The Islamic State in Mozambique (ISM) has ordered Christians and Jews to pay a jizya tax for infidels as a sign of their submission to an Islamic Caliphate, the Barnabas Fund reported Thursday.
Christians and Jews in the region have been threatened with death unless they either convert to Islam, vacate the area, or pay the tax.
“We will escalate the war against you until you submit to Islam,” states a handwritten message from ISM. “Our desire is to kill you or be killed, for we are martyrs before God, so submit or run from us.”
The letter, which menaces Christians and Jews with “endless war” if they do not submit to Islam or pay the tax, also threatens moderate Muslims with death if they do not join the Islamist cause.
The ISM publishes a weekly newsletter, which has also demanded that Jews and Christians either convert to Islam or pay the infidel tax.
In demanding the jizya, which according to sharia law allows Jews and Christians to remain in the land as second-class “dhimmi,” the ISM is echoing the tactics applied by the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
In 2014, the Islamic State issued a statement demanding that Christians in Mosul either convert to Islam, pay the jizya, leave the city, or be killed. This led every in the region to leave, ending 2,000 years of Assyrian Christian presence.
In 2015, the Islamic State launched a series of attacks on Christian towns along the Khabour River in northeast Syria, during which the jihadists abducted hundreds of Christian hostages, who were similarly told they must convert to Islam, pay the jizya, or face death.
The imposition of the jizya has repeatedly been employed as a means of emptying regions of Christians.
In northern Mozambique, some 21 Christians were killed by Islamist extremists in violent attacks in the month of October alone. The jihadists have also regularly raped Christian women during their raids and kidnapped Christian boys to serve as child soldiers, Barnabas reported.
The assaults on Christian villages have also been accompanied by the burning of houses and churches and the execution of numerous Christian pastors.
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