{"id":13204,"date":"2026-09-08T12:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/?p=13204"},"modified":"2026-09-08T12:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:08:27","slug":"fighting-christians-a-new-dynamization-of-african-jihad-by-sara-brzuszkiewicz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/fighting-christians-a-new-dynamization-of-african-jihad-by-sara-brzuszkiewicz\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fighting Christians\u2019: A New Dynamization of African Jihad? \u2013 by Sara Brzuszkiewicz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Another transformation to watch. In recent months, ITSTIME has highlighted<\/a> how Africa should no longer be regarded simply as one of the theatres of expansion of contemporary jihadism, but as one of the spaces in which some of its most significant transformations are taking place<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Its operational center of gravity has shifted, the relative weight of different provinces has changed and, most importantly, the African mujahid has come to represent the purest and most complete example of the ideal jihadist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another potential transformation may now need to be added to this picture, although its scope and future evolution remain to be assessed: a possible dynamization of the anti-Christian dimension of African jihad, accompanied by an increasingly explicit construction of local Christian communities as belligerent actors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By dynamization<\/strong>, we do not simply mean an increase in attacks against Christian targets, which are far from new in several African theatres. Rather, we refer to a process through which the Christian dimension becomes more salient and recurrent: Christians are targeted not only as religious \u2018others\u2019 or convenient civilian targets, but are increasingly represented as active participants in a broader confrontation with jihadist actors \u2014 as supporters of governments, militias, foreign powers, or an allegedly hostile transnational Christian front. If consolidated, this shift could affect both target selection and the narratives through which violence is legitimized and presented to local and international audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rise of the \u2018Fighting Christian\u2019 Category<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is particularly visible in the way Christian communities are represented in DAESH propaganda in relation to theatres such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and other African contexts. Christians have long been described in jihadist propaganda through a vocabulary of hostility and belligerence, and their portrayal as participants in a broader war against Islam is by no means new. What appears potentially significant today is its increasing frequency and prominence. In An-Naba, for instance, references framing local Christians not merely as religious \u2018others\u2019 but as belligerent Christians (al-na\u1e63\u0101r\u0101 al-mu\u1e25\u0101rib\u016bn<\/em>) appear with growing regularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The terminological choice is far from neutral. Attributing belligerent status to an entire community discursively reduces the distinction between civilian and combatant and, crucially, transfers part of the responsibility<\/strong> for violence onto the victims themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jihadist propaganda has a long history of constructing the Christian enemy through the figure of the Crusader, associated primarily with the West, foreign powers and their military interventions in Muslim countries. The representation of the local Christian as a belligerent actor, however, introduces a different dimension. The confessional enemy is no longer only distant and external: it may be the neighboring village, a rural community, or a section of the population inhabiting the same geographical space as the insurgency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jihadism in an increasingly sovereigntist Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any possible dynamization of the anti-Christian dimension of African jihad will also have to be understood against a rapidly changing political and ideological landscape. In parts of the Sahel in particular, jihadist organizations are operating in an environment already saturated with narratives of sovereignty, anti-imperialism and emancipation<\/strong> from former colonial powers. The progressive distancing of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from France and other Western partners, and the consolidation of the Alliance of Sahel States, have contributed to making the rejection of external interference a powerful component of contemporary political discourse in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The symbolic rise of figures such as Ibrahim Traor\u00e9<\/strong> is particularly revealing. Traor\u00e9 has deliberately invoked the legacy of Thomas Sankara \u2013 the iconic pan-African leader of Burkina Faso assassinated in 1987 – and constructed his political persona around sovereignty, self-reliance and resistance to neo-colonialism. His appeal has also travelled beyond Burkina Faso: he has been celebrated by sections of African youth and portrayed as a new anti-imperialist and pan-African icon, although this image coexists with an increasingly authoritarian domestic political system and a security situation that remains highly problematic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This creates a particularly interesting environment for jihadist narratives. Jihadist organizations do not hold a monopoly over anti-Western discourse<\/strong>. On the contrary, they will have to operate alongside political actors capable of articulating hostility towards France, Europe or the broader West through a radically different vocabulary: national sovereignty, anti-colonialism, Pan-Africanism and the defense of the state. The relationship between these narratives should therefore not automatically be understood as one of convergence. It may also become one of competition. Where sovereigntist leaders present the nation and the state as instruments through which foreign influence must be resisted, jihadist ideology ultimately rejects precisely those national and state-centered frameworks in favor of a transnational religious community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jihadist propaganda could seek to reinterpret existing anti-Western grievances through a confessional framework, presenting local Christian communities as extensions, allies or beneficiaries of the same external enemy. Yet such an operation would be neither automatic nor necessarily successful. Contemporary sovereigntist narratives in the Sahel are primarily national and political, whereas the Islamic State’s worldview is explicitly hostile to nationalism and to the legitimacy of the nation-state itself. Figures celebrated for embodying African sovereignty may therefore constitute not only an opportunity for jihadist appropriation of anti-Western grievances, but also ideological competitors: they offer an alternative explanation of domination, an alternative enemy and, crucially, an alternative locus of loyalty<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two projects should not be conflated. Their ideological foundations, political objectives and imagined communities are fundamentally different and, in crucial respects, incompatible. Yet they may draw upon some of the same reservoirs of grievance: perceptions of Western interference, resentment of former colonial powers, distrust of externally supported political elites, and a broader sense that existing international arrangements have failed African societies. What makes this intersection particularly important to monitor is precisely where the two narratives diverge. They may speak to some of the same perceptions of the external enemy while directing their audiences towards opposite forms of political and collective identity.<\/strong>One locates emancipation in African sovereignty, the nation and political self-determination; the other seeks to delegitimize those very categories in favor of a transnational religious community and a universal jihadist project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question, therefore, is not simply whether anti-Western sentiment will grow – it most likely will – but which political language will prove capable of organizing that sentiment and transforming it into identity, belonging and action.<\/strong> In an African landscape in which both sovereigntist-nationalist narratives and jihadist projects are evolving rapidly, their interaction \u2014 whether competitive, mutually reinforcing at the level of grievance, or increasingly antagonistic \u2014 may become one of the transformations worth watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A final development to monitor will concern Western and European responses<\/strong> to these intersecting dynamics. As nationalist and increasingly anti-Western political currents gain traction across parts of Africa, the temptation may emerge to read jihadist actors and nationalist forces primarily through the lens of their opposition to one another, rather than through the risks each poses in its own right. Past experiences in other regions of the world suggest the dangers of tolerating, instrumentalizing, or selectively overlooking one destabilizing actor because it appears, in the short term, to constrain another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warning here is not primarily an ethical one, but a strategic one<\/strong>. Choosing\u2014or simply tolerating\u2014one threat as a counterweight to another rarely eliminates the underlying problem; it tends instead to postpone its consequences. In Africa, therefore, monitoring the evolution of jihadist narratives will also require monitoring how external actors interpret and respond to the continent\u2019s competing nationalist, anti-Western, and jihadist mobilizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another transformation to watch. In recent months, ITSTIME has highlighted how Africa should no longer be regarded simply as one of the theatres of expansion of contemporary jihadism, but as one of the spaces in whichRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[193,429,689,264],"class_list":["post-13204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-terrorism","tag-africa","tag-central-africa","tag-christians","tag-daesh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13206,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204\/revisions\/13206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itstime.it\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}