Islamic State Dabiq magazine calls for attacks on Christians

Entitled "Break the cross", the entire edition of Dabiq focuses solely on inciting attacks on Christians. Photo / AP

Isis (Islamic State) has ordered its supporters in the West to carry out more attacks on Christians, in the latest issue of its monthly online magazine, Dabiq.

Entitled "Break the cross", the entire edition of Dabiq focuses solely on inciting attacks on supposed "crusaders".

In the foreword, the magazine calls on all Europeans to "abandon their infidelity and accept Islam, the religion of sincerity and submission to the Lord of the heavens and the Earth".

The issue includes interviews with several Christian converts to Islam, including an American and a Finnish woman, and about fighting for Isis.

It comes a week after two Isis followers attacked a church in the French town of Rouen, kidnapping two nuns and killing a priest.

The men, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, gave a sermon in Arabic at the altar, saying they had pledged allegiance to Isis and that it was their duty to kill Christians.

Haras Rafiq, the managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism thinktank, described the Rouen attack as a turning point. "What these two people have done is shift the tactical attack to the attack on Rome ... an attack on Christianity," he said.

The magazine also featured a six-point "justification" of why the group hates the West, which included "because some of you are atheist".

Isis' shift comes as it tells supporters not to travel to Isis-held territory in Iraq or Syria, but to carry out attacks in their home countries.

Experts say this means there are no genuine "lone-wolf" jihadists. "In reality the institutions of the caliphate stand behind this campaign," said Kyle Orton, a Middle East analyst at the Henry Jackson Society thinktank.

He said the downplaying of Isis' direct role in the European attacks "had deadly consequences last year when the connections between a series of plots in France were missed".