Jihad PhD, Pt. I
BY GABRIEL FANELLI
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has changed his name and reinvented himself numerous times. He has gone by his given name, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri, two self given “kunyas” or nom de guerres, and a variety of nicknames that attest to his elusive nature. His aversion to the public eye, and ability to stay clear of Iraqi security forces who failed to catch him six times between 2010 and 2013 earned him the nicknames “as-Shabah” or The Ghost, and the Invisible Sheikh. Whatever he went by, he was the foremost authority on Islamic scholarship to ever take over a terror group, and eventually his scholarly credentials and the violent acts he committed with Quranic justification would be seen as a threat to AQ and the direction they wished to take the group.
In the months following Zarqawi’s death, the control of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was transferred into much more palatable hands for AQ leadership. Abu Umar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri took over the group and renamed it the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and began to unify the competing jihadi groups in Iraq under one roof governed by the Mujahideen Shura Counsel. One of those groups was the Jama’at Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’a – a mouthful in any language. The JJASJ or The Army of the Sunni People Group was a Salafi organization founded by future Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi between 2003 and 2004 under Baghdadi’s leadership until his arrest by coalition forces in 2004. He spent the next ten months in Camp Bucca, along with 9 of the future leaders of IS. He was released after being dismissed as a low-level street thug by U.S. officials.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was born in Samarra, Iraq in 1971. In complete contrast to Zarqawi, he was not only a very behaved young man, but extremely religious from the start. He grew up in a devout Sunni family that claimed to be descendants of the Quraysh tribe of the Prophet Muhammad. Staying out of prison and in the books led him to Baghdad where he enrolled in the University of Baghdad’s Sharia college, earning a bachelor's degree in Islamic studies, and master’s degree in and Quranic Recitation. He immediately pushed on to a doctoral program in Quranic Sciences, eventually earning his PhD, but before doing so he had to complete his practicum – repelling the invading forces through jihad.
In 2003 it seemed that every self-proclaimed true believer took up arms against the United States in Iraq. al-Badri couldn’t resist joining in the fight, but within a year, he and members of JJASJ were detained in Fallujah and sent to Bucca. While at Bucca, he started a pseudo university for those jihadists who needed formal training in the Quran, something he had been doing at a local mosque to pay for his doctoral program before being captured and started going by the nom de guerre Abu Dua – Father of the Prayer. The vast majority of detention centers in the Middle East that were established in the wake of the GWOT have turned into breeding grounds for hatred and extremism. Bucca was just one example, but numerous prisons in Syria currently housing IS members have installed a system of Sharia law inside the prison walls, and routinely radicalize prisoners during their stay. Abu Dua traveled to Damascus in 2004 to help align his groups ideology with the Salafi’s ultra orthodox movements teachings. Returning to Baghdad in 2007 he proudly defended his doctoral thesis and received high marks from the university and earning him a PhD at the beginning of the surge in Iraq.
He joined the ISI’s Sharia Committee and rose through the ranks over the next three years, with his education earning him a spot as the ISIs top spiritual advisor – number three in line for leadership of the fledgling caliphate. A raid in spring of 2010 by U.S. forces in Tikrit eliminated the two in front of him, and he was elected as emir of ISI in a vote of 9 to 2. He then changed his nom de guerre to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. To Sunni Muslims, Abu Bakr was the first caliph in succession upon the death of the Prophet. This grandiose kunya was chosen to highlight him as the first caliph of the caliphate to come under the IS.
Neighboring Syria was descending into chaos following the outbreak of civil war in 2011, and al-Baghdadi saw an opportunity to expand the reach of the organization and gain more territory for the new empire he wished to establish. He hand-picked several Syrian born fighters and charged them with the formation of a Syrian based ISI aligned group. The result was Jabhat al-Nusra, which would soon become a rival to al-Baghdadi and ISI.
