Shahed Amanullah fears some have forgotten the true meaning of the holy month, which began on June 28th:
I feel we are inadvertently following the model of Christmas and turning the month into a “season” that is a time for socializing, indulgence and consumerism above all else. Corporate America is sensing this and is responding accordingly with Ramadan promotions and special events (latest example: the DKNY Ramadan launch this week), using a barely-modified Christmas playbook.
Our need for belonging makes us applaud any public acknowledgement of our holiday, whether it is a Best Buy ad, a politician’s Ramadan greeting or a department store Ramadan display. I regularly attend public iftars where nearly half the attendees are not Muslim, and any religious aspect is relegated to a small side room so as to not get in the way of networking and socializing. When you start seeing people like Wolf Blitzer at iftars, you just have to wonder what is happening to our most precious religious holiday.
But, in a review of DKNY’s Ramadan collection, Bina Shah argues that commercializing Islam is nothing new:
[I]sn’t it a cynical marketing gesture on the part of DKNY to use Ramadan as a way of selling clothes? If you think that, you’ve clearly never been to Pakistan, where I live. Entire clothing lines, such as the wildly popular Junaid Jamshed men’s stores, are based on meeting Islamic guidelines and use Muslim terminology and phrases to motivate people to buy the clothes. And it isn’t just restricted to clothes: everything is sold using religion as a motivator. There is Al-Falah (Good Works) Industries, which takes its name from the line in the Muslim call to prayer urging people to “come to good works.” There’s even a brand of household soaps and cooking oils called Sufi – after the mystical branch of Islam.
The Dish 