The recent terror attack in Orlando, in which a lone gunman pledging allegiance to the so-called Islamic State gunned down 50 people in a gay nightclub, happened just about a week into Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar. This is not a sad coincidence, but part of a deliberate pattern of escalation during this month by extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Last month, the Islamic State released a 31-minute long audio screed calling for more jihadist attacks during Ramadan, which lasts from June 5 to july 5 this year.
"Make it, Allah permitting, a month of hurt on the infidels everywhere,” said Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a spokesman for the Islamic State, in his annual speech.
The U.S. State Department also released a memo last week urging Americans traveling abroad to stay vigilant against the potential "lone-wolf" attacks encouraged by the Islamic State. It warned that “martyrdom during the month may hold a special allure to some," in a report released shortly after Al-Adnani's address.
Last year, a spate of high-profile terrorist attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait, and France also took place during the holy month.
"It wouldn’t seem to be simply by coincidence that they occur during a period that increases the fervor that some feel about their religious obligations," Marvin Weinbaum, a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, told the Christian Science Monitor.
While groups like al-Qaeda and Hamas have documented histories of intensifying their calls for jihad around Ramadan, the month may hold further significance for ISIS because it declared its caliphate on the first day of Ramadan in 2014.
The sad irony of this phenomenon is apparent to the vast majority of Muslims, for whom Ramadan is a time for introspection, prayer, and community service. In addition to fasting from dawn to sunset, they refrain from ordinary vices like smoking, lying, and gossip.
There is an obvious shock value from carrying out disruptive attacks during a month of reflection, and groups like ISIS thrive off media ink. The disparity also heightens the contrast between militant Islamists and the vast majority of the world's Muslims. One thinks, at times like these, of the futility of the phrase "moderate Muslim." Obviously the world's Muslims, full-stop, no qualifying adjective, are by and large the ones fasting, reflecting, and speaking out with clear horror about the Orlando attack. CAIR, the country's largest Muslim organization, sponsored a blood drive for Orlando victims just hours after the incident.
They are not "moderate" Muslims -- they are just Muslims. The kind of people who pervert the holiest month of the year to justify terrorism and murder are the exceptional ones -- the extremists, the radicals, and in more ways than one, the lone wolves.
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