A report from France’s domestic intelligence agency has identified Christians as the “prime target” for radical Islamists, who are actively trying to stoke anti-Christian sentiment in the West with “anti-crusader” propaganda.
The General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) has found that “anti-crusader” rhetoric has been at the forefront of jihadist rhetoric and attacks over the past thirty years.
The report from the French intel service, seen by Le Figaro, said that Islamist propaganda frequently attempts to portray Islam as a victim of the West by presenting an amalgam of historical events such as the Crusades and colonialism to recent military interventions in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, and Syria.
Such messaging is specifically targeted at ethnic minority populations within the West to stoke division, the DGSI said, pointing to al Qaeda tied terrorist Abu Musab al-Suri, who is said to have advocated for intentionally provoking backlash against Islam to incentivise Muslims in Europe to join the jihadist cause.
An example of the use of victim mentality to justify terrorist attacks pointed to by the report was a 2020 call from al Qaeda-linked publication Thabat, which told adherents to use knives or vehicles as weapons against Christian churches in France over supposedly “Islamophobic” policies.
“Just as they have closed your mosques, close their churches. Just as they attack you and insult your prophet, take revenge and slaughter them,” the radical outlet commanded.
A French-language ISIS magazine, Dar al-Islam, similarly called on followers in 2015 to attack Christian churches to “instil fear in their hearts.”
The French report also quoted former ISIS spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, as saying: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women… They will sell your sons in the slave market.”
Groups like al Qaeda and ISIS frequently brand Christians as followers of a “deviant faith”, “unbelievers”, “idolaters”, or “infidels”, the DGSI said.
Such rhetoric has resulted in numerous terror attacks in Europe and the rest of the world on Christians over the past three decades, the report found.
Most recently, a wheelchair-bound Iraqi Christian refugee, Ashur Sarnaya, was killed in a stabbing in the French city of Lyon in September. At the time of his killing, allegedly by an Algerian national, Sarnaya was live-streaming on TikTok to promote Christianity.
Over the past ten years alone, France has experienced nearly 70 Islamist terror attacks, 19 of which were fatal. Additionally, police managed to foil at least 80 more Islamist terror plots in the country.
Meanwhile, a report this month from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe) found that France experienced the most anti-Christian attacks of any nation in Europe over the past year, and recorded a “disproportionately high number of incidents with an Islamist background.”
