Islamic State Celebrates Mutual Destruction in Russia-Ukraine War

On August 3, the Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP) published the 11th issue of Al-Azaim’s Voice of Khurasan magazine that included a notable piece of commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which they refer to as “a great, tremendous glad tiding for the Muslims worldwide.”

ISKP exclaims:

Who can forget that emotional feeling of watching the Russian taghut screaming (hura!), and all his generals and officers of an army exceeding the figure of 1,000,000 reiterating the cry? The war began, and indeed a blessed war it proved. This time the victims were not the Muslims of Chechnya, nor Afghanistan nor Syria; the war was to be fought on the “peaceful lands of Europe” – as the kuffar try to make the world realize. It’s a Crusaders Vs Crusaders war; Crusaders invading Crusaders; Crusaders massacring Crusaders; Crusaders desecrating the sanctity of people of cross.

ISKP asserts the “war started with the Russians [wanting to prove] their superiority over America.” The group speaks of shattered peace in Europe with thousands of civilians killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and millions displaced.

Strikingly, ISKP states that “the people who thought they would never be threatened in their homes, as every threat was set to be removed by their Crusader governments waging their war on terror against Islam, have seen a clear glimpse of war right in their own homes.”

The group says “not only in Ukraine, but the entire Western world and the kuffar as a whole, sooner or later [will] drink from the same bitter cup of war that they made the Muslim nation drink from.” They go on to mention “airstrikes, mass graves, cries of injured, unburied corpses, orphans, mourning women”, bragging about how these have now “become a normal sight in Europe again”. Even though the Western powers tried to prevent war in and near their homelands, ISKP gloats that conflict “will return, by the will of Allah, because it’s part of universal law; when a people cross their limits and get corrupted beyond repair, they are removed!”

Accordingly, ISKP proceeds to quote former caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s prediction when he said:

… we promise you –by the grace of Allah– that everyone who participates in this war against the Islamic State will surely pay dearly, and will regret it. So, wait oh America! Wait oh Europe! Wait oh Russia! Wait oh Rawafidh! Wait oh murtaddin! Wait o Jews! We are waiting along with you.

ISKP takes the “war erupting among the kuffar” as a “great sign from Allah the Almighty”. The group believes the war has exposed Western media and governments for spreading disinformation about Putin being mentally insane or in the final stages of cancer as well as their “filthy racism”.

The Islamic State plucks quotes from the Western commentariat saying things such as: “This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan ... This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city” or “To put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine They’re Christians, they’re white. They’re very similar [to us].”

ISKP touches upon the changing global political landscape, shifting balance of power, and the end of unipolarity with the rise of China and resurgence of Russia, arguing this new era will be one in which “there won’t be just a single superpower oppressing the whole world” as said nations will also increasingly be doing so.

The US is accused of using and “disposing” of Ukraine, which ISKP refers to as one of America’s “pets” and sees a greater global war coming between the “Crusaders” in the “East” and the “West”. Evidence of this, the group says, is found in China’s rising hostilities towards Taiwan, and North Korea’s tensions with the “Western puppet” South Korea.

ISKP concludes by describing how “America has been a furious enemy of Islam throughout the last century, and Russia has proven no different.” Thus, they surmise that Muslims should not support either party and must shed their “inferiority complex” to build their own independent power — “the camp of Islam.”