ISIS reportedly called upon Muslims to use any means necessary to kill “Christians and Jews” in the United States and Europe, with a specific focus on France, in an edition of its Arabic-language magazine.
Although the so-called Islamic State has lost its physical Caliphate after it was defeated under the first Trump administration, ISIS radicals continue to advocate for their strict interpretation of the Islamic religion and seek to influence impressionable young Muslims in the West to commit acts of terror in its name.
In a copy of its al-Naba obtained by the Centre for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT) and shared with the French paper of record Le Figaro, ISIS wrote: “O monotheistic Muslims… Hit Jews and Christians, their crowds and convoys, in the streets and on the roads of America and Europe, and especially in France. Do not spare them, attack them, kill them by all means: by car, with a knife, a gun or by causing a fire.”
“Know that every disbeliever you kill makes them suffer more than our strikes can do here… Hit them in solitary attacks like those we have seen before in Paris, Brussels and other places in the countries of the Crusader.”
Despite the overtures from France and other European nations to back Palestinian statehood, the radical Islamist group urged Muslims to reject such offers, arguing that they are merely intended to “disarm Muslims and neutralise their jihad”.
The publication went on to claim that demands by some in the West for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas “only aim to save Jews from the threat of disappearance and collapse, after the blows dealt to them by the mujahideen.”
Terrorism researcher Marc Hecker suggested that France is being singled out by ISIS and other Islamist radicals over its laws specifically mandating secularism, which he said are interpreted as “institutionalised Islamophobia”.
Such laws in France have been used to shut down Islamist institutions, such as the euphemistically named European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH), a school for Imams in rural Bourgogne. The allegedly Muslim Brotherhood-tied training centre was accused of promoting “armed jihad” in France.
The researcher also noted that French military participation in coalitions fighting jihadist groups in the Sahel region of Africa and in the Levant is characterised as “armed struggle against Muslims.”
“By often targeting France, with large or small attacks (the so-called ‘a thousand cuts’ strategy), terrorist organisations seek to slowly bleed the social body,” Hecker said.
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