The 'Holy Month' of Ramadan Is Ending, and Here's the Death Toll

It's the Islamic holy month, when it's a terrible insult to Muslims who are praying and fasting to bomb a rogue state that threatens the U.S. and its allies, right? Ilhan Omar said that. Yet as Ramadan draws to a close this year, the jihad death toll worldwide is 499 infidels murdered in 133 jihad attacks. No adherents of any other religion, or even any “right-wing extremists,” committed any terror attacks during this period.

Those who are confused as to how all this killing could take place during what is supposed to be a holy month should remember a key fact that the political and media establishment routinely ignores: because Ramadan is the month in which Muslims redouble their efforts to obey Allah, Ramadan is also quintessentially the month of jihad. That doesn’t just mean the month in which Muslims engage in a spiritual struggle to improve their fidelity to Allah’s commands. It means jihad violence.

This is because fighting against and killing infidels is commanded in the Qur’an (cf. 2:191. 4:89, 9:5, 9:289, 47:4, etc.). As a result, killing infidels during Ramadan is, for the killers, a holy and sacred act. A jihad group explained it back in 2012: "The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and Allah’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators."

This is not the prevailing view among non-Muslims in the West. Even President Donald Trump, in his 2026 Ramadan message, stated:

Every Ramadan stands as a reverent season of spiritual renewal, reflective meditation, and appreciation for God’s countless blessings. This sacred time for many Americans emphasizes prayer and fasting, strengthens familial and community ties, and affirms our shared values of compassion, charity, mercy, and humility.

Trump was right. Ramadan is indeed “a reverent season of spiritual renewal, reflective meditation, and appreciation for God’s countless blessings.” Yet for that very reason, given the contents of the Qur’an and Sunnah, Ramadan is also “is a month of holy war and death for Allah.”

During Ramadan, Muslims are exhorted to renew and deepen their devotion to Allah. Hence it is a time when they read commands such as this one, and many look for ways to put them into practice: “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers, and merciful to one another.” (48:29) The imperative during Ramadan is to grow more devout. The Muslim who applies himself diligently to the observance of Ramadan will thus become both more merciful to his fellow Muslims and more ruthless toward non-Muslims.

Throughout the history of Islam, we can see jihad being waged with extra ferocity during Ramadan. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS recounts the story of the centuries-long and excruciatingly devastating Islamic jihad against India. During Ramadan in 1504, the Delhi sultan Sikandar Lodi, in the words of the contemporary Muslim historian Niamatullah, “raised the standard of war for the reduction of the fort of Mandrail; but the garrison capitulating, and delivering up the citadel, the Sultan ordered the temples and idols to be demolished, and mosques to be constructed.”

Then the sultan “moved out on a plundering expedition into the surrounding country, where he butchered many people, took many prisoners, and devoted to utter destruction all the groves and habitations; and after gratifying and honouring himself by this exhibition of holy zeal he returned to his capital Bayana.”

Plundering, butchering, and destroying temples was, as far as Niamatullah was concerned, an “exhibition of holy zeal.” Niamatullah wrote admiringly of Sikandar Lodi:

[T]he Islamic sentiment [in him] was so strong that he demolished all temples in his kingdom and left no trace of them. He constructed sarais, bazars, madrasas and mosques in Mathura, which is a holy place of the Hindus and where they go for bathing. He appointed government officials in order to make sure that no Hindu could bathe in Mathura. No barber was permitted to shave the head of any Hindu with his razor. That is how he completely curtailed the public celebration of infidel customs. If a Hindu went there for bathing even by mistake, he was made to lose his limbs and punished severely. No Hindu could get shaved at that place. No barber would go near a Hindu, whatever be the payment offered.

Murdering infidels thus doesn’t contradict the spirit of Ramadan. It embodies it. The Kavkaz Center, a website operated by Chechen jihadists, explained in a 2010 article that the idea of Ramadan as a time for warfare against infidels went back to Muhammad’s time: "The month of Ramadan in the life of the Prophet (pbuh) and the righteous ancestors was a month of forthcoming. The greatest battles during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) occurred in this blessed month, the month of jihad, zeal and enthusiasm."

It is, therefore, an annual occurrence: there is more jihad terrorism during every Ramadan. We saw four jihad attacks in the U.S. during the month of March, with which Ramadan largely coincided this year.

It is dangerous, suicidal folly for infidels to pretend that Ramadan is simply a month for renewing one’s piety, and that it is not the month of jihad. It is because Ramadan is a time for renewing one’s Islamic piety that the jihad rages even more fiercely during this month, which mercifully is now drawing to a close, than it usually does.