Islamic State’s War on Christianity in Africa—and Beyond
The Messaging in Al-Naba 507
Coverage of Africa has been extensive in the Islamic State’s (IS) weekly newsletter, Al-Naba, for many years, with a particular emphasis on warring against the continent’s Christians. Africa has appeared on Al-Naba’s frontpage since at least 2018, and is by now the overwhelmingly dominant feature in that space. In 2023 and 2024, Africa comprised over-80% of Al-Naba’s frontpages; so far this year, that figure is over-90%.1 And it is not just the frontpage. In the most recent edition of Al-Naba, number 507, published on 7 August 2025, four of the five articles about IS activities were from Africa, as was the main editorial.
AL-NABA 507 ATTACK REPORTS
The one attack report in Al-Naba 507 that was not from Africa was from Syria (Wilayat al-Sham). It documented a series of attacks on “the PKK militia”, the PKK being the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which operates under the banner of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) on Syrian territory. IS’s anti-PKK attacks were reported from “Al-Khayr” (Deir Ezzor), the eastern desert province where IS has its deepest roots thanks to the cynical actions of the fallen regime of Bashar al-Asad. IS claims to have killed seventeen PKK militiamen over the preceding week by assaulting village checkpoints with machine guns, and ambushing two PKK vehicles, one on the road between villages and one in a village using an IED. This is, says Al-Naba, part of the “continuing escalation of the mujahideen’s operations against the militia in the area.”
IS’s Sahel Province (Wilayat al-Sahel) claims to have killed thirty soldiers in an ambush in the Kalamba area of Burkina Faso, and to have repelled an attack by the army of Niger near the village of Kallagui that killed sixteen. “Local sources confirmed that the apostate militias are suffering heavy losses in terms of men and equipment, despite receiving support from French and American forces in the region”, Al-Naba claims.
IS’s West Africa Province (Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiya) “burned a military site of the apostate Nigerian army, killed three of them, and wounded at least two others, and destroyed one of their vehicles, in two separate attacks in Borno State in northern Nigeria”, according to Al-Naba. ISWAP allegedly also seized “weapons and other equipment” in the raid.
In Wilayat Mozambique, “the soldiers of the caliphate” abducted four Christians from a village in Cabo Delgado and then “slaughtered them”, says Al-Naba 507. A fifth Christian was murdered in another village in the same area of Mozambique.
IS’s Central African Province (Wilayat Wasat Ifriqiya) murdered four Christians in the Ituri area in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Al-Naba. Three Congolese Christians were shot to death by IS in a village and two days later another Christian was “slaughtered” on a road between two towns. Al-Naba boasts that his comes after ISCAP murdered fifty-three Christians in the Congo the week before, and “seized dozens of homes and possessions belonging to them”.
AL-NABA 507 MAIN EDITORIAL
The editorial in Al-Naba 507, entitled, “The Light of Jihad” (Nur al-Jihad), begins by celebrating that just when “the burning of the camps in West Africa died down”, IS “in Central Africa and Mozambique stoked the fire of jihad against the combative Christians, and plunged them into a new whirlpool of displacement, ruin, humiliation, and degradation”. The “rising African jihad” is credited to the fact “that the mujahideen there benefited greatly from the arenas before Africa”.
ISCAP’s rampage in Irumu, specifically, is lauded for attacking “the centre of Congolese trade and a vital transport hub”, achieving success despite “the Crusader forces [having] exerted every effort to secure [the zone]”. IS’s attacks on Christian “churches and gatherings” are singled out for praise, and Al-Naba is immensely satisfied that this happened after such attacks “had died down for months, which the African tawaghit thought of as ‘deliverance’, before waking from their delusions to pools of blood”.
The simultaneous “wave” of actions by “the knights of Mozambique” are noted to have occurred “following a severe tribulation”. It is a consistent theme in IS’s messaging that difficulties for its troops are a test from God that purify the ranks ideologically and thereby strengthen the group. Al-Naba hits the same theme here, saying “the heroes [in Mozambique] were patient with the ordeals and held fast to the embers of faith, so God replaced their hardship with ease and their distress with relief”, enabling the “kindling of jihad and the shedding of blood … [T]hey burned the villages of the slaves of the cross … in northern Mozambique, struck their necks, and displaced thousands of them, until their government was burdened with the care of its citizens who had spent their recent years weeping and fleeing”.
Al-Naba goes on to explain the conditions under which it will stop massacring African Christians:
[I]f the Christians of Africa want to be safe and get out of the whirlpool of killing, let them know that our upright Islam grants them the freedom to choose between three options: the first is Islam, whereby they become our brothers, having what we have and bearing what is upon us; the second is paying the jizya in humiliation while being submissive, thus sparing their blood and securing their villages; and if they refuse Islam and the jizya, then the third option is killing and expulsion, and that is what they have been witnessing and suffering for years.
