Critiquing halal tourism: Power, piety, and the politics of gaze

This conceptual paper rethinks halal tourism through the intersecting lenses of Urry's tourist gaze, Foucault's disciplinary gaze, and the Qur'an's ethical gaze. While halal tourism is typically marketed as a culturally sensitive and religiously compliant alternative, we argue that it often reinforces commodified, performative, and externally driven expressions of Islamic piety. Drawing on tourism studies and Islamic ethics, the paper deconstructs how halal tourism reshapes religious subjectivities through visual regimes, institutional power, and internalized norms. We introduce the concept of the halalized gaze to describe how faith is often consumed as symbolic reassurance rather than lived ethical engagement. By contrast, the Qur'an's invitation to “lower the gaze” offers a moral counter-narrative that reorients tourism toward humility, introspection, and taʿāruf (knowing the Other). In theorizing the three gazes, this paper challenges dominant paradigms in faith-based tourism and calls for a reimagining of halal travel beyond visual conformity and toward ethical depth. • Introduces a triadic framework—tourist, disciplinary, and Qur’anic gazes—to critique halal tourism. • Examines halal tourism’s commercialization through Islamic ethics and critical hospitality theory. • Reveals tensions between piety, performance, surveillance, and sincerity in Muslim travel. • Integrates Urry, Foucault, and Qur’anic ethics to bridge tourism studies and Islamic thought. • Calls for ethical, reflexive, and critical research beyond market-oriented halal tourism narratives.