Islamic State Wants to Use Libya as a Launchpad for Terrorism Against Europe
Editorial in Al-Naba 512
In the 507th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State (IS) newsletter, published on 7 August 2015, the main editorial was primarily devoted to celebrating the jihadists’ relentless war against Christianity across Africa. In the final paragraph, however, IS gave this signal of its broader thinking:
For the hearts are still burning for revenge against the Christians of Europe, and the call remains open for the heroes of Islam to repeat the attacks upon them and raid them deep in their homes, and impose upon them the rulings of heaven, just as their brothers did in Africa.
The “rulings of heaven” IS intended to extend from the Christians of Africa to the Christians of Europe had been made clear earlier in the article: a choice between conversion to Islam, submissively paying the jizya, or death. And “the call” referenced is the one made in January 2024 by the IS official spokesman, Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari, for the resumption of global terrorist attacks, a call that was subsequently answered.
As I wrote at the time, this was not a threat that could be dismissed:
From the Sahel to Southern Africa, ISIS has combined devastating acts of terrorism with an increasingly sophisticated insurgency that is overwhelming local states. This clears the way for the group to govern territory. … A key problem here is that Russia has largely displaced America and France as the imperial guarantor in West Africa and the Sahel, where its brutality, distraction in Ukraine, and plain incompetence have allowed ISIS to expand its reach …
ISIS has been able to steadily infiltrate into North Africa, and this rising tide of jihadism so close to Europe is deeply concerning—not least because of the population displacement it causes and the group’s record of using migrant flows to get its operatives into Europe. … ISIS [carried out the 2024 attacks in Europe and America] largely from the Afghan node [of its network]. It would seem logistically easier to use the African infrastructure, and the group seems to be thinking along these lines.
In the editorial of Al-Naba 512, perhaps not coincidentally published on 11 September, IS provided further evidence that it is indeed thinking along these lines about bringing terrorism back to Europe after a half-decade or so of relative quiet.
The Naba 512 editorial, a translation of which is given below, is entitled, “Libya of Glories” (Libya al-Amjad). It begins with a quote about the importance of Libya to IS’s jihad from Abu al-Mughira al-Qahtani (sometimes transliterated Abul-Mughirah al-Qahtani), a former security official in Saddam Husayn’s regime who also used the kunya Abu Nabil al-Anbari and whose real name was Wissam al-Zubaydi.
Al-Zubaydi was sent to lead the creation of the IS colony in Libya, which was formally announced in October 2014, and he became the public face of the enterprise until he was killed by the U.S. in November 2015. IS had lost control of Derna in June 2015 and its remaining urban stronghold in Libya, Sirte, came under pressure in the months after Al-Zubaydi’s demise, with IS finally being ejected from the city in December 2016. The IS project has seemed moribund in Libya since then, with the intermittent surges of activity over the last nine years amounting to little more than reminders that IS retains a presence in the country.
The Naba 512 editorial seeks to legitimise IS grabbing territory in Libya by presenting it as a modern manifestation of the original Arab conquest that ultimately brought the Roman Christian province to Islam. The article is larded with theological argumentation drawn from the Qur’an and Tradition on this front, and these citations are intended as much as a roadmap for the future as they are justifications for the past. It is notable—and consistent with IS’s approach since its beginnings—that the enemies IS rails against most in the ideological portion of the article are not the “Crusader” West, but its Islamist rivals, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda.
When Al-Naba 512 shifts to more temporal analysis, there is an unmistakeable confession that IS shares the view of its Libyan “province” (wilaya) as being in a state of considerable disrepair at the present time—there is reference to a “prolonged stagnation and inertia”—coupled with a conviction that it need not remain so.
Libya effectively has two governments, one in the west and one in the east; both of these mutually-hostile polities are quite weak and predatory, the worst combination of all. As Al-Naba correctly notes, the failure of the Libyan political elites that emerged after Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi’s downfall in 2011 has made them unpopular, and Libya has historically been a hotbed of jihadism, a trend IS hopes to give new life to by offering jihadism as the only viable alternative to the current malaise. If IS sees hope in the Libyan political landscape, it sees even more in the operational situation of general instability, especially the vast ungoverned deserts in which IS thrives, and porous borders. The strategic value of an IS revival in Libya is spelled out: the country is situated in a crucial geographical nexus that can support IS’s jihad to the south, in West Africa and the Sahel, and to the north, in Europe.
