By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 April 2021

The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released a forty-five-minute media product, “The First Audio Interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir”, on 24 October 2008. A translated transcript of the interview is reproduced below, with some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold.

The Islamic State (IS) movement was known as Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (the Monotheism and Holy War Group) from the beginning of its operations in Iraq in early 2002, until October 2004, when it became an overt branch of Usama bin Laden’s network, known as Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM). The IS movement founder/AQM leader, Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), was killed in June 2006, and replaced by Abu Hamza, whose real name was Abd al-Munim al-Badawi. In October 2006, some of the jihadists in Iraq came together and announced “the State” (ISI), appointing as leader Abu Umar al-Baghdadi. Al-Badawi had formally dissolved Al-Qaeda in Iraq in November 2006 by swearing his allegiance to Abu Umar and being appointed the “war minister” of ISI in April 2007.

This complicated story—which was partly a ruse, allowing ISI to better integrate into its Iraqi surroundings without the “foreignness” of an open Al-Qaeda affiliation, while secretly continuing to regard Bin Laden as emir—was to explode in 2013-14, with IS and Al-Qaeda going to war in Syria, IS being expelled from Al-Qaeda, and IS’s “caliphate” declaration in June 2014.

Therefore, among the interesting things in this “interview”—it was clearly a stage-managed dissemination of Islamic State propaganda dressed up as a question-and-answer session, not a genuinely adversarial grilling—is Al-Badawi’s insistence that Al-Qaeda “is one of the components of the Islamic State”. It gives a sense of how the IS movement was presenting its relationship with Al-Qaeda in those ambiguous years from 2006 to 2014.

Stage-managed it might be, but the very fact that ISI felt the need to put on this façade, where genuine criticisms of “the State” were presented to its effective deputy to knock down, is itself indicative: this was over a year-and-a-half after the U.S. troop “surge” and two years after the “Awakening”, the joining together of tribes and other Islamist insurgent groups that had previously welcomed ISI with the Americans to liquidate ISI’s territorial holdings, which by the summer of 2006 covered vast swathes of western Iraq and some other Sunni Arab-majority zones. ISI had by this point been driven from cities and other urban centres into the deserts. The situation was so dire for the jihadists that, according to Abu Umar in early 2008, “We have no place to stand for a quarter of an hour.” ISI was clearly in trouble and sought to clear the air about some of the major controversies as it tried to rebuild and win back the tribes.

The “State” declaration is presented as a decision forced upon ISI by other Sunni forces scheming with the Shi’a-led government to create a Sunni autonomous zone that would have brought those areas irrevocably under the control of the Americans, and Al-Badawi is at pains to say how hard ISI worked to do this by consensus. It is claimed that “the State” had mass support among the tribes, and even many of the insurgent groups that joined the Awakening had agreed, before some treacherously reneged. The only group that was not consulted is the IS movement’s great nemesis, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the local version of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Badawi denies that force was used to coerce any tribesmen or other insurgents into pledging allegiance to the ISI, and gives a very interesting reason: he admits that even religiously literate people are hazy on the details of an Islamic State, so the expectations of common people are far lower, and they cannot be forced into something they do not understand; they have to be brought in gradually. Al-Badawi appeals to logic when it comes to insurgents, saying the ISI would never trust recruits who had been press-ganged into their ranks. Al-Badawi says the ISI accepts—encourages, indeed—the repentance of all and, very interestingly, makes a point of saying the ISI is not targeting the former officers of Saddam Husayn’s army, and is, instead, recruiting them—at least those who prove their jihadist credentials, which is seems a significant number can, and have done since the beginning of the Iraqi jihad. These officers are credited as being significant military assets within ISI from the early days after the regime was demolished. By the same token, Al-Badawi is unconcerned about the ISI being isolated, appealing to the example of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, who was surrounded by hostile elements that all Muslims now agree were either evil or ignorant.

Asked about the mockery of “the State”, since it exists on paper yet names “ministers”, including for “agriculture and fisheries”, Al-Badawi replies that the state is a reality and that ministry specifically has done good work helping farmers, caring for refugees (who apparently flooded into ISI-ruled areas), and paving roads damaged in the rain. This is the most desperate-sounding of the answers given, which are otherwise rather plausible.

Fallujah in 2004 is mentioned as the first experiment in governing territory, and Al-Badawi clearly thinks it went well, at least as a proof-of-concept/lessons-learned exercise. The implementation of God’s law, i.e. holding and ruling territory by (the jihadists’ interpretation of) the shari’a is reiterated time and again as an obligation, even if it only lasts briefly.

When it comes to the major accusations against the Islamic State movement that Al-Badawi wants to counter, a big one is one that would persist long into the future: the idea IS(I) has some kind of relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is furiously denied Al-Badawi, who gives examples of the ISI’s attacks, kinetic and rhetorical, against the Persian theocracy, with by far the most interesting being the details he gives about the situation around the kidnapping of the Iranian Consul in Karbala in August 2004. Al-Badawi is also insistent that the ISI does not target Sunni laypeople and does not make excessive use of suicide bombers; he is specifically adamant that the ISI (almost) never uses female suicide bombers, and the stories to the contrary are malicious slanders.

Perhaps the most notable revelation, retrospectively, after the Islamic State external attacks wave in 2014-17, is Al-Badawi’s admission that the June 2007 terrorist incident at the Glasgow Airport was the work of the ISI, and there had been plans for a related attack in Britain that was thwarted because of a mistake in operational security by one of the plotters.

*                  *                  *                  *                  *

At Al-Furqan Foundation, we are pleased to meet Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir—may God protect him—and to have him answer the most important questions, about which there has been so much controversy.

At the outset, I welcome Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir—may God preserve him—and we begin with the help of God.

