When Humans Become Commodities

I have tried to complete university three times in my life, and all three times I failed miserably.

At the time, I simply assumed that perhaps I was not academic enough or that I lacked discipline. Yet, looking back now, I realise that something much deeper was taking place, though I did not possess the language to express it then.

There was something within me that resisted.

I do not mean that education itself is wrong. Islam is a religion that honours knowledge and raises the rank of those who seek it as long as it is beneficial and done for the sake of Allah. Nor was it hard work or striving to earn a livelihood that troubled me. Rather, there was something unsettling about spending years chasing grades and percentages so that one day I might earn another number called a salary, which would then grant me another label called success.

Even if I had succeeded, I would still have been a number.

And university was not the only place where I encountered this resistance.

Before Allah guided me to Islam, I had more than fifteen jobs throughout my life, and I was dismissed from many of them. For years, I assumed that this was simply a defect within myself, that perhaps I lacked perseverance or that I was too hasty to remain upon one path for very long.

I also believed what so many of us are taught to believe: that if a person dislikes his work, he simply has not yet found the right occupation, the right passion, or the right calling. There is certainly some truth in this. Many people spend their entire lives searching for meaningful work, while others remain in occupations they do not love because they provide stability and a means of provision.

Yet whenever I looked back upon those years, I realised that there was something deeper that I could not then understand.

I never enjoyed going to work. It was not labour itself that I disliked, nor earning a livelihood, for seeking provision is from the affairs of this worldly life that Allah has commanded us to undertake. Rather, there was something burdensome about spending one’s days within a system that seemed to reduce a person to his output and measure his worth according to targets, performance, and utility. We become summaries of ourselves, condensed into qualifications, experiences, and achievements, until an entire human being is reduced to a resume.

The places changed and the people changed, yet the system itself always seemed remarkably similar. A person’s place remained secure only so long as he continued to produce, and once his usefulness diminished, he became readily replaceable.

At the time, I could not have expressed any of this. Allah had not yet guided me, and I did not possess the language to understand what I was sensing. Yet when I look back now, I cannot help but wonder whether my fitrah was recoiling from something it dimly recognised. The fitrah knows, even before a person fully understands it, that there is something within the human being that cannot be accounted for by the world’s measures alone.

It was only after embarking upon this journey of tazkiyah that I began to understand what had long remained hidden from me. We live in a world that increasingly teaches human beings to understand themselves through the language of numbers, productivity, and utility. A person’s worth becomes tied to what he produces, what he possesses, and how useful he appears to others. We no longer ask first, “Who is this person?” but rather, “What can he offer? What value does he add?”

The successful person in today’s world is often the one who can be measured, managed, improved, optimised, and consumed. Even our language bears witness against us. We speak of human resources, social capital, and personal brands. On social media, people become content, followers become metrics, and the human being slowly becomes a product. In the workplace, years of loyalty may be forgotten the moment a person’s usefulness declines, and his humanity becomes secondary to his utility.

This is not merely an economic arrangement. It is a vision of reality and, more importantly, a vision of man himself.

When the remembrance of Allah is removed from the centre of life, man forgets who he is. He no longer sees himself as a servant journeying to his Lord, carrying a soul created by Allah and an honour bestowed upon him by his Creator. Rather, he becomes another object among objects, another thing among things, another resource to be organised, managed, and consumed.

Everything gradually becomes a commodity: knowledge, relationships, culture, and even human beings themselves. The questions we ask begin to change. Instead of asking, “Is it true? Is it just? Is Allah pleased with it?” we ask, “Is it useful? Is it profitable? What can I gain from it?”

Perhaps this is one of the reasons there is so much confusion and disorientation among Muslims today. Somewhere along the way, we began to inherit the assumptions of a civilisation that does not share our understanding of man, life, and purpose. We adopted its measures of success and absorbed its definitions of worth until many of us began to see ourselves through its scales rather than through the scales of revelation.

This should not surprise us.

The heart was created for one qiblah, one direction, and one ultimate purpose. It was created to seek its honour from Allah alone and to find its rest in remembering Him. When it turns away from that direction and seeks its worth elsewhere, it becomes scattered, restless, and burdened.

