Paris attacks part of ISIS strategy to provoke retaliation and force Muslims out of west: activist

ISIS carried out the terror attacks in Paris yesterday killing more than 129 people to provoke retaliation against Islamic communities in France as part of their broader strategy of forcing Muslims out of the west, an Arab Spring activist claimed today citing an essay written by the terrorist group.

“Eliminating the grayzone – the zone of coexistence – and rendering a world as black and white as their own flag,” democracy activist Iyad el-Baghdadi said on Twitter. “That’s what ISIS wants.”

El-Baghdadi cited the feature article from the seventh issue of ISIS’s English-language magazine Dabiq, titled “The Extinction of the Grayzone” written following the Charlie Hebdo attack in January of this year.

The author of the article argues that since the advent of ISIS, also known as ISIL or the Islamic State, and its putative Caliphate, the world is divided between the Islamic State and the West with no middle ground in between.

The ISIS article states:

Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands so as to force them into a tolerable sect of apostasy in the name of ‘Islam’ before forcing them into blatant Christianity and democracy.

Muslims in the lands ruled by the apostate tawāghīt will find themselves driven to the wilāyāt of the Islamic State, as the tawāghīt increase their imprisonment of any Muslim they think might have a mustard seed of jealousy for his religion, or lead them to apostatize by working as agents, soldiers, and puppets serving the banner of the tāghūt,” the author adds.

Eventually, the grayzone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of īmān versus the camp of kufr.

The author argues that the reaction against the Charlie Hebdo attack was much greater than the reaction against previous terror attacks in Europe because of the “atmosphere of terror” created by the Islamic State.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attacks Paris, indicating that the targeted locations were “accurately chosen,” and threatening that the operation is the “first of the storm”, according the security firm SITE, who specializes in tracking Jihadi terrorism.

The ISIS message, translated by SITE, claims:

Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys. This attack is the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.

Police in Paris have found passports on the bodies of the attackers, one Egyptian, and the other Syrian.

A Greek minister has claimed that the Syrian passport belongs to a refugee who entered Europe through Greece.

The Belgian Police have raided a Brussels neighbourhood after it emerged that three of the eight attackers came from that area.