An erroneous perennial refrain heard from Washington — that it is forbidden, haram, or at least unwise to fight during Ramadan — is making its return as the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar approaches.  

Ramadan came up in a message President Biden tried to convey this week, with the holy month of fasting and praying set to start Monday, as he answered a reporter’s question about negotiations to release hostages in return for a Gaza cease-fire. 

“There’s gotta be a cease-fire because Ramadan — if we get into a circumstance where this continues through Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem, then you got — it could be very, very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said — or, rather, mumbled somewhat incoherently. 

A chorus of Washington foreign policy professionals has for years preached that wars and Ramadan do not go together. At times the argument is that fighting is forbidden in the Muslim religion during the holy month.

As Ramadan approached in November 2001, weeks after the September 11 attacks, American diplomats, allies in Europe, and Muslim countries urged President Bush to stop the war. “The enemy won’t rest during Ramadan and neither will we,” Mr. Bush retorted. “We’re going to pursue this war until we achieve our objective.”

He had a point. As the Middle East Media Research Institute notes in a recent research paper, “jihad organizations regard Ramadan not only as a month of abstention and worship, but also as the month of jihad and martyrdom.”

Mr. Biden’s use of the holy Muslim month to lean on Israel to lay down its arms is therefore being directed at the wrong side of the war: Ramadan or no Ramadan, Hamas has rejected any of the American, Qatari, and Egyptian pleas to release hostages in return for a cease-fire. 

Indeed, many Israelis believe that the strategy of Hamas’s war chief in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, is to escalate the fighting during Ramadan in the hope that Muslims would join him in attacking Israel on all fronts.

Sinwar named the Hamas October 7 attack “al Aqsa flood.” Now Israeli security officials say he is hoping for Ramadan-related skirmishes between Muslim and Israeli security forces at the Temple Mount’s mosques that would dominate television broadcasts, inciting Muslims the world over. 

Under such a scenario, Sinwar is hoping that Hezbollah, Iraqi, and Syrian militias, Jordan- and Egypt-based jihadists, and West Bank supporters will then open the al-Aqsa floodgates and unite all anti-Israel fronts in a Ramadan war. 

“This all depends on Iran,” Memri’s founder, Yigal Carmon, tells the Sun. So far, he says, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has been cautious. He instructed Hezbollah to harass Israel, but prevented it from using its 160,000-missile arsenal against Israel’s population centers. 

“An all-out war on Israel will happen only if Iran wants it,  and Iran doesn’t, because Khamenei is a coward,” Mr. Carmon says. He does, though, anticipate Ramadan-related skirmishes on the Temple Mount. Yet, so does the Israel Defense Force, which, he says, can handle bursts of violence that occur each year during Ramadan. 

Clearly, no mysterious writ of the Koran forbids believers from fighting wars during that month. After all, Prophet Muhammad led his followers to the battle of Badr during Ramadan in the year 624 of the common era. In modern times, Muslim countries and jihadists often use that month to launch wars. 

Nor is there any Fatwa against attacking Jews on their holy days. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria conducted a coordinated surprise attack on Israel in what Arabs still call the Harb Ramadan, or the Ramadan war, after when it started. Since it was also launched on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Israelis call it the Yom Kippur war. 

Hamas launched the current war with horrendous atrocities as Jews celebrated the last day of Sukkot, known as Simchat Torah. Of the 240 hostages Hamas abducted on October 7, 130 remain in Gaza dungeons. An unknown number of them have likely died in captivity.  

The Biden administration has increasingly moved away from its demand for an “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” In the past it dangled a short pause in the war as an incentive for Hamas. Reversing emphasis, a current American proposal for a United Nations Security Council resolution calls for “an immediate ceasefire of roughly six-weeks in Gaza” to occur “together with the release of all hostages.”

As Sinwar exploits Ramadan to escalate an all-Muslim war to save him from defeat, the release of hostages as a Ramadan gesture is far from his mind. While Israelis nevertheless pray for a Purim miracle, they are unlikely to heed Mr. Biden’s evocation of Muslim pieties and risk losing the war against Haman — the antagonist in that upcoming holiday’s story.