IS concludes the Naba 512 editorial by goading its loyalists to be as brave as the asylum seekers who take risks crossing the Mediterranean to get to Europe, and once there IS instructs its legions to carry out terrorism on a scale sufficient at least to consume European attentional resources, the implicit idea being that if Europe is focused on domestic security threats from IS, Europe—and by extension the West as a whole—will cause less trouble for IS at the Centre, in Iraq and Syria, and in the other theatres where it operates, from Africa to Afghanistan.
Libya of Glories
“Libya enjoys great importance for the umma [community] of Islam, being the heart of Africa and southern Europe, in addition to being the key to the African desert which extends across several important States.”
With these words, the emir of the Libyan provinces, Abu al-Mughira al-Qahtani, may God accept him, summarised, in one of his press interviews, the importance of the Libyan arena for the Muslims in the region, and the extent of its threat to Crusader Europe.
There is no doubt that what was said by this seasoned commander, who managed the Libyan provinces and ignited the war there for years against the Christians and apostates, was not the product of a momentary impulse or fleeting enthusiasm, but rather was rooted in a deep understanding of the nature of the region, familiarity with its ancient history, experience of the contemporary reality, and discernment about the future, which is certainly for Islam, as God and His Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, have promised us.
Returning to Islamic history, specifically during the era of the [reputed second Rashidun] Caliph Umar al-Faruq, the armies of the Muslims under the leadership of Amr ibn al-As, Uqba ibn Nafi, and others moved toward Libya until they brought it under the Islamic Conquest [Fath al-Islami], with its three regions: Barqa, Tripoli, and Fezzan. The conquerors continued to advance into the African arena through da’wa [missionary activity] and jihad until they reached the Atlantic coast.
In the recent past, about a decade ago, the soldiers of the Islamic State followed the path of their conquering forefathers in the Battle of the Shari’a, and the hooves of their horses reached the land of Libya with its three regions, until it became an arena for their assaults and campaigns, which were met with great concern and fear by the apostate and Crusader governments for the aforementioned reasons: it is the heart of Africa and the gateway to southern Europe, and the hub of communications between six States with vast borders, not to mention the great eagerness of the sons of the Muslims in North Africa to join the [Islamic State’s] Libyan wilayats, which constituted a real threat to the local taghuti projects and to the ambitions and schemes of the international Crusaders.
Among the things that drew attention to the Libyan scene was the Islamic system of governance that the Islamic State implemented, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong [amr bil-ma’ruf wa-nahi anil munkar], safeguarding virtue and suppressing vice. This explains the strong intervention of the Crusader coalition and its apostate rabble against the then-young wilayats, because the sovereignty of shari’a governance [siyada hukm al-shari’a] necessarily means the end of the ambitions of the unbelievers and the dreams of the hypocrites [munafiqun], and the termination of their conspiracies and exploitations.
But soon the allies of the party of Satan hastened to war against this blessed project, and the devilish alliances were established among the revolutionaries of the “Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] and Al-Qaeda” in a joint apostasy room, led and inspired by Iblis [the Devil], until they all fought the mujahideen side by side with the aim of achieving a common goal: the expulsion of the Islamic State and the overthrow of its rule, the very same goal for which the Crusader aircraft had earlier prepared the way with great intensity.
After they conspired together to bring down the rule of the shari’a, the allies turned against one another, and the leaders of the local governments sold out Al-Qaeda’s militia and eliminated it after having satisfied themselves by using it in the war against the Islamic State. Thus, they lost both their deen [lifeway, Islam] and the dunya [temporal world] together, and they competed with the apostate Ikhwan for a place on the list of error and humiliation. The Libyan scene ended up in this condition, where the apostate partners and rivals divided power among themselves while their conflicts continued, until many people began to long for the days of the taghut Qaddafi! [It was] a belated implicit admission that the revolutions are nothing but a cycle of successive periods of jahiliyya [pre-Islamic ignorance] that remove one taghut and bring another.