Interviewer Question 1: Virtuous Shaykh [Fadeela al-Shaykh], can you summarize for us the circumstances that preceded your declaration of the Islamic state?

Abu Hamza: Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim [In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful]. Praise be to God, Lord of power and rule, the one who is far above iniquity and far from injustice, the uniquely eternal, the Hearer of every complaint, the one who detects every tribulation and removes every affliction. And prayers and peace be upon the one [Prophet Muhammad] sent clear evidence and definitive proof, the herald of glad tidings for those who believe and warner for those who disbelieve, and a caller [or inviter] to God’s path, by His permission, as a shining lamp spreading light.

As for what follows:

First, everyone should realise, as we have repeatedly stated, that we are fighting for the word of God to be supreme, and this can only be done by hukm [ruling, arbitration, judgment] and emirate. The establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq [Dawlat al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq] has been the goal for all of us since the first shot we fired at the occupiers and their supporters, a dream that kept haunting our souls, for which we have worked with all earnestness and diligence, spending money and shedding copious amounts of blood.

From the political point of view: the Kurds have become independent in a state in the north, and the influence of the Badr Corps and its allies has become dominant in the federation of the centre and the south, where they have the right to approve a federal entity [like the Kurdistan region] in the idolatrous [shirk] parliament. On the political scene, then, the Kurds have a project and the Rafida [derog. “Shi’is”] have a project, so the Islamic State was our project for the Sunnis.

From the military point of view: We have intensified our work in all the Sunni areas, and we have thrown everything in our military arsenal into this goal. This unbalanced the occupier and his agents, after [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri] al-Maliki announced with pride [in June 2006] the killing of the martyr, [Islamic State founder] Shaykh Abu Musab [al-Zarqawi]—may God have mercy on him—and said they had eliminated eighty percent of the resistance [al-muqawama], therefore there is no need to negotiate with them. This history is well-known. Under the blows of the men of Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen [the Mujahideen Shura Council],[1] the giant [al-mard] began to stagger and tumble, and exposed his back to us, allowing us to take what we wanted from, then it began to shrink and retreat, leaving most of the Sunni areas to our administration. At this time, the criminal in the White House [President George W. Bush] admitted that the situation in Iraq was difficult—that we had reached the critical point we had always sought, with the enemy at its weakest point, militarily and politically, and we at our strongest, militarily and economically—and this was unanimously agreed by the mujahideen in Iraq. It was at this point where we decided we should declare the Islamic State and install its emir, and that was on the twenty-first of the blessed month of Ramadan in the year 1427 hijri [14 October 2006].[2]

Interviewer Question 2: Most people say that you should have waited for the occupier to leave and then declared the project of the Islamic State. What is your response?

Abu Hamza: We have already said that we arrived at the same point [i.e., view] that we [the jihadists] had been planning for a long time, and the strange thing is that the advocates of a corrupt manhaj [methodology, approach, curriculum] and advocates of nationalism [wataniya] had reached the same conclusion, and they wanted to harvest the fruits of the jihad, fruits grown by being watered with our blood and preserved with our souls. News came to us confirming a conspiracy was underway by the [local manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iraqi] Islamic Party,[3] in collusion with a party of the “honourable” resistance,[4] according to which they would declare a Sunni region under the Rafida state, claiming that this region would be independent and preserve the rights of the Sunnis. The Americans were satisfied and even supportive of this move. There was also another attempt by another party [in a similar direction], though it was less dangerous than the first, so it was necessary to take a decisive decision, which we did.

Moreover, [trying to implement Islamic rule at] the time of the occupier’s withdrawal is, as the experience of Afghanistan proved, the worst time.[5] We are certain of this, because there were actors storing weapons and preparing security groups [al-majmu’at al-amni] for the day after the occupier left. For example, they would fire one missile and save ten. We learned these things from some of those who repented to God and pledged allegiance to us. Some of them admitted that the day when they would fight us was approaching, and some of them were more jovial, saying: “We will not forget your blood!” After the occupier withdrew, then, the equation would have been: a collection of secularists [almaniyeen], nationalists, and Ba’thists—who did not seriously exert themselves in the fighting—possessing money, weapons, and men, facing the mujahideen in the cause of God, who had been exhausted by their wounds and spent what they had in terms of money and weapons. The result of the equation would have been: secular nationalist rule and the banishment of the deen [i.e. Islam] and its people,[6] as has happened in all the conflicts that have occurred in the modern era, in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Pakistan, where the fruit—that is, the fruit of jihad—fell into malicious hands. The project of the Islamic State, praise be to God, thwarted all their plans. God foiled their cunning [schemes] and is plotting against them.

Interviewer Question 3: Did you try to contact other resistance groups prior to the declaration of the State?

Abu Hamza: God bears witness that we worked hard on this, and all groups know this well. With the exception of one faction that was fully involved in the political process [i.e., the Islamic Party], we contacted some of them two months ago, some of them four months ago, but unfortunately we were unable to meet with some of them before the declaration of the State. Some we could not [meet], frankly, because they were out of the country, while others offered snivelling or ridiculous excuses [for not meeting]. The invitation was, first, to [join] Hilf al-Mutayibeen [which was announced on 12 October 2006].[7] We wondered what the response would be to [the call for] such an oath, but lots of the good responded and a few lagged behind. Even after the announcement of the State we contacted them and we are still saying: “O servants of God, this is your project, and the project of the umma [worldwide Islamic community]. It is not our monopoly. We have abandoned the names of our groups [jamaat] and set aside our emirate in favour of this great project.” We have said to everyone: “Our hearts are open to any criticisms and [suggested] amendments regarding this project. Only two matters cannot be reversed—the State and its emir—because we strived hard [in their selection] and assessed them [as sound] in benevolence, blessings, and cultivation [al-khayr wal-barakat wal-falahi].

