How the Grinch Stole Ramadan

## Newer Narrative

This is an updated version of this over here. https://www.reddit.com/r/childrenofdusk/comments/v5nsox/how\\_the\\_grinch\\_stole\\_ramadan/. This is now the new canon. Please note, I will be using some highly based humor here, please take it all in good humor. This is canon, though it's the part of canon you would read in this universe's equivalent of r/NottheOnion.

Once upon a time, in the year 2040, a popular store chain had a problem. They wanted more money. It wasn't that they weren't turning a profit, it was that whatever the amount of money they had was, it was not enough. And in their never-ending efforts to accelerate the downfall of human civilization (The funko pops have sold out, billions must die), they hatched a plan to commercialize Ramadan.

Ah, Ramadan, one of the most sacred and holy elements of Islam. Lowering your selfish needs, and raising up your spirits to God by sharing in the compassion and hunger of the poor. Reflecting on your inwards relationship, focusing back on ritualistic prayer, and inching ever closer to the infinite beauty of the divine, it is truly a somber and contemplative moment.

So of course, how do we monetize this holy moment and attract Muslim money, I mean customers? Well, that was what this store chain wanted to figure out. Corporations all over the world had already saturated the West, and the East was mostly off limits because of China's Silent Veil. Problem was, Western audiences could only celebrate so many holidays before their economy would collapse, and the last time they celebrated Pride Month, they got a pipe bomb from every conservative in the Bible Belt, and the incumbent president.

So presumably when a bunch of corporate executives were staring at a map and realized for the first time there were continents outside of North America, they realized the Middle East existed and that there were other continents. Oh, and that said continents had customers, aka money. This had gone wrong before, but fear not, they have learned from their mistakes! The less that is said about Veteran's Day Charlie the Crippled Soldier, the better.

So the big company gathered together their finest marketing experts and cultural inclusivity consultants to try and formulate how they were going to turn a month of fasting and contemplative prayer into one of rampant greed and consumerism. This should go swimmingly, if not for the fact that they suffered from a genetic defect known as being white, a disability known as being a Westerner, and another common mental illness known as being progressive. Meaning their average comprehension of the outside world came from Neo-Twitter, and their definition of "the rest of the world" basically meant Canada and Western Europe.

Even worse, the company had just gone through a big set of layoffs, meaning the only people left were HR heads and a bunch of diversity hires. Who despite solely existing for the purpose of trying to add more diversity were 80% white women with different genders. This was before Cortez smited them out of existence for being the wrong shade of white and liking the wrong genitals. And whose knowledge of the outside world, once again, consisted mostly of terminally online Neo-Twitter. What could possibly go wrong?

So they brainstormed, and made sure everyone felt sufficiently safe, loved, and validated before they should create a mascot to help them channel gluttonous consumerism. And because none of them could be bothered to do anything even remotely creative, one of them pointed out that they could adopt a pre-existing piece of folklore as their mascot, like they did with Santa Claus, or St. Patrick, or the life-size model of crucified Jesus commanding you to buy more product. And because none of them could even be bothered to do a 5 second web search, they came up with the prime figure of the Islamic faith himself, Muhammad.

Oh God.

They also drew the connection that Muslims were hungry during Ramadan, and therefore the consumerist extravaganza should be about trying to make them consume as much as physically possible. Because THAT is what Allah would have wanted when writing the Quran. Now this company was highly socially conscious, meaning they will tweet trans rights before exploiting their massive hordes of 3rd world child slave labor, so they were highly concerned about the perpetuation of whiteness in modern culture. Meaning they were dedicated to making more non-white characters, and by white, I mean BIPOC.

Because screw the Arabs, Latinos and Asians.

One of the race specialists cried foul and insisted that they make him black, so they did. And then a gender specialist cried foul and insisted they make him a member of the LGBT community. So they did, giving him a gay husband named Abdul. Then one of the trans specialists cried foul, so he was made into a transgender woman.

