“If It’s Good for You, Allah will Give it to You”: Istikhara in the Business Practice of Russian Muslims

Abstract

The article, based on ethnographic material collected among Muslim entrepreneurs in 2023–2025 in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tatarstan, and Dagestan, analyzes the practice of istikhara as a way of dealing with uncertainty when making economic and life decisions. Relying on the concept of semiotic ideologies, the article demonstrates that istikhara takes various forms, both ritual and semiotic. The study distinguishes three analytically distinct semiotic regimes of istikhara: divinatory, hermeneutic-procedural, and normative-ethical. Each of them differently defines permissible ways of “reading” divine signs and differently structures the uncertainty of the future — from delegating the decision to the ritual to refusing the semiotization of events. An important place in the study is given to the concept of good (blago), correlated with the concept of barakat (blessing) — informants refer to these categories to describe the consequences of their decisions, which allows them to interpret failures and setbacks as part of the divine plan. In conclusion, the article proposes to view istikhara as a way of existing in conditions of uncertainty by delegating responsibility to divine predestination.