The response of the emir of the Mujahideen Army [Jaysh al-Mujahideen], for example, after my meeting with him and his deputy, was that he said, after eighteen hours of dialogue: “Shaykh, even if we do not all join this project, I am your soldier”. His deputy showed joy in this meeting, and we exchanged gifts, but three months after this meeting, the man suddenly turned, started to break away from the brothers, and allied himself with the Sahwat [Awakening], to the extent of staying overnight at the home of Shader Abd al-Salem, the leader of the Sahwat in Taji. Nevertheless, our hands and our hearts remained open to the sons of the Mujahideen Army, as we were aware that some of them were not satisfied with the behaviour of its emirs, and much good came from this [i.e., defections from the Mujahideen Army]. As for those who fought in the ranks of the Sahwat, and they are many, they are no different to their brothers from the people of apostasy [ahl al-rida].

As for [Kataib] Thawrat al-Ishreen [The 1920 Revolution Brigade],[8] we informed them before the announcement of the project but did not invite them because of their manhaj of calling for nationalism and their adherence to the approach [in action], while we call [or proselytise: da’wa] to Islam alone in our manhaj. As such, we fought most of their soldiers and emirs [who joined] alongside the Awakening after the declaration of the State. It has been confirmed to us that their general emir did not order them to do so, in theory, but no one responded to [these instructions].[9] For many reasons, this is not its position.

Interviewer Question 4: Did the State receive bay’a [pledges of allegiance] from any of the jihadist groups [al-jamaat al-jihadiya] after its declaration?

Abu Hamza: If the truth was as pronounced by our enemies, then the reality would be as [Sunni Arab leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front] Saleh al-Mutlaq claimed on one of the satellite channels, where he said, sounding the alarm to the Americans and the apostates: “The resistance groups are fading away in favour of Tanzeem al-Qaeda [The Base (of Jihad) Organization].” And this is what happened, praise be to God. In the first weeks after the declaration of the State, about a thousand fighters joined the State each week, until we absorbed, praise be to God, more than eighty percent of the mujahideen on the ground, from all groups, without exception.

Interviewer Question 5: Did a group of tribal shaykhs really give bay’a to the State?

Abu Hamza: We were honest that more than seventy percent of the shaykhs of the Sunni tribes gave bay’a to the Islamic State and its emir after their entry into Hilf al-Mutayibeen. We keep a good number of those pledges written and recorded. One day, the martyred shaykh—as we think him, and God is his reckoner—[the Islamic State movement spokesman from 2006 to 2007] Muharib al-Jaburi met with about forty shaykhs from the Anbar and Baghdad tribes, after which they dipped their hands in the perfume, sealing the contract they had made, pledging allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful [or Prince of the Believers: Emir al-Mumineen], Abu Umar, in a collective form, in a majestic [or solemn: maheeb] scene that brought tears to the eyes of my companion [or comrade: rafiq], Muharib al-Jaburi, a former member of the Mujahideen Army, who said: “By God, I never thought I would live to witness a day of glory for the deen like this.” Unfortunately, some traitors broke this pledge and joined the ranks of the Sahwat, without any justification except for the gleam of the occupier’s dollars, such as the Shaykh of the Albu Fahd tribe [in Ramadi], who was one of the first to give bay’a, and the Shaykh of Al-Jamilat [around Fallujah], who perished in the blessed Karma operation [amaliya al-Karma mubaraka].[10]

Interviewer Question 6: Did you force people and armed groups to give bay’a to the Islamic State?[11]

Abu Hamza: The project of the Islamic State is new to the umma, and its provisions are unknown even to many students of knowledge, so how about ordinary people? We do not force people to do things that they do not understand, though their welfare is protected by this project. But the idea we would accept a soldier who came to us under duress? Would you trust him and his loyalty?! This is a lie that does not need a response. All we wanted to do was organise the [insurgent] work in the areas the State soldiers had liberated with their blood. After we liberated areas, many [people] raced to them and we were suddenly faced with this influx: some showed up with weapons or cameras, some wanted to fire missiles at the enemy from densely populated areas, some showed up with prisoners to take advantage of the security [we provided] as they demanded ransoms, and some types of detachment [i.e., insurgent groups] we regard as forbidden, like the apostate. Our imposition of order within these areas angered some, who considered it to be akin to forcing them to pledge allegiance, which, by God, it is not.

An example of this: in one area we were controlling, [an insurgent group] brought to it a prisoner, whom they claimed was an apostate, but we did not see him as such, then they admitted that he did not apostasise. We knew that the enemy would intensify action against this area [to try to free the prisoner] and expose its people and soldiers to a campaign for which we were unprepared. Although we knew where the prisoner was being held, we tried to appease the group [holding him] with kindness so that they would not say that we were imposing upon them and offered them a sum of money, pleading with them to release him to avoid getting us into a crisis, but they refused. The result was successive campaigns against the area, which killed some of the best men from among the mujahideen, more than thirty in total, both muhajirun [lit. “emigrants”; foreign fighters] and ansar [lit. “partisans”; local fighters]. The enemy came to him and arrested the rest of the good people, including the members of that group, and then the wicked clan wanted to be awakened after he was killed and the good people were arrested from them. In the end, the prisoner escaped, and since the prisoner had recognised the place [he was in], he brought the enemy to him, and they arrested the rest of the good people, including members of that group [that had kidnapped him]. The killing and arrest of good people provoked the malice of the tribes, who thereafter wanted to join the Awakening. So, would we, O servants of God, have been sinful if we had intervened with force—as we could have done—and released him [before any of this happened]?

As for the claim of some that they had predominance and power in some of those areas, does it make sense for the weak to impose obligations on the strong?[12] There is no doubt that the Islamic State and its men prevailed, which gives us the legitimate right to organize the [area’s] affairs and not to tamper with the march of jihad in it.

