How do Millennials engage with sectors in the Islamic economy?

Did you know that Islamic finance and modest fashion are the top two sectors that Muslim Millennials worldwide would like to interact and engage with? Or that the top keywords and hashtags used by Millennials in 2016 include “hijab”, #Halal, #Projekstg and #Bilal? 

These were some of the findings of the Millennial Consumer Insights in Thomson Reuters’ “Global Islamic Economy Report 2016/17”. The report used three weeks’ worth of Facebook data—a total of 452,600 interactions—for an in-depth analysis of social media. 

The fourth edition of the report, which was released today, looked at Millennials’ behavior with regard to sectors of the Islamic economy. It emphasized that Millennials have a critical role to play in the development of the Islamic economy.

Here are some of the interesting insights that the report offers:

• The top countries where Millennials were engaged with Islamic economy sector topics are Indonesia (126,000 interactions), Malaysia (84,700 interactions), Pakistan (55,900 interactions) and the US (14,600 interactions).

• In Indonesia, 54 percent of Millennial interactions were related to the modest-fashion sector.

• In Malaysia, 71 percent of Millennial interactions were related to the Islamic finance sector.

• In Pakistan, 87 percent of Millennial interactions were related to the halal media and recreation sector.

• In the US, 46 percent of Millennial interactions were related to the halal food sector.

• Overall, the most active Islamic economy sectors where Millennials interacted were Islamic finance (157,000 interactions), modest fashion (101,000 interactions), and halal media and recreation (99,000 interactions).

• Halal food (54,000 interactions) and halal travel (15,000) were surprisingly lower relative to the other sector interactions.

• Men (205,000 interactions) and women (206,000) were almost equally engaged on social media.

• Millennial women were most engaged in topics related to the modest-fashion (65,000) and Islamic finance (61,000) sectors. Millennial men were most engaged with the Islamic finance (83,000) and halal media and recreation (66,000) sectors.
   

• An overwhelming 76 percent of Millennial interactions had a positive sentiment, 17 percent were negative, and 7 percent were neutral.

The report developed by Thomson Reuters, the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre (DIEDC) and DinarStandard can be downloaded here.