Boko Haram has lost ground to a more determined Nigerian military in recent months, and without territory it loses some of its draw for new recruits, but al-Barnawi’s anti-Christian focus is tried and tested by his mentors in the “caliphate,” who want to keep the Nigerian conflict turned up to a full boil.
Al-Barnawi’s anti-Christian rhetoric is already the focus of ISIS in Europe. On the day he was announced as Boko Haram’s new leader, ISIS used the latest issue of Dabiq to paint Christianity as a “false” religion and Christians as “cross worshippers.” It encouraged Muslims to attack churches in a ways similar to the atrocity in France last month, where two men entered a Catholic church in small town Normandy, slit the throat of an 86-year-old priest, and gravely wounded a nun.
ISIS has proven in the past that it is capable of following up on its warnings, and determined to do so, is why the threats by the leader of its so-called West Africa province must be taken seriously.
Before the Normandy attack, ISIS, in the fifth issue of its slick French-language magazine, Dar al-Islam, which came out last summer, listed French churches as targets in a campaign “to create fear in their hearts,” according to a CNN report last month.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member