Interviewer Question 7: Some criticise the announcement of the ministerial line-up [i.e., the cabinet, in April 2007] by the Islamic State and tell jokes about some of them, such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries?

Abu Hamza: Glory be to God, when we announced this ministry, we, praise be to God, were keen to make it real and not to lie to God and God’s slaves, therefore they were limited in number. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, which people joke about, was the most realistic and practical. God allowed us to take from the sons of Ibn al-Alqami [i.e., Shi’is][13] more than two hundred villages with thousands of dunums of agricultural land interspersed with fruitful orchards, and we have gained about five hundred fish farms in southern Baghdad, [the nearby city of] Al-Mada’in, [as well as in the provinces of] Diyala and Salahuddin. Undoubtedly, this is a huge bequest [tarika] that needs someone to take care of it. Indeed, these lands were settled with thousands of displaced Sunni families, who were able to find shelter there. This ministry—with God’s help and grace—was also digging small rivers, for example delivering water to many of the orchards in Dhuluiya [in the Salahuddin province], which has not had water during the floods throughout successive Iraqi governments, and the same is true south of Baghdad and elsewhere. It [the “ministry”] was also entrusted with an additional responsibility, which is paving some roads that are damaged by rainfall and hinder or block people in times of hardship. And all of this, praise be to God, has benefited our people. So, were we, O servants of God, lying to the umma?

Interviewer Question 8: Some claim that you target ordinary Sunnis, the shaykhs of the tribes, the imams of mosques, and officers of the former Iraqi Army. What is your response?

Abu Hamza: People have accused us of elaborate and great crimes; of extremism, ignorance, and illicitly shedding blood [i.e., killing Muslims];[14] and even of abandoning prayers and encouraging disobedience to parents. Some have gone as far as saying that we are not circumcised, and, according to these or some of them, we are not from the Muslim faith [mila].

Our reproach and pain is not [hearing this] from the occupying infidels and their helpers from the mercenary factions who have been exposed by God. Rather, our pain and grief are directed from those who we thought were at are our backs, our helpers, and the protectors of our honour. God Almighty said: “O you who believe! If a wicked person comes to you with any news, verify it, lest you harm people in ignorance, and afterwards become full of repentance for what you have done” [Qur’an 49:6].

If the command is to be slow and not hasty in dealing with what a wicked person says, then how about the infidel? The reason for the verse is well-known, and it was revealed regarding a companion from among the Companions [Sahaba] of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and then groups of people were sent to us, may God reward them with good for their confirmation, but they said, “Help us trust you”. The question is: “Are the people of the frontiers and the jihad the ones who leave themselves undefended against accusations, or those who come out to clarify the truth from the people directly on the ground?” We have actually already tried to send a number of brothers [to do clarifications], but it was the lot of all of them to be martyred before traveling—and there is no might nor power except with God—due to the ferocity of the battle, and anyway only God knows what is true in this matter, and we think that God defends us. “God defends those who believe” [Qur’an 22:38].

As for the lie that we target common people from among the Sunnis: Where are the men in our army coming from? Who embraced our jihad? Who stood up against the occupier in the first place? Are they not ordinary Sunnis? Is it not ridiculous to say that we are targeting the father, maternal uncle [khal], paternal uncle [a’m], brother, and the tribes [of our soldiers]? Why would we target loyal shaykhs from among the loyal clan elders? What reason could be have to target their shaykhs of their deen, [any more than] the imams of their mosques? Who will lead the people in prayer, issue fatwas, and be responsible for the houses of God after them? Are we Buddhists or Magus [Zoroastrians] who target the imams of our deen, the lamps of guidance and the beacons of goodness?! The servants of God have nothing to fear from us!

Why would our brothers think well of themselves and not think well of us? Isn’t the blood we have shed so copiously from among our men enough for them to know the correctness of our methodology and the sincerity of our manhaj? Unless you or others hold it against us—and I do not think you do—for killing of an agent shaykh from among the leaders of the Awakening, or an imam from among the imams of unbelief and apostasy: with those, it is an honour to pick their heads [i.e., assassinate: qutuf ru’ws], and we rejoice as the Messenger of God—may God’s prayers and peace be upon him—rejoiced over [cutting off] the head of Abu Jahl.[15] So who, by God, does not rejoice over the killing of Abu Risha or the apostate Jubaili?[16]

As for the accusation that we are targeting the officers of the former Iraqi Army, all the people of Iraq know the lie of this call, for many of them are among our best men. In fact, some of them became imams in the deen, having yesterday been officers in the Iraqi Army. I can confirm that many more former Army officers joined our ranks from early on [after Saddam Husayn’s regime came down] than from other groups. Abu al-Bashair al-Jaburi is only one such officer from among these people. He was a colonel in the previous [regime’s] army, and Chief of Staff of the Islamic State after that. Who was it who developed jihad in Iraq and advanced it over great distances in everything related to military matters? It is this sincere, loyal, and unified cadre of men.[17]

Interviewer Question 9: You are accused of seeking to start a civil war in Iraq, as evidenced by the letter of Shaykh Abu Musab [al-Zarqawi] (may God have mercy on him) to Shaykh Usama [bin Laden] (may God protect him) published by the Americans in the media. What do you say to this?