And then the one, THE ONLY Muslim on the entire committee (3rd generation through her mother, completely secularized, non-practicing, LGBT-affirming, of the Palestinian diaspora.) decided it wasn't Anti-Semitic enough. And she added a villain called Goldstein the Merchant, the enemy of trans black Muhammad. Yes, it is exactly like what you are thinking of. Yes, his nose was very big. He wasn't EXPLICITLY Jewish, but come on.

See, this is why you don’t let your kids go secular.

Staring back at them the probable image of Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (The Islamic Antichrist) and the Islamic mark of the beast, Allah had compassion for this world and caused sudden blackouts to roll over their entire advertising department and crashed all of their hard drives in a vain attempt to save his children from this abomination. Alas, it was not to be, and the retail company had backups.

Now that the holiday was inclusive enough by the coveted standards of Twitter, they announced it to the world through Twitter. That a cartoon black transgender Muhammad with a gay husband named Abdul will now be commanding you consume relentlessly during the month of Ramadan and that you should spend all of your money with them rather than donating it to charity.

This went over about as well as you expect.

Within 5 seconds of posting it to Neo-Twitter, it got so many downvotes that they had immediately closed the thread. They were getting 500 angry pings and messages every second from utterly outraged Muslims incandescently furious at the sheer theological Chernobyl meltdown that was a depiction of trans black gay Muhammad. The entire Jewish community was screaming at them for including such an insanely racist caricature of a Jewish person, to which the company replied that they weren't technically Jewish, which went over as well as you expect. It was so bad the Supreme Leader of Iran declared that this was the mark of the beast, the world was ending, and the end times are near.

They immediately got denounced by every Muslim under the sun, got emails stating that their entire executive team was now banned from half the Muslim world. The depiction of Muhammad was such a racist and exaggerated caricature of an Arab that the KKK of all people came in and denounced it for racism, Stormfront took the image and plastered it on their front page for days, and the Anti-Defamation League came in and designated it an official hate symbol. The ACLU intervened and said not even it was going to defend this one. And then the actual terrorism began, you thought Christian pipe bombs were bad? Try having the leaders of Iran and Arabia coming together in the first time in literal centuries and explicitly announcing a jihad against the company.

Every single store they had were burned to the ground by angry Muslim protesters, every single office they had were burned to the ground by angry Jewish protesters, and yes, they received even more pipe bombs through the mail by angry Christians for including the gay (TM). And yes, one of those pipe bombs came from Victoria Cortez herself. The company had done the utterly impossible and united all 3 Abrahamic religions. Like, do you realize how significant that is?

The company tried to get up on its Neo-Twitter account to state that they were only trying to update Muhammad for modern audiences, before Muslims responded that they are pretty sure they had just unleashed an image of Ad-Dajjal and the mark of the beast. It all came to a head when a terrorist actually bombed their headquarters, violence all over the West spiked for a bit before calming down and the entire business lost 95% of its value.

In the ashes of their former headquarters they declared the whole Ramadan campaign was a moral victory, and that the bigoted world was not ready for black transgender Muhammad, but they were on the right side of history. For their next project they decided to try and monetize Hanukkah, but the Jewish community hearing about this panicked, got the Mossad involved, and then immediately crashed the stock market and bankrupted the company. Finally deleting their ongoing projects and whatever other cursed abominations they would have unleashed on the world once and for all.

Thank God, no one would ever have to see their unfinished project to appeal to the Jewish community called "Holocaustmas".

## Older Narrative

Ah, Ramadan, one of the most important and holiest holidays in the Islamic tradition. A time of fasting, charity, prayer, reflection, and faith. Clearly one of the most sacred and beloved traditions in the entire world.

Now how can we profit off of this?

As of late companies were running into a problem: they didn't have enough money. Not that they were not turning a profit, they were doing tons of that, no the specific problem is that the current amount of money they made was not big enough. However much money they made, they wanted more. And one of the biggest things stores did to make money was by commercializing holidays, after all, who doesn't like turning beloved traditions into consumerist extravaganzas?

