ROOTS OF RAMADAN EXPOSED

Time to talk about Ramadan's violent roots

Until today, we have avoided discussing the brutality and murderous nature of Muhammad and early Islam. However, the fact that many Muslims regard this bloody history as a religious and moral symbol, and that on October 7, they replicated it, compels us to change our approach.

 

By Nadav Shragai  

 

Israel Hayom

Mar 8, 2025 

 

 

The natural caution ingrained in us Jews, in respecting other religions, and the fact that no other religion in the world has suffered as much persecution and harassment from other faiths as Judaism, has so far left the historical reckoning of radical Islam's violence and its roots in the hands of a handful of Muslim intellectuals who have distanced themselves from both Muhammad and his teachings. These individuals have articulated what many Jews have refrained from saying.

The most famous among them was Salman Rushdie, who did so in The Satanic Verses back in 1988. But others followed. Hamed Abdel-Samad, for example, the son of an Egyptian imam who fled to Germany, wrote the bestseller Mohammed: A Reckoning. Abdel-Samad noted that Muhammad had two problems with the Jews: their steadfast commitment to the prohibition against murder and their refusal to recognize his prophetic mission as divine. Years before the "Palestinazis" from Gaza raped women, beheaded civilians, and gouged out the eyes of Jews in the Israeli border communities, Abdel-Samad and others pointed to the horrific, ancient "Muhammadan routine" and even drew parallels between the ideology of Islam's founder and that of Hitler.

Sandra Solomon, a Christian who was born Muslim under the name Fida, comes from a family of terrorists in Ramallah. She recounted how, from the age of five, she was made to memorize the Quran and was taught that Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs, are the filthiest infidels in the world and deserve death. Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist born in Beit Sahour who was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood's cell in the US, went through a journey similar to Fida's. He described how, from a young age, he was brainwashed with a racist ideology, directed to hate Jews, and sang songs about killing them. Noor Dahri, who joined a terrorist organization in Pakistan, was raised to believe that "Jews are worse than animals." Hamid al-Sharifi, founder of the Liberal Muslim Association and a former Iraqi diplomat who survived three assassination attempts for his views, described how religious leaders read select passages from the Quran to young people, turning them into "walking time bombs." He described himself as "a blind man whose eyes were opened."

Pyramids of skulls

Even though Shoebat and other "blind men whose eyes were opened" have been doing this work for us - and despite the deep respect and appreciation for their courage - it is time, particularly in the month of Ramadan, which has for years been marked by deadly terrorist attacks against Jews, to speak for ourselves. To discuss what radical Islam has done to the "Month of Mercy, Forgiveness, and Repentance," during which "the Quran was sent down from heaven." To talk about Islam, which for centuries was considered a relatively tolerant religion toward other faiths, especially compared to Christianity, but has since been replaced by violent fanaticism directed at Jews and their persecution. About the "Month of Drawing Closer to God," which far too many Muslims have turned into a month in which they intensify their hatred and violence against Jews.

Let's talk, for example, about the massacre carried out by Muhammad and his men in the 7th century against the Jewish priestly tribe of Banu Qurayza; the horrifying slaughter during which hand-bound teenagers, men, and elders were executed by beheading, while the women were turned into sex slaves. Or about the conquest of Byzantine Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, during which countless men, women, and children were murdered. Or about Tamerlane, the father of the Uzbek nation, yet another Muslim mutation, whose armies wiped out men in their wars, raped their women and children, and built pyramids of skulls.

I apologize for these harsh descriptions (and only a fraction of them has been included here), but they are necessary, because the monstrous figures who orchestrated and carried out the October 7 massacre see these acts - or similar ones - as a model to emulate, as instructions to be implemented even today. Hamas, which currently enjoys immense popularity among Palestinians (both in the West Bank and Gaza), engraved this ancient, murderous doctrine onto its charter and writings years ago.

The issue is not only what Muhammad and his successors did or did not do in their time. The problem is that the traditions of his brutality and cruelty, his campaigns of deception and slaughter, particularly against Jews, continue to serve as religious and even moral symbols for countless Muslims today.

To this, we must add Islam's division of the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, regions yet to be conquered by Muslims, and its ambition to impose Sharia law (Islamic law) on the entire world, particularly on Jews, who, instead of being dhimmis, subjugated subjects under Muslim rule, dare to govern themselves here in the Land of Israel.

The writing was on the wall

If the writings of Islamic religious scholars are too tiresome for you, and if the works of Muslim historians documenting early Islamic violence are not accessible, then turn to more recent history, which demonstrates the modern-day interpretation that some of Muhammad's followers give to his teachings. Look at the murder of Ehud and Ruth Fogel and three of their children (including their infant daughter, Hadas, just three months old), whose bodies were desecrated. Look at Ori Ansbacher, whom Arafat Irfaiya tortured, raped, and murdered. Look at the early days of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the 1929 Hebron massacre, whose photographic evidence was censored and hidden from us for many years in an attempt to shield us from images we were ultimately forced to confront a century later on October 7.

The writing was on the wall back then in Hebron. The Jews believed that "mutual interests would prevail." Even then, we refused to believe that the worst was approaching. The Jews did nothing with the intelligence information they had received, even when incitement about their supposed intent to "seize and destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque" spread from Jerusalem to Hebron.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky's personal secretary, the Jewish writer Arthur Koestler, whose words I have quoted here before, vividly described the behavior of Muslim clerics and their influence on the masses. Until October 7, such descriptions might have been considered politically incorrect. Now, they are a massive understatement.

Koestler referred to the numerous attacks against Jews in the 1920s. "The Muslim clerics of my time," Koestler wrote, "would, on average, call for a holy bloodbath twice a year. A kind and peaceful Arab landlord would joke with his Jewish tenants during the month of Ramadan, then head to the mosque, listen to the preacher's sermon, and afterward rush home to slaughter the tenant, his wife, and their children with a kitchen knife… Never have I felt so close to divinity and yet so far from it."

The terrorist attacks and attempted attacks on the eve of Ramadan 2025 and at its onset draw inspiration from the ancient and brutal killing sprees of early Islam and Muhammad. Even the scholars of Egypt's Al-Azhar, who are influenced by this tradition, recently clarified that "Israel, the malignant disease at the heart of the Arab Islamic nation, will meet its end in destruction."

Yet we will prevail. Light, goodness, and justice will triumph. But we, too, must recognize the roots of "Ramadam" - the distortion that has perverted Ramadan.