A Malaysian manufacturing company recently created the first automatic Wudu machine for Muslims to perform their ablution (washing) ritual before praying. You might be asking yourself: seriously, is this the most urgent thing Muslims need these days? But the company is clearly interested in tapping into an extremely lucrative halal market that is making large inroads among Muslim consumers around the world. The global halal market today is worth more than $640 billion and growing at a rate of 20% annually, according to Halal Journal, a bi-monthly magazine that specializes in covering halal market trends globally. You can find anything from Muslim cosmetics, Muslim dolls, Muslim chicken nuggets, Muslim loans, Muslim Feta cheese, Muslim vitamins, Muslim music video channel, Muslim resorts, to Muslim bikinis. This is changing the way Muslims relate to the market because a flurry of products they buy now come from Muslims, whereas much of the "cool stuff" they bought before was produced and sold by Western parties. One pressing question that looms large now is what happens when Muslims are called on to join a global market that is no longer defined and controlled by Western interests? I've just ordered Vali Nasr's new book Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What it Will Mean for Our World, in which he argues that market pressure and competitiveness of global (not Western) trade will make the Middle East more moderate. The business-minded Muslim, Nasr says, is a much better weapon against extremism and Iran than any state intervention. You can listen to Nasr explain his arguments on NPR here. Capitalism always re-invents itself, and in the case of the Middle East, according to Nasr, its encounter with Islam is a good thing. I'll come back to this topic once I read Nasr's book.