By Alex Brick —
From 2013 to 2016, European radical Muslims dreamed of traveling (hijra) to fight the wars of jihad and achieve prominence and riches or die with a surefire entry into Jannah (paradise). To set up a caliphate, they went to Syria.
Now, they’re heading to Mozambique.
In March and April, six young French nationals (some were minors) were convicting in trails of planing to travel to northern Mozambique and join Islamic State–Mozambique (IS-M). On Telegram, they called themselves who “Team Musul.” They weren’t even Mozambicans.
IS-M is capturing the imagination of would-be Muslim warriors with its devastating attacks in Cabo Delgado — burning churches and killing Christian civilian (which it calls “combatants”).
Since being expelled from its self-declared caliphate Syria-Iraq in 2019, Islamic State has metastasized, spreading to Africa. The propaganda channels now urge Muslim youth to make the long trek — called hijra from Mohammad’s journey back to Medina — to go to Africa.
During the previous two years, IS-M has increasingly concentrated attacks in Christian-majority areas of southern Cabo Delgado (Ancuabe, Chiúre, Namuno and Montepuez). It burned 18 churches in Chiúre in February 2024 and beheaded of six Christians in Ancuabe in July 2025. It killed Christians in Chiúre and Muidumbe, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom published a Mozambique report this April.
The Islamist militants are simultaneously cultivating relations with Muslim villages in efforts to radicalize them. They wish to capture and sell the gas resources in the region, as well as carrying out kidnapping-for-ransom and extortion schemes. The coastal gas fields have become an important strategic asset amid the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
Counter-insurgency attacks have driven off IS-M, who don’t hold territory but continue to terrorize villages.
“They speak openly of a caliphate,” said Bishop António Juliasse of Pemba in June.
IS-M operations are expanding in northern Mozambique. On April 30, they torched a Catholic church, St. Louis de Montfort Church, in Meza.
“It was a scene of terror,” said Bishop Juliasse. “Homes, infrastructure, all destroyed, and the historic parish reduced to rubble. Civilians were captured and forced to watch and listen to speeches of hatred.”
In early May, militants killed a reported nine civilians at Namacuili and burned more than 160 houses (in the Ancuabe/Chiúre area).
Since October 2017, IS-M has killed thousands of people and displaced up to 1M people because of raids, beheadings, kidnappings and attacks on churches, schools and government facilities.
“The faith of these people will never be destroyed,” said Bishop Juliasse.
Related content: The killingest jihadis in Africa, Leftists cry for Palestinians and don’t care for Nigerians, slavery still practiced in Muslim Mauritania. Sources: National Catholic Reporter, Christian Daily, Le Monde, The Soufan Center, others.
