The Believer

How an Introvert with a Passion for Religion and Soccer Became Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of the Islamic State

William McCants

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780815728450
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Terrorismo

In The Believer, Will McCants tells the story of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS), a group so brutal and hardline that even al-Qaida deemed them too extreme. Baghdadi, an introverted religious scholar, with a passion for soccer, now controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. McCants shows how Baghdadi became radicalized in the Saddam Hussein era and found his path to power after connecting with other radicals in an American prison during the Iraq War, culminating in his declaration of a reborn Islamic empire bent on world conquest.

THE BELIEVER

IBRAHIM AWWAD IBRAHIM AL-BADRI was born in 1971 in Samarra, an ancient Iraqi city on the eastern edge of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad. The son of a pious man who taught Quranic recitation in a local mosque, Ibrahim himself was withdrawn, taciturn, and, when he spoke, barely audible. Neighbors who knew him as a teenager remember him as shy and retiring. Even when people crashed into him during friendly soccer matches, his favorite sport, he remained stoic. But photos of him from those years capture another quality: a glowering intensity in the dark eyes beneath his thick, furrowed brow.

Early on, Ibrahim’s nickname was “The Believer.” When he wasn’t in school, he spent much of his time at the local mosque, immersed in his religious studies; and when he came home at the end of the day, according to one of his brothers, Shamsi, he was quick to admonish anyone who strayed from the strictures of Islamic law.

Now Ibrahim al-Badri is known to the world as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruler of the Islamic State or ISIS, and he has the power not just to admonish but to punish and even execute anyone within his territories whose faith is not absolute. His followers call him “Commander of the Believers,” a title reserved for caliphs, the supreme spiritual and temporal rulers of the vast Muslim empire of the Middle Ages. Though his own realm is much smaller, he rules millions of subjects. Some are fanatically loyal to him; many others cower in fear of the bloody consequences for defying his brutal version of Islam.

Since Baghdadi’s sudden emergence from obscurity in 2014 as the monster who ordered and broadcast on YouTube the beheading and even burning alive of those he deemed his enemies, news articles and books have traced his radicalization back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although the American invasion fed the fire and enabled it to spread, in fact, his radicalization began much earlier, ignited by an unlikely but highly volatile mixture of fundamentalism, Saddam Hussein’s secular totalitarianism, and his own need to control others.

The Reciter

Baghdadi’s lower middle-class family was known for its piety but also for its proud lineage. His Sunni forefathers claimed to descend from the Prophet Muhammad through the Shiite leaders buried in Samarra’s golden-domed shrine. Baghdadi’s lineage is one instance of the many overlapping religious identities in Iraq that belie the supposedly eternal divide between Sunnis and Shiites. Al-Qaida would bomb the shrine years later after the American invasion in an effort to make that divide a reality.

The family patriarch, Baghdadi’s father Awwad, was active in the religious life of the community. It was at the mosque where his father taught that the teenaged Baghdadi got his own start as a teacher, leading neighborhood children in chanting the Quran. This was his first experience with oratory and religious instruction. When reciting the scripture, a revered vocation in Islam, Baghdadi’s quiet voice would come to life, pronouncing the letters in firm, reverberating tones. He devoted countless hours to mastering the subtleties of the art.

Despite the religiosity of Baghdadi’s family, some of its members joined the Baath Party, a socialist organization dedicated to the goal of pan-Arab union. Although Baathist leaders tolerated and sometimes even encouraged private devotion as an outlet for religious fervor, they were wary of religious activism as a threat to their rule. Baathism had dominated Iraqi politics and the machinery of state since the late 1960s, so citizens who wanted government jobs had to jo...

Table of contents

• Contents
• THE BELIEVER
• About the Author
• Copyright