The Islamic State (ISIS) issued a message on Christmas Day, but despite the fact that everyone from Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Pope Leo XIV have been telling us that there really isn’t any significant jihad threat to be concerned about, ISIS’ message wasn’t exactly brimming with Christmas cheer.
GB News reported Thursday that in its Christmas missive, the Islamic State called upon Muslims to make the holiday season a “season of terror” by murdering Jews and Christians for Allah. The Qur’an, after all, orders Muslims to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, 4:91, cf. 9:5), and to fight in particular against “the people of the book,” who are primarily Jews and Christians, until they “pay the jizya,” a poll tax, “with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
Contrary to the bland assurances of Islamic apologists in the West, the Islamic State doesn’t consider such passages (and there are many, many others like the ones cited) to be restricted to seventh-century conditions only. Instead, it considers them valid for all time and believes that it is part of every Muslim’s duty to implement them.
The ISIS Christmas message and its slickly produced magazine Al-Naba, which included the Christmas greeting, reveals what the group considers such implementation to involve: “explicit incitement to murder and attempts to frame such attacks as religious obligations.” The jihad group “gloats that Western cities now experience heightened fear during festive periods, with the terror organisation claiming governments have been forced into a state of permanent vigilance.”
In connection with that need for permanent vigilance, the Islamic State also “mocked the security measures now commonplace at Christmas celebrations, including armed officers, concrete barriers and intelligence operations.” This was a reference to what have been acidly dubbed the “diversity bollards” that many European cities set up outside Christmas markets in order to protect them from vehicular jihad attacks.
While city officials assured residents that these eyesores and sources of inconvenience to travelers were merely temporary, ISIS announced its determination to make them permanent. The ISIS newsletter “taunts Western authorities, declaring there is no prospect of this state of alert ending.”
And that’s true: Europe is now filled with tens of millions of Muslims, among whom there is an unknowable number of jihadis. They’re not going to just decide to go home one day and leave Europe in peace, and European authorities appear determined to prevent the accession to power of political groups that oppose the mass migration. Europe will, consequently, be facing the jihad threat from now on, as long as there is a Europe.
The Islamic State calls on Muslims to carry out jihad massacres during the holiday season: “Engage in the crowds of Christians and Jews in the heart of Europe, America, and the Jewish state, running them over with buses, beating them, and smashing them with heavy hammers.” It called on Muslims in Belgium in particular, which has a large population of Muslim migrants, to “fight Jews and Christians in every street.”
Accompanying this call for new massacres was a good deal of gloating over old jihadi bloodshed. Al-Naba called the two Bondi Beach jihad murderers “The Pride of Sydney,” and called them “zealous ones,” “heroes,” and “lions” who had acted in line with “Prophetic methodology.” ISIS hailed the prospect of Jews “bleeding in the streets of Australia,” and crowed that Hanukkah had become a “funeral” instead of a celebration.
Related: Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Know Anyone Who’s Been ‘Killed by Radical Islam’
The fact of these exhortations doesn’t mean that there will necessarily be jihad attacks in Belgium, the United States, or anywhere else in the near future. The Qur’an calls on believers not only to wage jihad against unbelievers, but to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60). In light of that, what looks to Westerners like an empty threat and a tacit admission of weakness has accomplished its purpose if some of the infidels in the West experience the terror that Allah wants them to feel.
If, however, there are no large-scale jihad attacks in Europe, North America or Israel in the next few days, this will not mean that ISIS is a paper tiger and not an actual cause for concern. Because of its strict adherence to the letter of the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad, the Islamic State continues to hold the allegiance of some Muslims around the world. It would be naïve in the extreme to assume that they won’t eventually strike.
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