economic development, rather than spiritual development or concentrate less on religion and has materialized religion on the subject of business. Even due to their economic superiority, they have tried to analyze and develop newer views on everything; society, religions, cultures, development etc. Sometimes, they have showed religion as positive force and afterwards due to the economic, social and political interests, they have tried to depict religion as monster. Therefore, religion sometimes have become a force of a positive culture and faith and immediate after that common masses have become confused of their faith and other’s religious faith. For example, we can talk about current trends of humiliating Muslims and Islam all over the world. A hundred years ago, the Germans specially Hitler depicted Jewism exactly like what the economic super powers are depicting Islam and Muslim today. As soon as the propaganda against Islam and Muslim (Lewis,1990; Huntington,1996) from academic, social, economic and political perspectives arises, American and European peoples forgot their own cultures and tried to show themselves as ‘secularist’ and at the same time, the Muslims and Islam as ‘fundamentalist’ and even terrorists. Now the question arises in the mind of anyone why suddenly Islam which was a peaceful religion before 1990 (Huntington,1993) and what did suddenly occur which made Islam so demonized? So, what’s the political economy of such demonization of Islam and Muslim? Business, yes sir, you heard it, right: truly economic benefit of the western economic super powers. In the next few sections, we would explain in detail of this business ventures of the capitalist economies.
Religion to some peoples are only beliefs and to some, this is just a business to whatever religion it is, i.e. whether it’s Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism. Some academicians or researchers might disagree with such views, but in it’s truest sense of terms, it’s a business as perpetrated by the religions themselves or capitulated by the capitalist ventures. For example, we can talk about the Muslim Eid, Hindu Pooja or Christian’s Christmas where the business in religiously prescribed festivity enjoyed the highest amount of business in the world. The business during the religious festivals like Muslim Ramadan, Eids, Hindu Pooja and Christian’s Christmas or Buddhist’s festivals are the highest. Even the Religious tourism like Muslim Hajj (Pilgrimage) and Umrah or Hindus Tirthajatra (Pilgrimage) or other religious Pilgrimage, Capitalist economy use the most of its resources to make the highest profit of it. We would discuss the major issues concerning the religious tourism in the fifth section of this chapter.
We would like to expand the pseudo contradictions of religion and so-called ideologies of capitalism, democracy, communism in the preceding sections. Rhetorically there are contradictions among the ideologies and religions, but in practice, the contradiction is only for the business of the capitalist world. To be fair, the contradiction is not among religions and capitalism, communism or democracy, the truest contradiction is: ‘who would control the economy, whether it’s the Religious Institutions (church, mosque, pagoda, mandirs) or the state?’ We would like to get into details of such conflicts of interest in the next section of this chapter.