It is claimed that “some” of the “displaced Christians … have indeed already begun paying the jizya in submission to the mujahideen in parts of Africa”, gaining security from this extortion racket for their villages and farms, and that there have been conversions to Islam. Under the “guidance” of the “mujahideen’s preachers”, says Al-Naba, some Christians have “realised that Jesus, son of Mary, is the slave of Allah and His messenger, and that the deen [lifeway] with God is Islam”. Nonetheless, the Naba editorial concedes that “most” African Christians “still turn away, insisting on being among the people of ‘the third option’, which will become ‘the only option’ as soon as Jesus, peace be upon him, descends”.
IS mocks the “voices of the Crusader States and their ‘institutions of bestial rights’” (i.e., “human rights” groups) who rose to condemn this wave of atrocities because “the dead and the displaced this time were their allies, the worshippers of the cross”, while, in IS’s perception, paying too little attention to Muslim suffering in Gaza. “For this reason”, Al-Naba says:
we advise the mujahideen to slaughter the one-eyed “humanity” with the knife of al-wala wal-bara, showing mercy to the Muslims and severity and harshness towards the disbelievers, in emulation of your Prophet and his noble Companions, as they were described in the Qur’an: “Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are firm with the disbelievers and merciful among themselves” [48:29]. …
This is the path to lifting oppression and seizing sovereignty, for our conquering forefathers ruled with swords at the head of the armies and at the forefront of assemblies until they terrified the nations of their time, who came to them willingly or unwillingly, submissive and subdued. This is the truth, and all else is falsehood, and it is what the mujahideen of Africa have embodied, paying no attention to anything else.
The light of jihad has shone in Mozambique and Central Africa after decades of the darkness of jahiliyya [pre-Islamic ignorance] and the Crusader massacres that the Christians committed after they invaded Africa, laden with hatred toward the Muslims for what they had encountered at their hands in earlier periods, such as Al-Andalus, which was lost through neglecting al-wala wal-bara, stabling horses, and immersion in luxury, and it will not return to us except through pure jihad, defiance, separation, endurance, and patience over the bitterness of tribulations which refine the fundamentals and expel the filth, so that the rank returns as the rank was, and the last of this umma [community] is set right by what set right its first.
As Al-Naba spells out, what IS believes “set right” the first Muslims with Muhammad was the Qur’an and the Sunna, a historically dubious assertion from many angles, but a perfectly orthodox Islamic view.
Of note in the above passage is the mention of “Al-Andalus”, referring to Iberia (Spain and Portugal), parts of which were occupied by Muslims for eight-hundred years, from the beginning of the eighth century to the end of the fifteenth. IS’s sorrow over the Reconquista and wish to reverse it is something it has made clear from its early days. IS has often stressed the need to reconquer Spain in the context of polemics against rival Islamists and other Muslim critics whom it feels are not properly adhering to Islam’s universal obligation to restore the shari’a to all areas that have ever been under Islamic rule. Specifically, this has been an argument IS has made as a counter-charge to accusations it is insufficiently focused on Israel. IS has pointed out, not unreasonably, that this is factually untrue, but IS goes beyond that. In IS’s view, it is an egregious doctrinal sin to prioritise jihad in former Mandate Palestine over any other area, whether it is Saudi Arabia (whose rulers IS regards as apostates) or Spain.
“The light of jihad, which illuminated the paths of the believers, and its fire, which burned the necks of the disbelievers, settled upon the land of Africa”, says Al-Naba. IS’s nodes in Africa, by carrying out jihad, “a blessed shari’a obligation”, have transformed themselves from small and weak beginnings into a powerful force. In this Al-Naba sees a lesson for those who would “depart from the divine shari’a, and take the path of democracy and plunge into the gutters of international politics, or incline toward other than one’s own”: “nothing will result [from such a path] except loss and regret; and the one who disobeys will reap nothing but disgrace, lowliness, misguidance, and injustice”.
Al-Naba concludes by inciting IS’s troops in Africa to extend their jihad to the heartland of Christendom, Europe:
So, O knights of Islam in Africa, prepare against the Crusaders whatever strength you are able, and fortify your strength with faith [iman] and knowledge [ilm], for that is more conducive to success and more effective for the path. May God light your way, safeguard your jihad, and aid you in the trust of carrying it and delivering it to the shores of Europe, to invade it, shatter its security, and turn its streets and capitals into another Ituri and Cabo Delgado!
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. And God will surely grant victory to whoever supports Him.
NOTES
In 2022, 42 out of 52 (81%) of the Naba frontpages were about Africa; in 2023, it was 43 of 52 (83%); and in 2025 it has been 30 out of 32 (94%). Most of this is West Africa and the Sahel; to a lesser extent it has been Mozambique. A slight change this year is an increasing focus on Somalia, specifically Puntland, which had its first cover story in Al-Naba in the first issue of this year (476) and there have been a total of seven Puntland frontpages to this point in 2025.