Abu Hamza: First, assuming the validity of this message, Tanzim al-Qaeda [the Al-Qaeda Organisation] is one of the components of the Islamic State,[18] and the Organisation was seeking to repel the aggression of the Magian Rafida [Iranian Shi’is] against the Sunnis, which began harshly and brutally from the first day after the occupiers landed, when they acted as a sect as their buttress and eyes, then as their soldiers and rabid dogs against the Sunnis, sparing no infant nor weak old man from their crimes, demolishing our mosques, burning our books, and insulting our dignity. It was, therefore, necessary to repel the aggression of these criminals and stop their expansion, so we targeted their symbols and broke their army, but the aggression of these people was one sect against another, making it impossible for one mujahid group or several groups to deter them; it was necessary for the Sunnis as a sect to [join together to] repel the aggression of the new Magians and defend themselves. This is why we threw everything we had behind the people of our deen: we gave them weapons, encouraged them to stand firm, and explained to them the danger of these Magians. Praise be to God, our plan worked to repel the aggression of these people and their evil, and the violence as [a] sect upon sect [phenomenon] diminished to a large extent, especially after the ranks were separated according to the different regions. Today, the people fighting us do so under the name of a state in which the Rafida dominate, and this is what we sought to thwart by declaring the Islamic State after we expunged their military from the Sunnis areas. But the new secularists in the [Muslim Brotherhood’s] Islamic Party and the Islamic Army [Jaysh al-Islami] refused that, and God is sufficient for us, He is the best disposer of affairs.

Interviewer Question 10: Some people say that the method of holding territory is a failed military method. What is your response?

Abu Hamza: These are the words of the impotent, the weak-willed, weak-minded, and inexperienced who are far from the theatre. Everyone here knows the great and good impact of the events of the first Fallujah [battle in April 2004] and the seizing of land that followed, and how most jihadist groups announced themselves after these events, benefiting from the security achieved by the sacrifice of blood from the men of Tawhid wal-Jihad [as the Islamic State was called at the time] and some sincere ones [from other groups].

Let us be clear here: most of the campaign against this type of fighting came from a specific faction [Jaysh al-Islami] through the words of their official spokesman, and the people know more than others [from outside] that they were the biggest beneficiaries of this method, despite being neither use nor ornament in capturing Fallujah or protecting the city. However, when they kidnapped the French journalists, where did they take them? They brought them to Fallujah. We knew their whereabouts—the very house they were being held in and who was responsible for guarding them—and that they received millions of dollars [in ransom].[19] We did not hear a word of thanks from them for the lions fighting in the trenches under the heat of the sun and the enemy’s missiles, protecting the egg [bayda] of Islam with their blood. All we got was libel and they their cash.

Is there anyone who does not think that God revealed His law and left us the option, so as to reward us if we act according to it and punish us if we depart from it? Is not the establishment of the deen obligatory on those who can do so? Is it not an obligation for a Muslim to strive in that cause according to his ability? Do not ability and capacity determine obligations? Are not the men in the field of ahl al-hall wal-aqd [lit. “the people who loose and bind”]?[20] And if they are not shura al-mujahideen [the consultation (council) of the jihadists], then who should swear hilf al-mutayibeen [the oath of the scented ones]?[21] The Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya, may God have mercy on him, said: “The foundation of the deen is the guidance of the Book [Qur’an] and the victorious iron, as mentioned by God Almighty, so everyone should strive for the synthesis of the Qur’an and iron for God Almighty”.

If we are able to establish the rule of God on His earth for an hour of the day, without the preponderant corruption, but rather with the preponderance of [good] interests, is that not an obligation upon us? How about if it is was possible for days, months, and years, as was the case with the Islamic State in Iraq? It controlled all the Sunni areas for about a year, and still controls many of them to this day. On the authority of Abu Hurayra[22]—may God be pleased with him—the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “A hadd punishment that is established in the land is better for the people than if it were to rain for thirty or forty days”. The interests of the deen and the dunya [temporal world] are in establishing God’s rule [hukm] on His land. God Almighty said: “There is life for you in Al-Qisas [retaliation in kind, or the law of equality], O men of understanding, that you may become Al-Muttaqun [the pious or righteous]”. Moreover, the enemy surrounding us is not an obstacle to the establishment of God’s rule on His land; the [fate of the] city [Medina] of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, is the best witness to that.

Interviewer Question 11: Is it true that you use a lot of martyrdom operations [i.e., suicide bombings] without a real military justification?

Abu Hamza: More or less, my brother, is determined by the leaders [al-qaya] in the field. They are the most knowledgeable people when it comes to the fighting and the requirements of the struggle [or conflict: al-sira’a], and the most careful with the blood of their brothers and the blood of the Muslims. Moreover, dozens of operations that are announced as martyrdom [attacks] are not.

Interviewer Question 12: Do you pay women and children to carry out martyrdom operations?

Abu Hamza: This is a blatant lie. As for children, it is impossible for us to accept into the ranks of our army someone who has not reached the age of puberty. As for women, the ruling on female jihad [jihad al-nisa] in defensive jihad [jihad al-daf’a] is well-known. Nevertheless, the Commander of the Faithful has declared over and over again that it is not permissible for a woman to carry out a martyrdom operation, except in circumstances where men are unable to, provided that her deen is sound and her honour is safe from the slightest harm, taking exaggerated precautions necessary to ensure this is secured. Any emir who transgresses these conditions is subject to a shari’a trial and punishment for his laxity. In addition, the malicious media exaggerates this issue: the enemy is lying about most of the operations that they claim were carried out by women. The purpose of this slander is well-known: [to claim the Islamic State is] violating the honour of the Sunnis.

Interviewer Question 13: Some accuse you of being the cause of the Awakenings projects. How true is that?

