Many religions have had times in their history where there has been violence committed by their followers. I don’t think that there is any major religion on the planet, with the possible exception of the more extreme among the Jains, that doesn’t have episodes of violence in their history and also violence that increases at certain times of the religious year. You don’t have to dig down far to find stories of different types of Christians going at each other at times when religious fervour is highest and some of the Jews of Tsarist Russia had good reason to be nervous at Easter. Jews themselves have a particular monthly observance, Rosh Chodesh a festival that honours women, that has its roots some say in an ancient civil war between different factions of Jews. There has also been Sikh – Hindu conflict in the Indian state of Punjab.

Many of these intra and inter-religious conflicts are either in the past, such as many of the Catholic and Protestant wars or the Easter Pogroms of Tsarist Russia now, or are very localised such as the ethnic conflicts in India. What we do not see are Jews going out and slaughtering random non-Jews at their major festivals, neither do we see Hindus doing the same at Dwali or Christians at Christmas. Many of these religions have grown out of widescale mass violence associated with their religious festivals.

But not Islam. Islam is the one faith in the modern world that has major death toll associated with its primary religious festival Ramadan. There isn’t a Passover death toll or an Annunciation Day death toll or whatever but with Islam there is.

Year after year there’s been horrendous levels of death by violence carried out by Muslims in the name of their faith at Ramadan. This is because some Muslims believe that acts of Jihad carried out during Ramadan are especially favoured by Islam’s bloodsoaked deity ‘Allah’. Whereas in most other religions that have violence in their histories the violence is part of its history, sometimes its very deep history, but in Islam there is the exhortation in its scripture for violence in the hear and now.

It’s likely or rather more than likely that this year’s Ramadan, which starts at sunset tonight, will also have a significant death toll. The only question is whether it is greater or lesser than last year’s death toll of 808 or whether it will be something like 2021’s Ramadan death toll which was over 1100. What we can be almost certain of is that there will be Islamic terror attacks at Ramadan and if any of these attacks happen in any Western nation then the political classes of these nations will be dishonest with their citizens as they so often are and say that the Ramadan terror attacks are ‘nothing to do with Islam’ even when they clearly are.

Welcome to the 2025 series of the Ramadan Big Savage House and let’s hope and pray that this year it will not be its usual bloodbath.