Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Al-Badri was born on July 28, 1971, in Samarra, Iraq. He was always religiously inclined, but was not a good student. He claims he could trace his lineage back through the Al-Badri clan for 300 years but, more importantly, he laid claim to being directly related to the Prophet through Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima. If it were true, it would go a long way to establishing his claim to possibly being the legitimate Caliph. In fact, this step required some considerable stretching of known facts, with implausible assumptions and guesswork to fill in the blank centuries that constitute most of his ancestry.
When an opportune time came, and to cover all options and establish his legitimacy to be the new Caliph, he adopted the name Abu Bakr al-Husseini al-Hashimi al-Quraishi al-Baghdadi. This laid claim to all the territory controlled by several previous Caliphs, stretching from Jerusalem, through all of Syria to parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. His last adopted name nominated Baghdad as the capital of this resurrected Caliphate.
Al-Baghdadi began his militant career in 2003 when he was appointed to lead the Sharia Committee of a militant Sunni group. Captured by the US Army, he spent most of 2004 imprisoned with about 20,000 others at Camp Bucca. By collecting the most radical militants and their leaders in one prison, Camp Bucca became a jihadi university. Contacts were made and networked, sabotage and fighting skills taught, and inmates inculcated in the most radical strains of Islamic ideology.
Due to his unassuming devoutness, quiet manner and lack of obvious aggression, Al-Baghdadi came to be regarded as a low-risk inmate and released. He immediately rejoined a militant group and, through dedication and diligence, began to climb through the ranks of the insurgents. Apparently, his US interrogators had not discerned that al-Baghdadi was a believer in the Sharia theory of murder and savagery.
[Interesting Read]
