With her 3-year-old daughter sitting inside a red Target shopping cart, Aya Khalil looked through the aisles with anticipation. The author was on a mission: See for herself that her children’s book about a boy and his grandmother baking for an Islamic feast was actually carried by her local Target store in Toledo.
“Oh yeaaaaah!” her daughter joyously exclaimed. Khalil giggled.“This didn’t happen when I was growing up. It was like, ‘Are things really changing now?’” she said. “I’m just really happy that now my own kids will be able to see that and that they’ll know that their stories are valid and … are out there like a totally normal thing.”
Others echoed the sentiment on Target’s website: “Thank you so much for making Ramadan decor mainstream,” one shopper wrote. “We feel seen and heard!” wrote another. Party supplies retailer Party City started selling Ramadan and Eid items in 2018 and has since increased such products amid growing demand. More than 280 stores, particularly in locations with large Muslim populations, carry the items, which include lantern string lights and table runners reading “Ramadan Mubarak,” or “Blessed Ramadan.”
From 2014 to 2016, she worked with Macy’s at South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa, California, to design the display towers with “Happy Ramadan” signs for an event. In 2018, she started selling her own items at a pop-up shop at Macy’s in Westminster, California. Responses varied. Some shoppers said that while supporting such businesses is important, so is buying from the big, national ones to encourage more representation and for Muslim children to feel celebrated. Others argued that decorations offered by many of the small businesses were often expensive or that big retailers were more accessible. Others suggested buying from both.
“It brings awareness to your neighbors,” she said. “The images that they see on TV and what Muslims look like is usually like a bad guy; it’s changing that.”
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