The Muslim world has been without a Caliph and Commander of the Faithful for ninety years, and now the new fundamentalist Islamic entity in Iraq and Syria known as the Islamic State has put forth a pretender to claim the title. At the age of 43, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi burst upon the national scene as the operational and political leader of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ), and now is the new spiritual leader of the newly proclaimed Islamic State. Armed with a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, Abu Bakr was a cleric at the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque in Samarra at the time of the US invasion of Iraq, He joined the Mujahideen Shura Council (associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and later to morph into ISIS) and battled US forces. As the Iraqi war continued, he rose through the ranks of Islamic militants and became the leader of ISIS in May of 2010. ISIS is considered an al Qaeda offshoot and a spawn of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). It even runs a “Zarqawi Camp” training center on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus named in his honor. A caliphate was proclaimed on June 29, 2014 and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—now known as Amir al-Mu’minin Calipsh Ibrahim — was named as its caliph. At the same time ISIS was renamed the Islamic State. In a remarkable fashion, Abu Bakr has transformed a few shattered Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq terror cells who were on the verge of extinction into the fastest growing, wildly successful, and most dangerous militant group in the world. ISIS mutated and grew exponentially during the ongoing civil war in Syria as well as in the security vacuum that followed the departure of American forces from Iraq. In 2013 it absorbed the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra and added thousands of battle hardened fighters to its ranks. In 2014 Abu Bakr formerly broke ISIS away from Al-Qaeda to follow his own path and seek his own destiny on the world stage.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 00:50:46 +0000
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