Abu Hamza: We have previously emphasised that the real reason behind the Awakening project is the establishment of the Islamic State, which is starting to surface these days, after the State announced the conflict between the Islamic project and the national project that has been adopted by almost the entire political spectrum in Iraq; this is what all fronts of harm have declared, repeatedly and openly.[23] It is not surprising or strange that all these blocs were formed after the declaration of the Islamic State, for they were in reality formed for their war [against the State], covertly and overtly. Hatred and envy ignited in the heart of Ibn Salul’s flag-bearers after their prize slipped from their hands and the plans for nationalist and patriotic rule were shattered.[24] They were certain that our blood and our body parts could be taken cheaply, and the fruits of jihad would be lost, leaving Iraq to be governed again without the shari’a of the Most Merciful. [But this failed] because their armies were a lie, especially after the faithful ones caught up in their ranks joined us: their only option was to stand with the occupier against the Islamic State, for the national project that they had conceived, gathered for, and allied over is the same as what the occupier wants. Having provided this in advance and free of charge to the infidel occupier, the only issue was employment conditions, by God a few dirhams, and the [restoration of the] security that the occupiers and their helpers [a’awan] had begun to deprive them of.

Interviewer Question 14: Do you accept the repentance of the Sahwat?

Abu Hamza: Of course, the door to repentance is open, as has been declared by the Commander of the Faithful over and over again.[25] The shari’a regulations according to which the repentance of armed groups who apostatise from the law of Islam [shari’a al-Islami] will be accepted, and the conditions [they must meet] for protection [being extended] over them, are well known. Once again, I advise the Sahwat soldiers to repent to God and [express your] contrition [al-nadam] and return to the banner of truth. I say to them: O drunkards [sukran], you will live miserably as an agent, die as an infidel and apostate, and bequeath a disgrace that will ensnare your descendants. Tell me, by God, who will want to marry your daughter? And what will your son say to people? What will your grandchildren say about you? Make sure that people do not say to them, “O sons of the traitor and agent, you seed of the haram [forbidden] and al-suht [unlawful, illegal]”. Beware that your son will spit on your grave after he understands your humiliation, if you do not repent to God Almighty. So repent, o wretched ones, and beware of the fatwas from the imams of misguidance.[26]

Interviewer Question 15: You have been accused of having a relationship with the Iranian regime, and these critics cite the case of the Iranian Consul, who was released during the days of Tawhid wal-Jihad.[27]

Abu Hamza: This is a futile slander that will be thrown back in the face of its owner. If this was true, would we have targeted the three Iranian diplomats near the Karkh Hospital? We have targeted the Iranian Embassy many times, and we targeted a group of Iranian intelligence [operatives] disguised as pilgrims in Karbala, and the story of our destruction of their bus is well known.

Who stood in the face of their [the Iranians’] agents in Iraq, fought fiercely against the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army [Jaysh al-Mahdi], breaking their spears and hitting them back twice as hard?[28]

As for the story of the Iranian Consul, it happened during the days of Tawhid wal-Jihad, according to the ijtihad [independent Islamic reasoning] of the brothers at that time, and its ramifications do not bind the State. Nevertheless, I was personally involved in some chapters [of this story]. I learned about it from the brother Abu Abd al-Rahman or Abu Islam—may God have mercy on him—who was one of the forerunners of the jihad in Afghanistan and was accused of destroying the [naval] destroyer [the U.S.S.] Cole in Yemen [in October 2000, the last major Al-Qaeda attack before 9/11].[29] He learned the news from the brother Abu Abeer al-Janabi—may God have mercy on him—who was one of the emirs of the Islamic Army at the time, before the news reached the media. Abu Abd al-Rahman came to us in Fallujah, suggesting that we exchange the [Iranian] captive for [jihadist] brothers held in Iran or to each other. Abu Abd al-Rahman was assigned to report the news to the [Islamic] Army, and he conveyed this plan to the brother Abu Abd al-Qadr—may God have mercy on him—who was also one of the emirs of the Islamic Army at the time. I travelled to Yusufiya to meet the [Islamic] Army emirs for the same purpose, on the authority of Shaykh Abu Musab [al-Zarqawi]—may God have mercy on him. But after I arrived in Yusufiya I was shocked to see the satellite channels reporting the news that the Islamic Army demands the release of former Iraqi Army soldiers [held from the time of the Iran-Iraq War] in exchange for the release of the [Iranian] prisoner. I thought that the news of the plan of the brothers had not reached them, so I met with Abu Ayyub, the Military Commander of the [Islamic] Army, the Emir of the South, and a member of the Majlis al-Shura,[30] and Abu al-Ma’a, who was with him and was introduced to me as the Deputy Emir of the [Islamic] Army. I reprimanded them, and Abu Ayyub claimed that he was unaware of the plans to exchange him [the Iranian diplomat] for the benefit of the brothers. Then Abu Abd al-Qadr entered—we were at his house—and I said, “Did you not deliver the news to the shaykhs [about what had been agreed]?” He said: “Yes, I told Abu Ayyub”, and the man’s face turned red [with embarrassment] and he began to offer excuses. I told them: “Now we cannot do anything because of what you did. The matter has come out in public, which hinders negotiations.” Moreover, Iran had already response by then that it had, after the fall [of Saddam’s regime], already released all the prisoners of the Iraqi Army. A delegation from the Islamic Army came to Fallujah and handed the [Iranian] Consul over to us, since they were now confused about how to deal with him. Shaykh Abu Musab stipulated to them that we would deal with him as we see fit, even if it meant releasing him. They said: “As you wish”. The opinion of the Shaykh and the brothers was that we could not kill him, because they [the Iranians] might retaliate in kind against the brothers they held, and demanding a financial ransom might also be harmful and lead to mistreatment of the brothers held captive there. At that time, Shaykh Abu Musab told me: “The Army has embroiled us [la-qad waratana al-jaysh]”. The brothers’ decision to release him [the Iranian Consul] was accompanied with a threatening message to the Iranian government not to play games with the [captive] brothers’ issue, and not to release their names to the media, which is the policy they have followed for some time.

