Whether you grew up believing that Muslims were at best mysterious foreigners who liked rigid prayer rituals and head coverings—and at worst, jihad-warriors sent from hell to destroy Christianity—you had better get used to their influence. The Islamic world, along with their doctrine and their money, is influencing every sector of the global marketplace.

And I thought somehow that Muslims shunned consumerism.  According to the Halal Journal, the halal food industry (the market that caters to the dietary guidelines set out in the Koran) is worth an estimated $632 billion each year, and it’s growing quickly. Hotels, businesses, fashion, and health care are all getting a piece of the Islamic action, with the combined economic impact set at a trillion dollars annually,according to Time magazine.

In Europe, where Islam is finding its most pronounced surge of influence, young Muslims want to have all their mainstream pleasures and their legalism too. In other words, give me the illusion of product purity—no pork, alcohol, or a bare leg—but let me be a sophisticated, trend-spotting consumer while I’m doing it.

This feel weirdly familiar to me. I was an eighties girl raised in the Bible Belt, who only now wishes that her early identification with Christianity hadn’t been so consumer-driven. I remember when the intimate, interior faith of my grandmother was suddenly supplanted by an evangelical co-op of space-age Christian architecture, scripture breath mints, and stadium concert tours. I remember no persecution, really. I got to have all the cool stuff that my secular friends did, but lucky me, my stuff was holier than theirs. It wasn’t really my parents’ fault. They loved Jesus Christ with everything they had in them, but they, too, were enjoying the mainstream popularity of the movement.

If I were a devout Muslim, I’m not so sure I’d be celebrating the new global consumer consciousness. If they would study a bit of social history—say, even a thirty-year blink of an eye—they might notice that religion and consumerism make lousy business partners. The Halal Journal asks this question of profit-minded companies: “What products and services are you going to provide to help Muslims lead the lifestyle they want to lead?” Yikes. The pronouns in that sentence say it all. Replace the word “Muslims” with “Christians” and we’re back at a 1987 planning meeting at the Christian Booksellers Association. Or maybe even a 2009 staff meeting in a mega-church who are debating if Twitter will appeal to their congregations.

In case you think I’m sounding like a neo-Emerson hippie, I’m not anti-consumerism. But my identification with Christ feels sometimes like it’s fighting for space in a cluttered storage unit filled with a decade’s worth of Christian books-of-the-moment and Guitar Praise for the Wii. Heaven help us. Our world defines religious devotion by its checklists and acquisitions, for the heart of man leans toward the earth sooner than it leans toward heaven.

I was reading this in The Message today. Peter says in the book of Acts: "Change your life. Turn to God and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away—whomever, in fact, our Master God invites." He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, "Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture!" That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

Peter’s admonition was so simple, but almost impossible. Peter reminds us to eat the common meal, to “get out of the stupid culture,” to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which cannot be bought and sold. Jumping out of a consumer-block might be just what our faith needs to thrive.