Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Arabic: أبو بكر البغدادي‎, born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri) (28 July 1971 – 27 October 2019) was the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS or Daesh, an Islamic extremist group in western Iraq, Libya, northeast Nigeria, and Syria. He was proclaimed by his followers to be a caliph.

Do not think the war that we are waging is the Islamic State’s war alone. Rather, it is the Muslims’ war altogether. It is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief.

Quotes

Soon, by Allah's permission, a day will come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as master.

2014

• ...If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you... God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience... so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge. This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries...
  • As quoted in "Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul", The Telegraph (5 July 2014)

2015

• Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting.
  • As quoted in "Islamic State releases 'al-Baghdadi message'", BBC (14 May 2015)

• ...Do not think the war that we are waging is the Islamic State’s war alone. Rather, it is the Muslims’ war altogether. It is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief...
  • As quoted in "Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resurfaces in audio urging supporters to join terror group", Independent (15 May 2015)

• ...[Be] certain that our hearts are broken on account of your leaving of your homes and your lands, and your seeking of shelter in the territory of the Rāfidah [those who reject Islamic authority] and the Kurdish atheists, and your being forced to wander the lands... So return to your lands, and remain in your homes, and seek shelter – after first seeking shelter with Allah – with your people in the Islamic State, for you will find therein, by Allah’s permission, a warm embrace and a safe refuge. For you are our people. We defend you, your honor, and your wealth. We want you to be mighty and noble, we want you to be safe and secure...
  • As quoted in "Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resurfaces in audio urging supporters to join terror group", Independent (15 May 2015)

• ...By Allah, we will take revenge! By Allah, we will take revenge! Even if it takes a while, we will take revenge, and every amount of harm against the Ummah will be responded to with multitudes more against the perpetrator...
  • As quoted in Dabiq, issue #12; published November 18, 2015, pg. 2

• ...Soon, by Allah's permission, a day will come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as master, having honor, being revered, with his head held high, and his dignity preserved. Anyone who dares to offend him will be disciplined, and any hand that reaches out to harm him will be cut off. So let the world know that we are living today in a new era. Whoever was heedless must now be alert. Whoever was sleeping must now awaken...
  • As quoted in Dabiq, issue #12; published November 18, 2015, pp. 2-3

• ...Crusaders and Jews don’t dare come on the ground because they were defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan...
  • As quoted in The Washington Times, and The Telegraph newspaper published December 26, 2015

• ...Jews, soon you shall hear from us in Palestine, which will become your grave...
  • As quoted in The Washington Times, and The Telegraph newspaper published December 26, 2015

2017

Statement released in Arabic, 28 September 2017

• America, which presents itself as the only superpower, is losing its status as the world’s top leader and is becoming an exhausted country with huge debts. This is preparing the ground for its collapse and the fall of other countries into the abyss.
  • The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 28 September 2017 (date of quote)

• Fight them and ambush them everywhere, increase the attacks against them. Target the infidels’ information and media centers and their psychological warfare centers ... Continue your actions ... Ensure that the Crusaders [i.e. Westerners] and those who have abandoned Islam do not enjoy a peaceful life in their homes while your brothers are suffering from bombing, killing, and destruction.
  • The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 28 September 2017 (date of quote)

2018

Statement released in Arabic, 22 August 2018

• For the Mujahideen the scale of victory or defeat is not dependant on a city or town being stolen or subject to that who has aerial superiority, intercontinental missiles or smart bombs... Oh Caliphate soldiers ... Trust in God’s promise and His victory ... For with hardship comes relief and a way out
  • Isis losses are test from Allah says leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 'new recording', Independent, 23 August 2018

• A bullet fired, stabbing, detonation of an IED in your country, are tantamount to a thousand attacks here [in Syria and Iraq], and don’t neglect [also] the ramming attacks on the roads.
  • The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 22 August 2018 (date of quote)

• Allah loves those who worship Him to become shaheeds, whose blood is spilled out of love for Him.
  • The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 22 August 2018 (date of quote)

• You have no alternative, and if you wish to live in honor, then this can be accomplished only by returning to your religion to religion and to jihad against your enemies.
  • The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 22 August 2018 (date of quote)

Attributed

• God's enemies from the Jews, Christians, atheists, Shiites, apostates and all of the world's infidels have dedicated their media, money, army and munitions to fight Muslims and jihadists in the State of Nineveh after they witnessed it become one of the bases of Islam and one of its minarets under the Caliphate.
  • Audio message as quoted in ISIS leader releases rare audio message as Iraqi troops enter Mosul by Euan McKirdy, CNN (November 3 2016)

