ISIS calls on Muslims in Sweden and all of Europe to attack
On March 12, the pro-Islamic State (ISIS) Al-Adiyat Media Foundation released a poster in Arabic, English and French, calling all Muslims in Sweden and throughout Europe to attack.
The poster, titled “We Say to the Swedish effeminate taghut [un-Islamic ruler],” shows an ISIS fighter brandishing a knife, along with references and images of the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Danish-Swedish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan.
The Swedish prime minister, called a “little slave of the cross”, is accused of promoting hatred towards the Islam after Rasmus Paludan, the leader of the Danish nationalist Stram Kurs party, and Edwin Wagenfeld, Dutch leader of the far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) group, burned a copy of the Quran in front of Turkey’s embassy in the Swedish capital last January. The act caused outrage around the world and condemnation from jihadis, including ISIS supporters who called on Muslims in Europe to carry out attacks.
Paludan, a Swedish-Danish activist who has already been convicted for racist abuse, already had provoked rioting in Sweden last year when he went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of the Quran.
The poster text addresses the prime minister, stating that “you have declared a war against the nation of Islam” and threatening that “you will be defeated and your fate is like the fate of the disbeliever swine teacher of history” — a reference to Samuel Paty, who was beheaded in Paris in 2020 after showing students cartoons perceived as insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The poster also calls on all Muslims in Sweden and throughout Europe to attack the “Crusaders […] with bloodshed and rent off body parts! Build an edifice with their skulls […] besiege them and coerce them, tear their bodies apart in the streets […] So fight the leaders of disbelief and sever off the heads of evil.”