Moreover, we have explicitly threatened Iran, but circumstances have prevented us implementing external actions [al-amal al-khariji] there, as well as the problems known to all who have practiced such methods,[31] not to mention that we were preoccupied inside Iraq with agents of the occupier.[32]

Then tell me, for God’s sake: Is there any group that has killed even one Iranian? Or threatened Iran explicitly? Or killed their leaders in Iraq, as we have?[33]

Is this [accusation of friendly relations between Iran and the Islamic State] not a reversal of the facts and an outright lie?!

Interviewer Question 16: This leads us to another question: Do you conduct military operations outside Iraq, such as in Western countries, for example? Do you intend to target Western interests?

Abu Hamza: Should we fight [the worshippers of] the Cross in our own homes, and not fight them in their own homes? All the countries that participated in their aggression against Iraq and their crimes against our people are a legitimate targets for us: even if we cannot get to them for a long time, the right [to attack them] does not lapse. Moreover, we have already carried out many operations outside Iraq. We would single out for a mention the last operation, in Britain, the easy part [juz’ yaseer] of which was carried out at the airport, while the remainder [of the attack] was not implemented due to a mistake made by one of the brothers, who a few days before the operation made a call to tell [the Islamic State of Iraq] about the impending operation.[34]

But nubashir [we bring glad tidings] to the leaders of Britain, America, and Australia of what is to come, for God has bestowed upon us that which they have no power to reverse and no ability to detect [or uncover]. We ask God for success and rectitude.

Interviewer Question 17: How do you evaluate the strength of the Islamic State at this stage after its announcement?

Abu Hamza: I will not speak about this power, and how we have and intend to extend our influence. This is something that we have set out in dozens of audio and video tapes, yet at that time we were not believed by those who were diseased in their heart or who fell victim to the official lies invented by those who cloak themselves in the deen. Now, the facts are beginning to assert themselves. A short while ago, the criminal in the White House admitted that Al-Qaeda—he means the State—was in complete control of Anbar, and was involved in all aspects [of governance].[35] And if the criminal only confesses to Anbar, here is the confession of an emir from the Islamic Army and a senior official in the Sahwat, who said on a television program on Al-Arabiya (in Arabic) about us: “They have become a true state [dawla haqiqa] on the ground, controlling most of the Sunni areas, being involved in the administration of most of the provinces, and hundreds of tribal shaykhs have pledged allegiance [given bay’a] to them.” Indeed.

This is the State that some have tried to dissolve by issuing fatwas, claiming that it is a cartoon [kirtuniya] and an internet state [dawla al- intirnit]. This tempted criminals [to move against the Islamic State], so blood was spilled on the basis of their fatwas and sanctities [al-arad] were violated. My God, I heard so many whose blood was spilled swear to God before their deaths, saying: By God, we will not tolerate these [people] and we will not forgive them on Judgment Day [or the Day of Resurrection: Yawm al-Qiyama]. On Judgment Day, flimsy arguments and falsified evidence are of no use: their tongues and the hands with which they wrote the fatwas will bear witness against them that they violated our honour and shed our blood. God suffices for us, and he is the best advocate [wakil].

Interviewer Question 18: Finally, do you have a word for the mujahideen outside Iraq?

Abu Hamza: Praise be to God, we started down the path quickly, and the features of the picture appear most splendid and most beautiful. Today, we are one army under one banner fighting our enemy on the different fronts on earth: in the Caucasus and Afghanistan in the north, in Somalia and the Ogaden region [of Uganda] in the south, and in Iraq and Algeria in the middle. Our hearts are united, our goal is one, and we seek shade under one creed [aqeeda]. So draw together, may God have mercy on you, for the thawr [lit. “bull”; leviathan] is beginning to fall; do not give it any chance to get up. Spare no effort: there is a breach [in the enemy’s defences] and it is beginning to expand. I think, inshallah, God the Mighty has authorised the destruction of the Empire of evil and gambling, America.[36]

Our hearts, O lions, we are with you. We shed tears for joy when we see your victories and hold our breath in sorrow at your affliction. In particular, I mention the afflictions of my dear, beloved brother, Abu Layth al-Libi in Afghanistan,[37] and Aden Ayro in Somalia. And I say to Al-Shabab in Somalia: The Horn of Africa is a trust in your hands, beware the ta’nat [lit. “stabs”, attacks] of the nationalists, for they will certainly come.[38]

As for the residents of Jerusalem [Bayt al-Maqdis] and the environs surrounding Jerusalem, we say: Be patient, persevere, bond, and fear God, so that you may succeed. We will spare no effort to communicate with you and provide you everything we have. Unite your ranks in the face of the stabs of the new secularists [al-almaniyan al-judud]. We repeat to you the words of Abu Musab the martyr, may God have mercy on him: “We fight in Iraq, but our eyes are upon Jerusalem”.[39]

Interviewer: May God reward you, honourable Shaykh, for this good [tayib] meeting. I ask that God benefits you. Another meeting is upcoming with another batch of questions, which we hope you will answer for us about the most important inquiries we receive.

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REFERENCES

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[1] Al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen (MSM)—generally known as “the Mujahideen Shura Council”, more exactly translated as “the Holy Warriors Consultation Council”—was formed in January 2006, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and the Islamic State movement was formally known as Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM). MSM remained dominated by AQM and controlled by Zarqawi, but it was intended to present the group as more broad-based and Iraqi, rather than foreign-led. After Zarqawi was killed in June 2006, Al-Badawi became MSM leader. MSM was nominally expanded on 12 October 2006 to include six Anbari tribes, and rebranded as Hilf al-Mutayibeen (Oath of the Scented Ones). Three days later, the Islamic State (of Iraq) is declared, under Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), and, on 10 November 2006, Al-Badawi declares allegiance to Al-Zawi and becomes his deputy and “war minister”, publicly dissolving Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

[2] The actual date of the declaration of the Islamic State was 15 October 2006, but the Islamic State dates things in a slightly odd way.

