The Islamic State Is Waging Arson Jihad

In the UK, an Islamic State online forum has been discovered that teaches its audience how to start wildfires and to hide their handiwork, as arsonists, from forensic investigation. It has long been suspected that lone-wolf arsonists loyal to the Islamic state and other Islamic terror groups have started some of the wildfires in both Europe and the U.S. Now there is proof that ISIS supporters have shared online their expertise on starting wildfires, suggested suitable targets, and provided guidance on how to avoid detection of arson. More on this latest weapon that Muslim terrorists are employing can be found here.

LBC [Leading Britain’s Conversation, a news, talk, and phone-in radio station] has infiltrated an online forum used by Islamic State supporters to share detailed instructions on starting wildfires, exhausting emergency services and avoiding detection by police and forensic investigators, just weeks after millions of people across Britain were sent an emergency warning over the country’s extreme wildfire risk.

The forum, which LBC has chosen not to name because of the nature of the material it contains, hosts a mixture of Arabic and English extremist content, including Islamic State propaganda and discussions between supporters of the terrorist organisation.

Among the material seen by LBC is a lengthy guide titled “Burn down your first forest and exhaust the workers of the tyrant”, which gives would-be attackers detailed advice on preparing for and deliberately starting wildfires.

The series of posts urge supporters to take advantage of conditions in which wildfires are particularly dangerous and emergency services may already be under significant pressure.

It also contains extensive instructions intended to help an attacker avoid surveillance, conceal their identity and movements and frustrate attempts by forensic investigators to establish who started a fire.

LBC is not publishing those sections in detail because they amount to practical instructions for committing arson and evading detection.

Responding to our investigation, a Home Office spokesperson said: “We take all threats posed to British interests and lives seriously. Our police and security services are backed by some of the strongest counter terrorism powers in the world, and they work tirelessly to defend the UK against the range of hostile threats we face.”

The department said police and security agencies had disrupted 19 late-stage terrorist attack plots since the beginning of 2020 and stressed that Britain’s counter-terrorism legislation is kept under constant review as threats evolve.

It also pointed to duties imposed on online services by the Online Safety Act, saying platforms are legally required to tackle illegal material including content amounting to incitement to violence and terrorism.

Moustafa Ayad, Executive Director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and its Research Chair in Global Islamism and Counter-Terrorism, told LBC that calls for supporters to use arson have been a recurring feature of Islamic State propaganda for years.

He said the tactic could be traced back at least as far as 2017, when Islamic State’s Rumiyah magazine published material encouraging arson attacks as part of its “Just Terror Tactics” series.

More recently, he said, the group’s official al-Naba newsletter called in April this year for churches and synagogues in the United States and Europe to be set on fire over Easter.

Islamic State propaganda also sought to exploit the devastating Los Angeles fires in 2025, with supporters urged to start further fires while unofficial propaganda outlets amplified the message….

The Los Angeles Fire Department in the past said that arsonists may have set “some” of the wildfires in LA’s outskirts, but has not provided any detail. It would make sense for Islamic State to want to target Los Angeles as America’s second most populated city and the world center for the entertainment industry, making it already the cynosure of all media eyes.

For a budding terrorist on a small budget, arson is the ideal weapon. No expensive explosives or weapons needed. Just some matches, some petrol, and that little fire is on its way, growing bigger and bigger, destroying everything in its path — trees, houses, shops, cars, animals, and wherever possible, humans.

He added that Islamic State affiliates have themselves used fire during campaigns of violence elsewhere in the world, including burning villages, churches and marshland.

Think of the hundreds of Christian villages that Boko Haram set on fire in Nigeria, or the churches that the Islamic State destroyed when it seized large areas of western and northwestern Iraq as well as eastern and northern Syria, and held that territory from 2014 to 2017.