Quotes about al-Baghdadi

• ...I was with Baghdadi at the Islamic University. We studied the same course, but he wasn't a friend. He was quiet, and retiring. He spent time alone. Later, when he helped found the Islamic Army, Mr Dabash fought alongside militia leaders who were committing some of the worst excesses in violence and would later form al-Qaeda... [but] Baghdadi was not one of them, I used to know all the leaders (of the insurgency) personally. Zarqawi (the former leader of al-Qaeda) was closer than a brother to me... But I didn't know Baghdadi. He was insignificant. He used to lead prayer in a mosque near my area. No one really noticed him...
  • Ahmed al-Dabash, as quoted by Ruth Sherlock in "How a talented footballer became world’s most wanted man, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi", The Telegraph (11 November 2014)

• In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Iraqi from Samarra, sent a scouting mission of seven or eight men from Iraq into Syria to assess how ripe the country was for his ambitions. Baghdadi was taking Zarqawi’s dream of establishing an Islamic state to another level. His men found a country much like Iraq in the years after the US invasion: outside the large cities, men with guns roamed freely, state institutions were weak, and—most conveniently—Assad had released scores of Islamists from his jails, just as Saddam Hussein had done before the US invasion of 2003. This was a classic move: the dictator appears to show magnanimity at a time of unrest and declares an amnesty for prisoners, but alongside the intellectuals and activists, he releases into the wild those who will inflict chaos, so he can be called upon as the best option to bring peace. In Syria, some of the men released had fought in Iraq, groomed by Assad himself to make life miserable for the Americans in Iraq. Assad would jail the fighters as soon as they returned, letting them rot in prison until he next needed them. As he set them loose in 2011, he deviously warned the international community that the protesters were religious extremists, making him the architect of his own self-fulfilling prophecy. Baghdadi’s men traveled west from Iraq into Syria, on desert highways and along rivers, a well-traveled road used by fighters who had gone in the opposite direction to join the insurgency in Iraq. In Syria, courtesy of Assad, they found a ready network of Salafist jihadists they could tap into to serve Baghdadi’s grand designs of a borderless Islamic state. But without a revolution for freedom, there would have been no such opportunity.
  • Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)

• ...I bear witness by God - and there is no other deity except Him - to what I know from familiarity with this imposter who has called himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as he had studied under me with a group of the erudite ones...in the year 2005, then the study was cut off because of my arrest, and I had got to know him very well. He was of limited intelligence, slow to understand, pale in intuitive grasp. For he is not from among the average students of Islamic knowledge ['ilm], and his studies background are academic studies in the government universities, whose standard is emaciated and which have no relation with forming a student of knowledge, let alone a knowledgeable person [referring to Baghdadi's time at the Islamic University of Baghdad].

Then indeed he was with us till the end of 2005 among the soldiers of our army. He was not among those outstanding in the field, nor was he of the people of assault and patrol, nor was he of special missions, nor do we recall for him an attested incident in reinforcements or confrontation until I was arrested, at which point the man turned on the brothers, became angry, and began stirring up problems in the group...I entreat God that I do not say this for the inclination in my soul, but I would not be recording it were it not for the fact they have written down their testimony/witness in a book and wanted what they wanted from this book...

Thus I confirm...that not only is this Abu Bakr not steeped in knowledge or a capable student of knowledge, but also he is not the master of a single accredited book in aqeeda [creed] or fiqh [jurisprudence], and our brothers from the Iraqi students of knowledge from all the groups and approaches know this very well, and know that there is no link between him and Islamic knowledge, and are aware of the very emaciated level of Shari'a knowledge that the government universities offer."...

• Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Mansour of the Jaysh al-Mujahideen, A Jaysh al-Mujahideen Amir's Testimony on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as quoted by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, (December 12, 2014)

• ...So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies...
  • Amir Taheri, "Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity", New York Post (20 August 2014).

• ...We have endured a lot of harm from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his brothers, and we preferred to respond with as little as possible, out of our concern to extinguish the fire of sedition. But Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his brothers did not leave us a choice, for they have demanded that all the mujahideen reject their confirmed pledges of allegiance, and to pledge allegiance to them for what they claim of a caliphate...
  • Ayman al-Zawahiri, as quoted in "Al Qaeda 'declares war' on ISIS as 9/11 terror group boss blasts rival for declaring himself leader of all Muslims"], The Mirror (11 September 2015).