Islamic Terror: Mindless Violence or Calculated Pattern?

Hardly a week seems to go by without a Muslim somewhere launching a terrorist attack and killing infidels—from shooting Jews on an Australian beach to stabbing Christian children in an Irish school.

Such behavior has become so taken for granted that important questions are often overlooked: What, for example, is the logic behind these seemingly “senseless terror attacks”? What motivates them? Do they have any rationale, or are they—as Western media and authorities insist—actions of mentally ill people?

A good place to start is the writings of the Islamic State (which, despite rumor, is alive and well, especially in Africa).

For example, in August, 2025, in an editorial its Arabic language newsletter, al-Naba’, the Islamic State called on Muslims in the West to engage in precisely such attacks. It began by praising the Islamic slaughter and beheadings of Christian “infidels” in Africa—specifically in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo—before calling on the “knights of Islam” to engage in the same behavior in the West:

May Allah illumine your paths and preserve your jihad, and assist you in carrying and delivering it to the shores of Europe, that it might invade them and disperse their security and turn their streets and capitals into another Ituri [devastated province in Congo] and another Cabo Delgado [devastated province in Mozambique]! For [Muslim] hearts still burn for revenge against the Christians of Europe, and the call is still open for the champions of Islam to repeat the [same] acts upon them, invade their homeland, and bring down the judgments of Allah upon them as, their brothers did in Africa.

The reason that the Islamic State says “the call is still open” to slaughter infidels is because it made an even more graphic call—with detailed instructions—on how to kill Western infidels earlier in 2024. After massacring over a 100 people in a terror attack on Kerman, Iran, it issued an audio recording titled “And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them” (a reference to Koran 9:5).

After urging Muslims not to attack Israel now, as that would only empower PA and Hamas, which are not, according to the Islamic State, “true Muslims,” it called on its followers, the “Lions of Islam,” to:

Chase your preys whether Jewish, Christian or their allies, on the streets and roads of America, Europe, and the world. Break into their homes, kill them and steal their peace of mind by any means you can lay hands on.
Understand that you are the arm of the Islamic State hitting in the kuffar’s [infidels’] homelands, and are avenging the Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Sham, and other Muslim countries. Solidify your plans and diversify the attacks: detonate explosives, burn them with grenades and fiery agents, shoot them with bullets, cut their throats with sharp knives, and run them over with vehicles. A sincere person will not lack the means to draw blood from the hearts of the Jews, the Christians, and their allies, and thus ease the suffering in the hearts of the believers. Come at them from every door, kill them by the worst of means, turn their gatherings and celebrations into bloody massacres, do not distinguish between a civilian kaffir, and a military one, for they are all kuffar [infidels]…. Intentionally seek easy targets before hard ones, civilian targets before military one, religious targets like synagogues and churches before others, for this will satisfy the soul and will demonstrate the characteristics of the battle, as our battle with them is a religious one and we kill them wherever we come upon them in response to Allah Almighty’s command.

Islam’s Three Worst Doctrines..