IS calls on its “hidden soldiers” to attack Christian churches, targets the Pope, Greek Orthodox and Coptic leaders

The Islamic State (IS) is inciting its supporters to intensify attacks against Christians and targets the Pope, the Coptic leader and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. The incitement is published in the latest issue of IS’s online magazine Dabiq, just days after two of the terror group supporters cut the throat of an 85-year-old Catholic priest in France.

Under the title “Break the Cross” the magazine calls the “hidden soldiers of the Caliphate” to launch without delay attacks against the Crusaders, the Christian churches and to destroy the “arrogant Christian disbelievers.”

It notes that “worshipers of the cross and the pagans of the West should consider the reasons behind the hostility of Muslims in Western and repent by abandoning Christianity and accepting Islam.”

Pope Francis, as well as Orthodox and Coptic church leaders, are among those singled out as targets. IS propagandists mock the Pope, saying the Pontiff only condemned the mass shooting at a LGBT nightclub in Orlando “because he comes from long line of boy rapists.”

IS’s fighters who have converted from Christianity to Islam tell supporters they have the “ability to terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.” Christians were legitimate targets “due to their mere disbelief,” and there was no difference between “disbelieving soldiers and their so-called ‘civilians.’

According to Voice of America, this is not the first time IS has exhorted followers to target Christians in the West — or threaten to destroy Christianity. In February 2015, the terror group released a shocking five-minute video documenting the barbaric mass execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on the shoreline of Libya, while it has targeted and terrorized Christians in territory it controls in Syria and Iraq.