Commodification in Ruqyah Practice: Social and Spiritual Implications in the Contemporary Context

Islam provides guidelines on wages in various activities, one of which is ruqyah treatment. Some scholars allow the acceptance of wages on condition that there is a reasonable tariff agreement between the two parties, so that tariffs that burden the patient are unacceptable. This study aims to 1) analyze the phenomenon of commodification in ruqyah practices on social media, 2) explain the impact of commodification of ruqyah practices on social media. The method used in this study is a qualitative approach with virtual ethnographic analysis. This study uses the commodification theory initiated by Karl Marx in 1867. This study fills the gap in previous studies by offering a new perspective on the relationship between technology, commodification, and spiritual medicine in Islam. Unlike previous studies that focused on traditional ruqyah, this study highlights changes in ruqyah practices in cyberspace and their impact on people's spiritual understanding. The results of this study indicate that the commodification of ruqyah, although providing easy access and increasing the visibility of spiritual medicine, risks changing the essence and main purpose of ruqyah itself. Socially, this paid practice can affect the relationship between practitioners and patients, create inequality, and change people's perceptions of spiritual values in medicine. Spiritually, commodification has the potential to reduce the depth of understanding and application of ruqyah in a religious context. This study offers important insights into the dynamics between technology, commercialization, and spiritual practices in contemporary society.