Ramadan arrives, and with it, divine lights flow through our lives, rejuvenating the spirit. In this month, Muslims cleanse themselves from sins, as it is the month of the Quran and a season for worship. It is a school where Muslims learn to endure hardships and a training course to practice virtuous morals. This description summarizes the religious discourse in Ramadan, which is good, but this discourse needs renewal.

Renewal is a fundamental component of the Islamic discourse, as per the prophetic hadith: Abu Hurairah narrated that the Prophet (PBUH) said, "Allah sends to this Ummah at the head of every century someone who renews its religion for it." (Narrated by Abu Dawood). This renewal does not aim to change the essence of the religion, but rather to restore it to the purity it had when it first emerged, adhering to its correct teachings, away from any impurities or deviations.

In this context, I hope that the religious discourse in Ramadan, in addition to the traditional approach which focuses on the teachings of religion and its rulings concerning fasting, includes another approach targeting the deviations that have affected the implementation of these teachings, deviating from their true intentions, and producing manifestations of "flawed religiosity". The first of these concerns the core intentions of Ramadan as a month of fasting, but the deviation in this concept has turned it into a month of feasting! Family spending on food during Ramadan doubles, consuming more than a quarter of the entire year's budget allocated for this area. Egyptians spend 60 billion Egyptian pounds monthly on food during normal times, while this amount increases to 100 billion pounds in Ramadan, as recently stated by Dr. Ibrahim Al-Ashmawy, head of the Internal Trade Development Authority. This leads us to the impact of what I have previously termed "consumerist tendencies", which employ all means to transform people into customers and push them towards more spending on goods, even creating artificial needs using various promotion methods to turn luxuries into necessities, to the extent that one company announced the sale of knafeh (a traditional dessert) in installments before Ramadan! This is a glaring example of the effects of consumerist tendencies, including the pressure to make many products like knafeh and yameesh (traditional festive foods) essential for Ramadan, in an effort to turn acts of worship into commodities, known as "commodifying rituals", where religious occasions are linked to the purchase of specific products. This approach began with celebrating the birthdays of some of the righteous saints, and it is surprising that many of them led ascetic lives, while commemorating their anniversaries has become an occasion for extravagance. This approach extended to celebrating the birthdays of prophets, peace be upon them, (like the sweets for the Prophet's birthday and New Year's Eve celebrations), and then to other religious occasions, including Ramadan and the festivals.

In light of the global economic crisis and rising food prices, it was supposed that religious discourse would seize Ramadan as an opportunity to shed light on this deviation in the intentions of the holy month, especially since we import large quantities of crops that we depend on for our food, such as wheat, beans, and lentils. Renewal in this area simply means focusing on two aspects. The first one urges us to change our economic habits by making Ramadan a true month of fasting, where we economize in consuming food and other products. If this happens, Ramadan would become a month of saving expenses, and it would lead to an increase in the export of food products from Islamic countries to others. This month would become an occasion demonstrating to the entire world that Muslims can abstain from the necessities of life, like food and drink, in obedience to Allah's command.

The other aspect of this discourse targets traders and producers to expose manifestations of flawed religiosity. Some of them may be keen on fasting, praying, and giving alms, but at the same time, they practice prohibitions and commit major sins, such as hoarding goods or withholding them from people to raise their prices, commercial fraud, and manipulation of weights (with bread as an example). The religious discourse here must clarify the Sharia ruling on withholding goods, the consequences for the greedy trader, and the punishment for those who exploit citizens' needs for more profit, among other matters that affect people's lives. In fact, I aspire for the Ministry of Endowments to lead awareness campaigns about these sins under attractive titles such as " Woe to those who give less [than due]!" (Woe to Al-Mutaffifīn).