By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 March 2021

The Islamic State (IS) movement announced its second “cabinet” on 21 September 2009. The “State” had been announced in October 2006, and the first cabinet had been “appointed” in April 2007.

CONTEXT

As with the first cabinet announcement, this speech was given as a video address—with the speaker’s face blurred out—rather than an audio address. The IS movement had been criticised for trying to set up its leader, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, as the “caliph” of all Muslims. IS was not at this stage directly claiming the title of “caliph” for its emir, but was referring to him by the blatantly caliphal title of Emir al-Mu’mineen (Commander of the Faithful). One of the criticisms was that the IS leader was anonymous: his face was never shown and his true identity was kept secret (his real name transpired to be Hamid al-Zawi). By the time of the 2009 “reshuffle”, IS was being ridiculed even more than in 2007 for its pretentions to statehood, since by then it was “a paper state”, its territorial holdings removed by the surge and Sahwa (Awakening) and its forces driven into the deserts of Iraq. As well as having set the precedent with the first address being a video, it was doubtless felt to be especially necessary to meet the critics half way in late 2009.

The need to counter this criticism notwithstanding, Abu Umar was not shown here—it is not him you can see with his face pixelated above. The speech was introduced as, “A Statement from the Office of the Commander of the Faithful, Broadcasted to You by the Spokesman of the Ministry of Information”. The new “information minister” or media emir was Ahmad al-Ta’i, who is presumably the speaker. An important part of this is operational security, but that is not all that is going on here.

There are two glaring things about the 2009 cabinet announcement: (1) it did not include a replacement for the official spokesman, Muharib al-Jaburi, who had issued the first cabinet list and been killed two weeks later; and (2) it emphatically was done in Abu Umar’s name—in the official speech lists that IS issues, the statement below is given as the twentieth of Abu Umar’s twenty-three speeches.

Abu Umar had effectively taken over the spokesman’s role after Muharib’s downfall and become the voice of the Islamic State, and with the IS movement in such dire straits in 2009 it was important for group cohesion and its interface with its Iraqi Sunni audience to maintain as much prestige as possible for Abu Umar, avoiding the risk of confusing or overshadowing his status by creating any rival voice within the movement. This is what lay behind the pointed refusal to appoint a new spokesman and for the “information minister” to read this speech as a proxy for Abu Umar, rather than in his own name.

THE SPEECH

The speech is brief, about ten minutes, entitled, “Declaration of the Second Ministerial Line-up of the Islamic State of Iraq”. Before it finishes with the new cabinet list, the speaker makes roughly three points: the Islamic State remains or endures (baqiya); the State’s establishment has made a lot of people angry; and this anger is a sign the IS movement’s rectitude, since the Prophet Muhammad’s original Islamic polity stirred up much hostility, too, and all Muslims recognise that their antagonism only demonstrated their own hypocrisy and ignorance in the face of the arrival of the True Faith.

The speech is being made as “we are coming up to the third anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq: we congratulate the martyrs [who attained] their rewards, we congratulate the prisoners for their constancy, we congratulate our tribes and our people for their support and steadfastness, and we congratulate the umma [worldwide Islamic community] on its survival, for it remains, praise be to God, remains, remains until the word of God is the highest and the word of the unbelievers is the lowest.”

The speaker goes on to say from “the day we announced the Islamic State, everyone was surprised by the enormity of the event”, and this led to many “confused” reactions. Among those who wrote and spoke against “the State” were “the sages of the air conditioners” (i.e., clerics safe from the heat of battle), one critic “in the guise of a mentor” (an unsubtle swipe at leading Al-Qaeda ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi), and another “in the guise of a mufti and grown-up scholar” (referring to Saudi Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Shaykh).

All of these people were “warning of the danger of this step and the difficulty of the next stage”, the speaker goes on, “and [to them] we say: With God’s help, we are proceeding towards the desired goal … of establishing God’s rule upon the whole earth … and neither the opposition of the unbelievers nor the discouragement of the hypocrites will deter us from our goal. We are well aware that the path to our desired goal is not paved with roses, but with body parts and blood.” IS takes the “greater the tribulations”, and the intensification of strife, as signs that it is getting near the mark, quoting the Qur’an [2:217]: “They will go on fighting you until they turn you away from your faith”.

“The appointment of an Imam is one of the requirements of the Muslim society [jamaat al-muslimeen] and an obligation to preserve and defend the deen [faith]”, the speaker says. “Likewise, an Islamic government [al-hukuma al-islamiyya] is also an obligation for the same goal.” The “Shaykh al-Islam”, Ibn Taymiyya, is quoted in support of this—and the need to expect resistance from “the people of the thorn” (ahl al-shawka). (“Thorn” is often used in classical Islam to refer to enemies; the connotation is of a potentially dangerous impediment.) This was the way from the beginning of Islam, the speaker goes on, with many rejecting Muhammad’s message: “blood flowed in rivers” until they got the point and the thorns were overcome, an allusion to the story of Khalid ibn al-Waleed, who appears up to the present time in IS propaganda.

“Today we announce, with God’s grace and success, the second Islamic government of the Islamic State of Iraq, which contains:

• Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Abd al-Munim al-Badawi: our First Minister, and Minister of War.
• Shaykh Abd al-Wahhab al-Mashadani: Minister of Shari’a Committees.
• Shaykh Muhammad al-Dulaymi: Minister of Public Relations.
• Shaykh Hassan al-Jaburi: Minister of Prisoners’ and Martyrs’ Affairs.
• Shaykh Abd al-Razzaq al-Shammari: Minister of Security.
• Shaykh Doctor Abdallah al-Qaysi: Minister of Health.
• Shaykh Ahmed al-Ta’i: Minister of Information.
• Shaykh Engineer Usama al-Lahibi: Minister of Oil.
• Shaykh Professor Yunis al-Hamdani: Minister of Finance.

Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds,

Your brother, Abu Umar al-Husayni al-Baghdadi.

Delivered by a spokesman for the Ministry of Information.”

A FINAL NOTE

It is noticeable that Abu Umar’s stand-in gives the real name of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. It is unclear why this is done, since Abu Hamza’s identity had been well-hidden—so well-hidden, indeed, that for a time it was unclear even what his kunya was, with some giving it as “Abu Ayyub al-Masri”, which he might have also used, and believing his real name was Yusuf al-Dardiri. One possibility, since Abu Hamza was here being moved officially into the deputy position—in the 2007 cabinet, Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Falahi was listed as the Wazir Awal (First Minister)—and would serve as a close, geographically and institutional, partner to Abu Umar, that revealing Abu Hamza’s name was a continuation of the effort to be more “open” about the identities of the leadership to deflect the criticism about the absurdity of trying to lead the whole umma from the shadows.

[UPDATE: In May 2021, the Islamic State revealed in Al-Naba, its weekly newsletter, that Ahmad al-Ta’i was the same person as “Abu Muhammad al-Furqan” and “Dr. Wael al-Rawi”, the media emir in the caliphate era, and thus Al-Ta’i/Abu Muhammad had overseen IS’s media apparatus in the entire period from 2009 to 2016, when he was killed. His real name was Wael al-Ta’i.]