Somewhere along the way, we began to follow the West rather blindly, as though its civilisation was the one worth pursuing simply because it appeared more advanced and more refined. Yet history itself bears witness that the Arabs before Islam also possessed customs, systems, and forms of civilisation, but it was not civilisation that transformed them. It was revelation. It was tawhid. It was the Qur’an that took hearts buried beneath ignorance and raised them to dignity and integrity.

Allah tells us that Shaytan vowed:

﴿وَلَأُضِلَّنَّهُمْ وَلَأُمَنِّيَنَّهُمْ﴾

“And I will surely mislead them and arouse in them false hopes.” (Surah al-Nisāʾ 4:119)

And when Allah informed the angels that He would place mankind upon the earth, they said:

﴿أَتَجْعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفْسِدُ فِيهَا وَيَسْفِكُ الدِّمَاءَ﴾

“Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood?” (Surah al-Baqarah 2:30)

Human beings, when left to themselves and their desires, are prone to excess, forgetfulness, and corruption. This is why Allah did not leave us to ourselves. He sent revelation as a light, guidance as a mercy, and His Book as a criterion by which truth is distinguished from falsehood.

And perhaps this is precisely what we are witnessing today. We live in a world that has become remarkably skilled at measuring things and yet increasingly unable to recognise what is sacred. It knows how to calculate a person’s productivity, estimate his market value, and quantify his achievements, yet it struggles to answer the simplest of questions: Who is man, and what was he created for?

When human beings forget the answer to that question, they begin searching for themselves in everything else. They seek their worth in titles, achievements, possessions, and the praise of people. They attempt to fill an emptiness with more consumption, more experiences, and more success, only to discover that the hunger remains.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah رحمه الله said:

“Within the heart is a fragmentation that cannot be mended except by turning to Allah. Within it is a loneliness that cannot be removed except by finding intimacy with Him in seclusion. Within it is a sadness that cannot depart except through rejoicing in knowing Him and being truthful with Him. Within it is an anxiety that cannot be calmed except by gathering one’s heart upon Him and fleeing to Him. Within it burns a fire of regret that cannot be extinguished except by being pleased with His commands, His prohibitions, and His decree, and by patiently enduring until meeting Him. Within it is a need that cannot be filled except by loving Him, turning back to Him, constantly remembering Him, and being sincere to Him. Even if a person were given the entire world and everything in it, it would never fill that need.”

Madārij al-Sālikīn (3/156).

How profound are these words for our age.

We live in a civilisation that continually offers the heart more of the world while remaining unable to address the emptiness that lies within it. The market can offer a person comfort, convenience, endless entertainment, and limitless choices, but it cannot tell him who he is, why he is here, or where true contentment is to be found.

The reason is simple: the poverty of the heart cannot be enriched by the world, for it was never created for the world in the first place. The heart was created for Allah, and whenever it seeks its ultimate worth and fulfilment elsewhere, it remains restless, no matter how much of the world it acquires.

This is why tazkiyah is not an optional extra or a luxury reserved for a select few. By the permission of Allah, it is an awakening of the heart after its heedlessness and a return of the servant after his wandering. It is the gradual restoration of things to their proper places, where Allah once again becomes the centre, the Hereafter becomes the destination, and this world returns to being what it was always meant to be: a provision, a means, and a field in which we sow for our meeting with Him.

Through this journey, a person slowly begins to remember that his value does not lie in his productivity, his wealth, or the estimation of others. Rather, his honour lies in being a servant of Allah, created by Him, sustained by Him, and journeying back to Him.

There is a profound freedom in this remembrance. The one who knows his Lord and knows himself is no longer held captive by the world’s ever-changing scales of success. He may work, strive, and seek provision, yet his heart remains settled, for he knows that his worth does not rise and fall with a salary, a title, or the praise of people.

This does not mean that we abandon the world. Allah has placed us within it as a place of cultivation and testing. The dunya is a field in which seeds are sown for the Hereafter. We take from it what helps us upon our journey and leave that which distracts us from our destination.

The question, then, is not whether we hold the world in our hands, but whether we have allowed it to take root in our hearts.

For when the world settles in the heart, the servant becomes its captive. But when the heart settles with Allah, the world returns to its proper size.

Perhaps one of the greatest fruits of tazkiyah in our time is that it teaches us to see again. It teaches us to remember that we were never created merely to be measured, consumed, and assigned a price, but to know our Lord, worship Him, and journey back to Him with hearts that have found their rest in Him.

-n.dahlia