As the moon of Ramadan 2026 rises over Jammu and markets everywhere, the familiar rush begins: higher prices on dates, sugar, ghee, and every staple that fills iftar tables. For many shopkeepers, traders, contractors, and businessmen, this is the golden season—demand surges, margins widen, cash flows fast. Yet the very month that brings this bounty also brings a clear, uncomfortable reminder straight from the Qur’an and the Sunnah: wealth is a test, not a trophy.
Fasting is not complete when the body abstains from food and drink alone. The soul must abstain from greed, from indifference, from the quiet decision to squeeze every extra rupee while eyes turn away from the hungry standing at the same counter. The labourer hauling your goods at dawn, the woman selling handfuls of spices outside your shutter, the driver who waits hours for payment—they fast with you, but their suhoor is often missing, their iftar meagre.
This Ramadan, businessmen and profit-makers face a direct question: will your ledger show only rising sales, or will it also record rising mercy?
You do not need to shut your shop or give away half your stock. The ask is simpler and more piercing:
1) Hold prices of essentials at last year’s level—no automatic Ramadan markup.
2) Prepare one extra large portion of iftar every evening and send it to your site workers, your watchman, your helpers.
3) Settle daily-wage accounts by the first ten days of the month, add a small Eid advance if possible.
4) Write off one modest overdue amount—the few thousand rupees owed by a struggling family can become their groceries for a week.
5) Place a basket of dates, bananas, or packed biscuits near the billing counter; let anyone who looks hesitant take one without question.
These steps cost far less than the windfall profit most expect this month. Yet each carries reward the books of account cannot record: the same thawab as the fasting person you fed, multiplied because the giver is the one who could have kept it all.
The Prophet ﷺ said the upper hand (the giver) is better than the lower hand (the receiver). In Ramadan that teaching becomes urgent. When profit is easy, generosity should be easier still.
Let this be the Ramadan when people in your lane, your market, your labour colony remember not just the higher prices, but the man who refused to forget them. Let them break their fast and say, “Today business had a heart.”
Measure success twice this month: once by the cash drawer, once by the number of relieved faces you leave behind.
Ramadan Mubarak. May your fast be accepted, your wealth purified, and your trade blessed with barakah that outlasts any balance sheet.
