Islamist terrorism has maintained for decades a constant obsession: attacking Christians. This is confirmed by a synthesis note from the General Directorate for Internal Security of France (DGSI), obtained by Le Figaro, which analyzes the specific threats against the Christian community and the persistence of jihadist hatred towards the “crusaders”. The document gains special relevance after the September 10 attack in Lyon, where Ashur Sarnaya, an Iraqi Christian in a wheelchair, was assaulted, in the third Islamist attack in France in 2025.
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An ideological hatred fueled over decades
The DGSI points out that radical Islamist discourse has positioned Christians as priority enemies for more than thirty years. Both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State repeatedly label Christians as “unbelievers”, “idolatrous”, “infidels” or “associationists”. This language is not accidental: it responds to a doctrinal strategy that presents the West and Christianity as the same hostile reality. In this way, the crusades, colonization, and recent military interventions in places like Afghanistan, Mali, Iraq, or Syria are blended into a victimist narrative designed to justify violence.
Islamist propaganda explicitly rejects interreligious dialogue and promotes attacking Christian communities with a calculated objective: internally divide Western societies and provoke reactions that facilitate jihadist recruitment. Already in 2005, the ideologue Abu Musab al-Suri proposed triggering hostile responses against European Muslims to push them towards radicalization.
Jihadism has said it without disguise: conquer, enslave, destroy
The warning in the note is supported by abundant public calls from jihadist leaders and organizations. Osama bin Laden had already issued a global fatwa in 1998 against the “Jews and crusaders”. His successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, continued the same discourse, presenting the world as a stage of total confrontation between Muslims and Christians.
The Islamic State has used even more brutal language. In 2014, its spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani promised to “conquer Rome”, “break the crosses” and “reduce [Christian] women to slavery”. The French-language magazine of Daesh, Dar al-Islam, urged in 2015 to attack churches to “install fear in their hearts”. In 2020, the jihadist agency Thabat called for responding to the supposed “islamophobia” in France with direct attacks on Christian temples. And in January 2024, the Islamic State launched an international campaign titled: “Kill them wherever you find them”, directed against Jews and Christians.
From theory to horror: attacks and murders around the world
The consequence of this structured hatred is a chain of attacks spanning more than thirty years. The DGSI recalls that in the 1990s, at least 19 religious figures were murdered in Algeria by the Armed Islamic Group. In Pakistan, Al-Qaeda has been decisive in the campaign of violence against Christians since the 2000s. In 2015, the world watched in horror the execution of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya, filmed and disseminated by the Islamic State as “a message signed in blood to the nation of the cross”.
Europe has not been spared either. The 2016 attack at the Berlin Christmas market revealed a deep hatred against Christians: the perpetrator, a Tunisian previously imprisoned in Italy, insulted and threatened his Christian cellmates.
France, a recurring target: churches attacked, priests beheaded
France has been under Islamist threat for a quarter of a century, explicitly directed against Christians. Already in the year 2000, a plan to attack the cathedral and the Christmas market in Strasbourg was thwarted. Years later, that same market was the scene of the attack carried out by Chérif Chekatt in December 2018.
The list of carried out or thwarted attacks is extensive:
2015: Sid Ahmed Ghlam prepared attacks against churches in Villejuif and considered attacking the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre as well.
2016: in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Islamist terrorists beheaded Father Jacques Hamel in the middle of the temple, explicitly designating Christians as enemies of Islam.
2016: a car bomb was about to explode in front of Notre-Dame de Paris.
2017: a police officer was attacked by a jihadist on the cathedral's esplanade.
2020: three people were murdered in the basilica of Nice in an attack carried out “in the name of Allah”.
2021: a radicalized young woman was arrested in Béziers while planning an attack on her neighborhood church.
The DGSI note underscores a clear pattern: Christians—their temples, their ministers, and their faithful—have become privileged targets of Islamist violence.
A persistent threat that demands realism and vigilance
The French intelligence report confirms a reality that many political leaders in Europe have minimized for years: jihadist violence is not random, but ideologically directed against Christian targets. This hostility is articulated in discourses, radicalization manuals, digital publications, and global campaigns, and has as a direct consequence a series of increasingly brutal attacks.
The Church in Europe today lives in a paradoxical situation: while its institutions and symbols are declared targets of terrorism, in many European societies, the antireligious—and specifically anti-Christian—component of these attacks is avoided. The DGSI, on the contrary, leaves no doubt: Christianity is at the center of the jihadist target.