Q. Doing Business with Muslims

Salaam Brother Mehboob,

The question can be arguable , in terms of experiences Muslims in Singapore have faced in decades. My personal observations are this:

1) The level of professionalism and expertise, in terms of competitiveness and result-orientated service, that shaped or becomes part of the Muslim challenge within the Singapore society . Within certain sector, the non-Muslims clearly dominated the field of professionalism and management e.g.Work recruitment agencies, logistics, corporate marketing etc..which are in fact the main contribution to the social, influence and "market professionalism" of any groups of people to shine. Hence many Muslims (tend to be or) are reduced, if not pressured, for Muslims remain as employees, or faced overwhelming deficiency to challenge to majority of "other" in businesses.

2) The minority which Muslim are, being part of the diverse culture and "religious Singapore" remains a traditional challenge to Muslim to compete with both, other minorities and also foreigners (and expats). The social requirements of Muslims additionally (our prayer timings, Fridays prayers, food and attire issues) contribute to the limitations and considerations for employers or customers to pick other because we are the "other", making the competition of preferences, a considerable factor.

3) The common inherited prejudice was in my view, overwhelms the first two points in considering for "not-Muslims" buyer/agent . For example, Company A once fraud Customer A in customer expectations and satisfaction, hence Customer A labels the whole company affiliated with Company A by it's affiliation with their race/religion/geographical affluence/culture etc...This in turn became the "yardstick" to judge other services/companines and thus lead to the inherited "the Muslim problem" as understood sadly, by the community today. Another similar example is how Singaporeans viewed China workers, or Bangladesh workers, and how one bad experience lead us to assume the "whole other", and became a social stigma that affected the norm, which by whole, un-Islamic.

Hence, I do not assume that Muslims can't fare better, but the relating experience by Muslims on other "under-performed" Muslim dominated companies/service and thus discriminating the rest can increasingly damaging, and hinders potential ideas and innovation for future improvement of services and competitiveness of Muslim minorities versus the other more influentially +effective "non-Muslim" services. Salaaam .