Janie B. Cheaney: When ‘they’ becomes ‘you’

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD commentator Janie B Cheaney on the changing demographics of the U-K.

JANIE CHEANEY: Ramadan 2025 began at the end of February and continues to the end of March. The month-long observance for Muslims to fast and pray occurs on a lunar calendar cycle, meaning it falls at a different time each year. Most Americans have no idea when.

But the British can hardly escape knowing, as columnist Melanie McDonaugh observed in a Spectator article titled, “Are you Ramadan-ready?” She writes, “That was the poster in Sainsbury’s advertising its delicious range of fast-breaking foods . . . And the striking thing about it was the ‘you.’ That ‘you’ means the normal customer, the default Sainsbury’s shopper.”

Sainsbury’s is the UK’s second-largest grocery chain. Their website offers “all the essentials needed for celebrating Eid,” which occurs at the end of Ramadan. Nothing wrong with catering to the clientele, but McDonaugh noticed that same intrusive “you” in an email she received from a hair salon she once patronized: “We know how important it is to take a moment for yourself amid the busy days of fasting and prayers.” Rest assured, the salon would be open after sundown for fast-breakers to “indulge in a little luxurious self-care.”

Ramadan lights have added a festive touch to Coventry Street and Leicester Square and schools are advised to schedule Ramadan assemblies. The Muslim population is now fifteen percent of London. No one denies the right to practice their religion, “but,” writes Ms. McDonaugh, “it’s still oddly unsettling that Islam is now the default ‘us’.”

In an Easter Sunday interview last year, atheist Richard Dawkins confessed to feeling oddly unsettled about the encroachment of Islam on English traditions. Though he had no use for the substance of Christianity, he retained a sentimental attachment to the trappings. “It would be truly dreadful,” he said, if another religion replaced cathedrals, hymns, and Christmas carols.

A hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton imagined just such a future in a comic novel titled “The Flying Inn.” The plot turns on prohibition, not Ramadan. As a result of a treaty with the Ottoman Empire and a prominent M.P.’s attachment to a Turkish Muslim cleric, Parliament has banned alcohol. Not only alcohol, but that cornerstone of British society: the local pub. The two heroes load a cart with the last remaining barrel of rum and travel from town to town serving up a kind of cultural communion. Chesterton’s point was that secular concerns like health and politics must never trump faith. Secularism is temporal and individual by nature. It doesn’t have the fortitude to withstand a united challenge from true believers, whether Islamic or communist. Creedal faith can only be confronted by creedal faith.

There’s been a lot of interest in a Pew poll showing that the decline of traditional religion in the US has stalled out. That could be because the American church, for all its divisions and scandals and brawls, still holds to the faith that shaped its history and character. This should stir us up to love and good works, not complacency. God willing, Ramadan lights will never replace Christmas lights, but we must keep the faith.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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