Days of Action or Restraint? How the Islamic Calendar Impacts Violence

Abstract

Does the religious calendar promote or suppress political violence in Islamic societies? This study challenges the presumption that the predominant impact of the Islamic calendar is to increase violence, particularly during Ramadan. This study develops a new theory that predicts systematic suppression of violence on important Islamic holidays, those marked by public days off for dedicated celebration. We argue that militant actors anticipate societal disapproval of violence, predictably inducing restraint on these days. We assess our theory using innovative parallel analysis of multiple datasets and qualitative evidence from Islamic insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from 2004 to 2014. Consistent with our theory, we find that important Islamic holidays witness systematic declines in violence—as much as 41%—and provide evidence that anticipation of societal disapproval is producing these results. Significantly, we find no systematic evidence for surges of violence associated with any Islamic holiday, including Ramadan.

Walls and Strategic Innovation in Violent Conflict

“…Many links between holidays and terrorism discussed in existing research do not apply in our context. Reese, Ruby, and Pape (2017) suggest that terrorists avoid carrying out attacks on holidays for fear of upsetting their supporters by violating the holiness of the day. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorists are overwhelmingly Muslim or Christian, whereas the holidays we use to predict closures are Jewish, thus terrorists are unlikely to worry about violating the day’s sanctity.…”

The Wane of Command: Evidence on Drone Strikes and Control within Terrorist Organizations

“…Specification 1 is estimated using an ordinary least squares (OLS) model. As OLS assumes normally distributed standard errors to determine the level of statistical significance of coefficients, Appendix B.4 shows Reese, Ruby, and Pape 2017). This is not the model of choice here, as results from negative binomial models are inconsistent and subject to bias in the presence of a large number of fixed effects (Allison 2012;Hilbe 2011).…”

“…Alternatively, negative binomial models are commonly used in the literature to analyze unlogged counts of terrorist attacks (e.g. Reese et al (2017)). This is not the model of choice here, as results from negative binomial models are inconsistent and subject to bias in the presence of a large number of fixed effects (Hilbe, 2011;Allison, 2012).…”

Walls and Strategic Innovation in Violent Conflict

“…in our context. Reese et al (2017) suggest that terrorists avoid carrying out attacks on holidays for fear of upsetting their supporters by violating the holiness of the day. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorists are overwhelmingly Muslim or Christian, whereas the holidays we use to predict closures are Jewish, thus terrorists are unlikely to worry about violating the day's sanctity.…”