They already did it with Christmas, then Easter, then Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July, point is they did it with a lot of things. But the problem was that Western audiences can only celebrate so many things. Pride Month was out, people weren't buying overpriced rainbow crap anymore and last time they tried some conservatives sent a pipe bomb to their house. And less said about the time they tried to commercialize Veteran's Day with "Charlie the Crippled Soldier", the better.

So the Western Market was saturated, and they had thoroughly soaked up the Eastern Market with Chinese New Year, Lunar Festival, and such. But then they realized there was a whole other global market they weren't tapping into. Enter, the Islamic countries. So a struggling, mid-size retail store was struggling during these times, and decided they needed to commercialize Ramadan somehow so they could attract Muslim money, I mean customers.

But the problem is, that this company had done a bunch of layoffs, and now they were basically all down to diversity hires and HR inclusion departments. What would possibly go wrong?

So, they brainstormed. How do we monetize Ramadan? “Hey”, one of the diversity specialists said, “Muslims are pretty hungry during the month of Ramadan, like my brother’s cousin’s friend’s coworker said he met a brown person, and he was a Muslim or something, and he was pretty hungry during this season.” And everyone nodded their heads and agreed, raising their own anecdotes about how they also had a brother’s sibling’s whatsit who knew a Muslim who was pretty hungry. And then applauding each other for being so stunning and brave. And then they said they needed a mascot, because Charlie the Cripple went over so well.

And because none of them could be bothered to do a 5 second googling on locating any other Islamic figure, they decided on the first thing to come to mind, they would be doing a reimagining of the prime figure of Ramadan himself, Muhammad.

Oh boy.

Now, you may be wondering, “how the hell is a company made up of diversity specialists this ignorant about other cultures?”. Well first they spent their entire life in an extremely rich well-educated bubble where “the rest of the world” was Canada and Western Europe basically. Secondly, this company put a lot of emphasis on inclusion of LGBT voices, and especially those of oppressed genders and sexes. In other words, the diversity team was like 85% white women. There was literally not even one Muslim on the board.

So now they were going to make Ramadan a holiday about consuming as much as physically possible, getting hundreds of Ramadan presents and whatever was needed to get them to fork over their money. But then one of the racial equity specialists complained that Muhammad was too white, so they made him black. And then one of the LGBT specialists cried foul, there was not enough LGBT representation, so they made him a transgender female.

Now that the holiday was perfectly inclusive and compliant with the HR’s guidelines on diversity and inclusion, they announced it to the world through Twitter. That a cartoon black transgender Muhammad was going to encourage them to consume product during Ramadan and that they should totally spend all of their money with them and not donate it to charity.

This went over as well as they expected.

5 seconds after posting it on Neo-Twitter they had so many downvotes that they immediately closed the thread, but they were getting pings and mentions at 500 times a second from extremely angry Muslims outraged at how they were treating their customers. Of course, the diversity team thought these were right wing trolls and doubled down, posting fanart of transgender Muhammad in order to try and piss off the obvious transphobes.

They immediately got denounced by every Muslim under the sun, got emails saying they were hereby banned from half of the Islamic League, and even the progressive and open minded caliph said if excommunication was an option he would have done it already. The 3 or so Muslim accounts trying to defend trans Muhammad were immediately called out as shill or alt accounts of the employees. And then the actual attacks began. Every single store they had were burned to the ground by angry Muslim protesters, joined by sympathetic Christians and outraged employees, they received thousands of death threats and they received several more pipe bombs.

They tried to state that this was a modern reimagining of Muhammad who was more fit to modern sensibilities, to which the Muslims responded that they’re pretty sure they had just created an image of the Islamic Equivalent of the Antichrist.

It all came to a head when a terrorist actually bombed their headquarters, violence all over the West spiked for a bit before calming down and the entire business lost 75% of its value.

In the ashes of their former headquarters they declared the whole Ramadan campaign was a moral victory, the bigoted world may have rejected black transgender Muhammad for now, but they were on the right side of history. For their next project they decided to try and monetize Hanukkah, but the Jewish community hearing about this panicked, got the Mossad involved, and then immediately crashed the stock market and bankrupted the company before whatever abomination they would have come up with could come to fruition.