LOS ANGELES—Much of the Muslim world is celebrating Ramadan, and in countries from Saudi Arabia to the Netherlands, traffic is dropping precipitously.
The annual month-long observance includes a ban on masturbation— take that, #NoFappers—and last year we sawa decline of 9.3% worldwide, and 2% in the US alone.
The biggest drops in Muslim-majority countries, by percentage:
- Algeria (-76.1%)
- Yemen (-74.6%)
- Egypt (-74.2%)
- Libya (-74.1%)
- Afghanistan (-66.6%)
- Tunisia (-61.9%)
- Palestine (-61.2%)
- Jordan (-57.7%)
- Saudi Arabia (-53.2%)
- Kuwait (-48.1%)
- Indonesia (-44.9%)
- Turkey (-40.7%)
- Iraq (-39.1%)
- Qatar (-38.7%)
- Malaysia (-35.5%)
- Lebanon (-34.5%)
- United Arab Emirates (-27.8%)
- Oman (-27.08%)
- Iran (-14.3%)
- Morocco (-11.8%)
“We admire the devotion of our Muslim users, but business-wise we can’t wait for Ramadan to be over,” says Alex Hawkins, vice president of xHamster. “Luckily, we’re seeing that not everyone can hold out a full month. A week into the observance, and numbers in many countries are slowly ticking up.”
