It would seem that an ideal time for a non Muslim army to attack a Muslim force would be toward the end of Ramadan.
It sure would seem that the Muslim soldiers would not be at their best at this time.
You are making some erroneous judgments about the pragmatics of Muslim society.
First: They can eat after dark, right up until dawn. Many eat VERY well during those hours, and so the 16 hours abstaining arent as serious as you think.
Next: As I said, their Muslims are pragmatic about it. Pregnant women, little children, the aged, the ill and certain other groups may certainly eat during the day during Ramadan.
These other groups would include people in emergency duties such as doctors, nurses, paramedics, police officers, and yes, at least some of the soldiers.
Not all muslims are pragmatic about it. There is a huge correlation in some places between retardation and being in the womb during ramadan, although I’m not sure at what point.
How ridiculous. I don’t know of any area where pregnant women are expected to take part as the Koran clearly lists them as exempt. Even if some women did fast, how would eating every day but only at night affect the baby?
Got any evidence to back up your claim?
If there’s a huge correlation, then it shouldn’t be hard to find a citation for it. Let’s see it.
If you are undertaking a duty where fasting would adversely effect your performance you do not fast. Period.
That would be a similar mistake to, say, an army invading Texas on Sunday under the theory that a lot of Christians live in Texas and would therefore not fight on the Sabbath.
As I recall, some folks once made an assumption like this about Yom Kippur.
Didn’t work out so well for them.
Ramadan never seems to stop the Muslim insurgents in the eight-year-old uprising in Thailand’s deep South from continuing to blow up citizens, soldiers and officials alike.
Everybody knows you should invade in the fall on a Friday night to catch us off guard. You aren’t so familiar with our religion, now are ya?
That’s right. That is when everyone’s drunk at their local high-school football match. Y’all.
Darn right it’s not hard to find evidence, so why do I have to do all the googling around here 
Full paper: http://merlin.fae.ua.es/activities/list/pdf/aej_ramadan_6_complete.pdf
Just more damage done by irrational beliefs. Or if one is a believer, just part of god’s plan.
Not eating for 16 hours, especially by a pregnant woman with high metabolic demands can lead to ketone production by the body. Ketones cross the placenta. And, they are teratogenic (link is only one of many, many references including those on human teratogenesis).
Yup. I really doubt you’d find a surgeon, for example, who fasts during Ramadan - even in majority-Muslim states. Nor a surgeon who fasts for Yom Kippur (unless he’s not on call).
Pretty much true, with the caveat that it worked out much less poorly for them than every previous Arab-Israeli war. One of the reasons for the Camp David accords was that the Israelis were very badly spooked by how close a thing it had been.
It’s an interesting paper but the authors don’t find a “huge” correlation. They had general census data from Iraq & Uganda, but the serious study took place among Muslims in Michigan. Birth weights were lower…
More work is needed…
One of the authors appears to be Muslim.
Worked out very well. The impregnable Bar Lev line was breached in about 2 hours and what was it, 100 tanks destroyed on the first day? Yom Kippur was chosen because it was a holiday, not because of the fact people would be fasting. Ironically, it was also Ramzan in Oct 1973.
As it is, the lack of food does not really begin to effect a person till about 4 pm, per my experience.
Perhaps a silly extension, but do Muslims working the night shift during Ramadan fast from dusk until dawn?
I doubt The Prophet foresaw the advent of 24-hour 7-Elevens.
In 1999, the Moslem students at McGill were upset because they were to take their December final exams during Ramadan. In Montreal in December, the sun rises around 7:35 and sets around 4:15, so fasting requires only skipping lunch. My attitude would have been suck it up or ignore Ramadan, but the university authorities were concerned enough to make some accommodation. It would have been different had there been exams in June, when there are more than 15 hours of daylight.
Ramadan is a spiritual exercise and a time for community bonding. It’s not something God requires in the sense that an angry god might require a virgin to be sacrificed to the volcano. It’s something that people do because they want to, because it brings them closer to their faith. It’s not some set-in-stone cosmic necessity. any more than celebrating Christmas is.
It’s perfectly okay to screw up on Ramadan. Most people do at some point or another- I’ve seen more than one faster mindlessly eat a piece of candy and then pull an “Ohhhhhhh shit!” It’s not optimal and you’d try not to do it, but if you do have to skip fasting, it’s not the end of the world. Typically, you would make it up on another day at your convenience. It’s not as satisfying to fast on a different day because you don’t have the social support and festival atmosphere, but it’s not really a big deal. Many women have to make up days, because you don’t fast when you are on your period. Indeed, there are a lot of people who do not fast or do a modified fast- children, the elderly, the sick, pregnant women, women on their period, breastfeeding women, travelers, people with critical jobs, etc… In a community (especially one with a high birth rate) you may find as many people are not fasting as who are.
So if there was an invasion, I’m pretty sure everyone would say “Okay, let’s not skip lunch today, and we’ll worry about this when it’s over.”