Ramadan Karim: The Terror Drive During Muslim Holy Days

Rome—(Updates with Islamic State claiming attacks) This is the second Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and as some observers predicted, terror attacks are on the upswing during the year’s most important Islamic holidays. One, this morning in France killed one person; a second, a bombing at a Shiite Mosque in Kuwait, took at least 25 lives; and the third, shootings, in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, with at least 39 dead.

The Islamic State claimed a part in all the attacks, though it’s hard to know whether the group was mainly the true instigator or just the vicious inspiration.

Predictions of assaults on civilians during Ramadan are an annual event–as are the attacks themselves, whether by the  Islamic State, at large in Iraq and Syria, or others in the alphabet soup of terrorist organizations.

Ramadan is the month in which Muslims celebrate Mohammed’s direct receiving of God’s word. The common holiday greeting is Ramadan Karim–“Generous Ramadan.”

The Islamic State this week not only invaded two cities on Syria’s border with Turkey, but slaughtered civilian families in their homes. China banned Ramadan celebrations in the Islamic province of Xinjiang. The ban, meant to reduce possible violence, instead provoked a series of 18 stabbings of ethnic Chinese by Uighur Muslims.

The terror targets are different but the basic motive the same: to hit at places that are festered with apostates. That includes not only the France of the West, but newly democratic Tunisia that hosts foreign tourists (in revealing bathing suits, no less!!) and Shiites, disdained by fundamentalist Salafi and Wahhabi Sunni Muslims as “polytheists.” A heretic may also be any Muslim who does not follow the Islamic State line on jihad.

Be shocked but not surprised by today’s wave of bombing.

This year’s prediction.

Islamic State urging violence against unbelievers.