ISIS-K has intensified recruitment efforts, targeting disaffected Muslims in the United States and other Western countries with a multilingual propaganda campaign across social media and the dark web. Photo courtesy of Kurdistan24.
The jizya is a tax historically levied on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, understood as a fee for protection, exemption from military service, and permission to practice a non-Muslim faith. Historically, jizya was imposed by Muslim countries across the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, and Central Asia, a practice that has been abolished in most Muslim nations.
With the exception of Taliban-governed Afghanistan, no internationally recognized nation-state in the Islamic world currently imposes jizya by name or in formal legal code. However, it is being actively imposed today by jihadist groups operating as de facto governing authorities across West Africa, Central Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.
The most well-documented active cases are in Mali and the broader Sahel, where JNIM (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin), an al-Qaeda affiliate, controls large rural areas beyond the reach of the Malian government. In August 2024, church leaders in the Dougouténé area of southern Mali were summoned to a meeting with JNIM militants and given new rules the entire community was required to follow.
The group subsequently imposed a tax of 25,000 CFA francs, roughly $40 to $41, on all Christians over the age of 18 in Douna-Pen, the largest Christian village in eastern Koro, Mopti. Payment was set as a condition for the free practice of religion. Those unable or unwilling to pay were warned their churches would be closed. Militants collected the money openly and without resistance.
The practice began in Dougouténé and spread to Douna-Pen, with local sources warning that more communities would face the same demands. In the La Tapoa region near the Niger–Burkina Faso border, jihadists announced that all males 15 and older who refused to convert must pay jizya, with Christians told they would “live as slaves” if they paid.
Open Doors analysts assess that these cases are not isolated but part of a wider plan, with families who refuse or cannot pay being driven from ancestral lands. One Christian told Aid to the Church in Need, “We are supposed to be living in a secular state, where such practices should not take place, but unfortunately this is becoming our new reality.”
The 25,000 CFA franc monthly payment represents more than half the monthly income for many families in one of the world’s poorest countries.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), operating as ISIS’s Central Africa Province (ISCAP), has imposed jizya as part of a documented campaign against Christian communities. Around late 2022, ISIS’s Al-Naba newsletter first began imploring Congolese Christians to pay jizya to be spared from ISCAP violence. By June 2025, the group was presenting Christians in Ituri Province with three choices during preaching campaigns: conversion to Islam, payment of jizya, or death.
An August 2025 Al-Naba editorial stated: “If the Christians of Africa want to feel safe and escape the cycle of killing, then they must know that our true Islam provides them the freedom to choose between three options, Islam, jizya paid humiliated and subdued, or death and displacement.”
These options were repeated in videos published on YouTube and TikTok in Swahili, Lingala, and French by ISCAP ideologue Zakaria Banza Souleymane, known as Bonge La Chuma. Locals and ISCAP defectors confirmed to Bridgeway Foundation personnel that the group systematically gathered farmers to register and tax their access to fields while requiring attendance at Islamic lectures. An ISIS December 2025 article warned that fighters would continue to slaughter Congolese Christians who refuse to pay, framing the violence as permitted by Islamic law.
The UN report assessed ADF at approximately 2,000 members, including families and dependents, with 600 to 700 active fighters. ADF leader Musa Baluku was located in Madina camp in Epulu National Park, Mambasa Territory, Ituri Province. The report states that ADF enjoys complete freedom of operation within its designated area, as M23’s occupation of key cities has diverted Congolese military resources.
The report names Abu Waqas, listed as Ahmad Mahmood Hassan, as responsible for 300 deaths in and around Lubero Territory since June 2025 alone, including the massacre of 50 churchgoers at a church in Oicha and 70 mourners at a funeral in Ntuyo village in August and September, respectively. ADF has adapted to satellite communications as a force multiplier, enabling fighters to transmit propaganda directly to ISIS central media from the bush and to convert cryptocurrency into mobile money without access to conventional cellular networks.
In Pakistan, TTP and Lashkar-e-Islam have applied jizya in tribal border areas where state authority is absent. In 2009, TTP forced the Sikh community in the Peshawar region to pay after occupying their homes and kidnapping a Sikh leader. Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs in villages along the northern Afghan-Pakistani border, including Bara, Chora, Karamna, and the Tirah Valley in the Khyber Agency, have been collectively required to pay jizya, with some Sikh families in Feroze Khel forced to pay 20 million rupees. In Orakzai, TTP took over stores and houses owned by Sikhs. Some families paid while others abandoned their homes and the area rather than comply.
ISIS imposed jizya on Christians in Raqqa in 2014, the city it controlled as its de facto capital, and summoned Christian leaders in Mosul to negotiate payments. Hudson Institute scholar Nina Shea documented that imposition of jizya by ISIS consistently preceded dispossession, violence, rape, murder, kidnapping, and enslavement. Experts note ISIS imposed jizya even on Muslims, which Islamic law strictly forbids, reflecting financial desperation rather than doctrinal consistency.
ISIS’s territorial caliphate collapsed in 2019, but its provincial affiliates in the DRC, West Africa, and Mozambique continue the practice. The debate over whether Coptic Christians should pay jizya has also surfaced periodically in Egypt since the 1980s.
From August 2025, Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh reportedly began collecting jizya from Hindus and other religious minorities following a political transition that brought increased radical Islamic influence.
Of the several groups currently imposing jizya on Christians and other non-Muslims, the most expansionist and dangerous are ADF/ISCAP and ISIS and its affiliates. ADF/ISCAP poses a regional threat, while ISIS and its affiliates are expanding not only across Africa and the Middle East but also into South Asia, Europe, and the United States.
In this context, jizya serves multiple purposes. First, it pressures poor populations to convert to Islam if they cannot afford to pay, which in turn creates a larger recruitment base for extremist armies. Second, it generates revenue that is used to fund expansion.
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