The wave of apostasy and the war against the shari’a was not an exception in Libyan history; similar historical periods had preceded it, during which groups apostatised from Islam in the era of [of the original Islamic Conquest led by] Amr ibn al-As. [The fourteenth-century Islamic historian] Ibn Khaldun and others mentioned that some of these “apostatized twelve times from Tripoli to Tangier, and in every case they marched against the Muslims! Their Islam was not firmly established until the days of Musa ibn Nusayr [in the early eighth century].” Whenever the conquering commanders departed, they would apostatise from Islam. After the killing of the Caliph al-Faruq, some of these tribes apostatised, so the Caliph Uthman sent the commander Abd Allah ibn Abi al-Sarh to fight the apostates and discipline them.
As this reality is being repeated today, it is necessary for the sons of Islam and the guardians of aqeeda [the creed] to follow the example of their predecessors in disciplining the apostates and to emulate the deeds of the first conquerors, by earnestly striving to overturn this equation and persisting in the work to break the state of prolonged stagnation and inertia, so that Libya might rise again, restored to its ancient glory under the rule of Islam, rather than [being left under] the rule of taghut. This will only be achieved by uniting on the path of tawhid [monotheism] and jihad, for all other paths are blocked and severed.
Soldiers of Islam in Libya, you have had a recent history that pulses with honour, abounds with heroism, and teems with noble deeds. You must revive this and renew its covenant [ahdih], for the pages of deeds continue to turn and the sun has not risen from its west. The duties and obligations have not changed, and the rulings have not been abrogated. So al-wala wal-bara [loyalty (to Muslims) and disavowal (of infidels)] remains an obligatory and unavoidable duty, and jihad remains a fard ayn [an individual obligation], indeed it is the duty of the hour, whose ruling is emphasised in such a circumstance, where the shari’a is suspended, the weak [or oppressed: al-mustad’afun] cry out for help, and the taghut in all forms raise their heads, turning eastward and westward and breathing shirk [idolatry] into the lands.
Fulfilling the duty of exhortation [wajib al-tahrid], we address the mujahideen in Libya and its vicinity. We rouse their resolve, stir up their energies, sharpen their determination, and remind them to renew their motivation and purify their hearts. We urge them to earnestly strive to revive the Libyan arena by jihad on the prophetic methodology [manhaj al-nubuwwa], acting in accordance with His saying: “O you who believe! Respond to God and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life” [Qur’an 8:24]. [The eleventh-century Persian Islamic scholar] Imam al-Baghawi reported: “Ibn Ishaq said:1 ‘It is jihad, may God honour you by it after humiliation’, and another said: ‘Rather, it is martyrdom’.” Between jihad and martyrdom are contained all the causes of life in this world and the next, so respond to that which gives you life.
Let the mujahideen in Libya remember that their brothers in the neighbouring wilayats expect much from them, in making use of the field conditions and the porous borders to reinforce the jihad with resources [or capabilities or manpower: taqat]. The role of the Libyan arena and its effect in driving the wheel of the local jihad is not hidden, and, if it falters, it must rise and continue.
And the matter is not confined to the local dimension but extends to the international dimension, through exploiting the Libyan arena adjacent to southern Europe, thereby threatening nearby Crusader interests or at least preoccupying them. Let not “asylum seekers” [tullab al-luju] be bolder than you, O knights of tawhid, in facing dangers and plunging into horrors, while you are “martyrdom seekers” fleeing with your deen to your Creator, glorified be He. A person who takes the lead and acts first is not like one who arrives later and joins the ranks. God will surely grant victory to whoever helps Him.
NOTES
Ibn Ishaq is credited in Islamic historiography as the earliest biographer of the Prophet Muhammad, but his manuscript—written in the 760s AD, over a century after Muhammad died—survives to us only in a recension produced by Ibn Hisham around 830 AD, two centuries after the Prophet’s death. The issues with this for the historian are redoubled by the cover note Ibn Hisham includes on his Prophetic biography, which openly says: “Things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people; and such reports as Al-Bakka’i told me he could not accept as trustworthy—all these things have I omitted.”