[3] [UPDATE:] This explanation given by Al-Badawi for the timing of the Islamic State declaration in October 2006—that it was a means of thwarting the Iraqi Islamic Party forming a Sunni autonomous region—was also the version of events given in the Islamic State’s important “Strategic Plan”, published in December 2009 or January 2010.

[4] The word translated here as “honourable” is “al-sharifa”. What Al-Badawi is referring to is a distinction that many Sunni Arabs in Iraq made in the early years after Saddam Husayn’s fall, when the Sunni insurgency was still not dominated by the Islamic State movement, between the foreign-led jihadists and the (then-more powerful) Iraqi Islamist elements largely drawn from the fallen regime’s security apparatus and tribal clientele, the latter of which many Sunnis designated “the noble resistance” (al-muqawama al-nabila). After the formal transfer of sovereignty from the American occupation authorities in 2004, the more moderate Sunni Arab leaders on the Governing Council were shunted aside in favour of Sunni Arab leaders who had been in or around the insurgency. Iraq’s then-President Jalal Talabani said of this cadre that many of them did politics in the day and terrorism at night—which could also have been said of significant elements of the Shi’a leadership, especially the Iranian agents of the Badr Corps who controlled the Interior Ministry.

[5] This is a reference to what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviets left and the Communist regime under Mohammad Najibullah finally collapsed in April 1992—whereupon the Islamist insurgents who captured Kabul immediately fell into a terrible civil war that largely destroyed the city and what remained of society.

[6] “Deen” is often translated as “religion”, but this is highly misleading since the word, especially in English, has connotations that are distinctly Christian, reliant on the idea that “religion” is one part of life that can be separated from things like “law” and “politics”—distinctions rejected by Islam, which is a whole-of-life system covering belief, identity, custom, practice, and authority, public as well as private.

[7] Hilf al-Mutayibeen or Hilf al-Mutayyibin (لحلف المطيبين) translates as “Oath of the Scented Ones”, but the variation in English translation has been quite substantial: “The Pact of the Perfumed Ones”, “The Coalition of the Scented Ones”, and “The Mutayibeen Alliance”. The name refers to an apparent episode where a struggle over custodianship of the Ka’ba in Mecca, before the revelations to the Prophet Muhammad, was resolved by several tribes aligning themselves with the stewards of the pilgrimage site, the Banu Hashim, a clan within the Quraysh tribe whose descendants are the Hashemites (such as the present rulers of Jordan), and sealing this alliance by dipping their hands in a bowl of perfume and then spreading the perfume on the Ka’ba itself. When Hilf al-Mutayibeen was announced in October 2006, in a video where the signatories re-enacted a similar ceremony with a bowl of perfume, their statement said the group was composed of four factions: “[The Islamic State-dominated] Al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen, Jaysh al-Fatihin [Army of the Conquerors], Jund al-Sahabah [Soldiers of the Companions], Katbiyan Ansar al-Tawhid wal-Sunna [The Supporters of Monotheism and Sunna Battalions], many of the faithful tribal shaykhs, and others who will announce themselves later”. The tribal leaders were drawn from the six (of thirty-one) Anbar tribes who had not joined with the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State movement. (A forgotten aspect of the Hilf al-Mutayibeen episode was the release of another video a day later by a man calling himself “Abu Usama al-Iraqi”, who called for Bin Laden to remove Al-Badawi as head of Al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, Al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen (MSM), and replace him with an Iraqi, because Al-Badawi was leading the jihad astray. There are some echoes in this of what later happened as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria tried to walk the same path as MSM in ostensibly breaking its ties with Al-Qaeda to better integrate into the local insurgency. That said, the differences are pretty striking, too. After a period of apparent in-fighting in Syria, and alleged efforts to remove Al-Nusra’s leader Ahmad al-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), a nominally independent faction was created that was overtly loyal to Al-Qaeda. In the Iraqi case, is not even clear that “Abu Usama” was an insurgent—he could well have been the fabrication of an intelligence agency trying to destabilise MSM during the transition—and his complaints were about MSM’s behaviour and the loss of popular support among Sunnis this was causing, rather than the ideological grievances about the direction of Al-Nusra and the issue of bay’a that were brought against Al-Shara.)

[8] The full name of the group is: Kataib Thawrat al-Ishreen, also transliterated Kataib Thawrat al-Ishreen, and it can also be translated as: “The Revolution of 1920 Brigade”.

[9] Al-Badawi appears to be clearing the 1920 Revolution Brigade leader, Harith Dhahir Khamis al-Dari, of involvement in pulling that group into the Awakening. Given that Al-Dari was murdered in late March 2007, apparently at the point that “the 1920 Revolution Brigades … were about to link up with the al-Anbar Salvation Council”, the Awakening committee, this is an attempt by Al-Badawi to deny that ISI was responsible for the assassination, which obviously could be a lie since the rumour-mill seemed to point to Al-Dari himself leading the push towards the Awakening, or it could be true, in which case Al-Dari might have been eliminated by internal rivals who wanted to take his group into the Awakening. (The Al-Dari killed in 2007 is the nephew of the Harith al-Dari, who was based mostly in Jordan, though making intermittent trips into Iraq, during the U.S. regency in Iraq. The older Al-Dari headed the Assembly or Association of Muslim Scholars, Hay’at al-Ulema al-Muslimeen, a fundraising and propaganda operation for the Iraqi insurgency. Al-Dari senior was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury—only in 2010, bizarrely—for “providing financial, material, or technological support and financial or other services to or in support of” ISI. The elder Al-Dari was said by the Treasury to have provided “operational guidance” for terrorist attacks in Iraq, and to have tried to “reinvigorate the insurgency in Iraq” since at least August 2008, including attending at least one “training meeting[]” in Syria. Nearly as bizarre as the timing of the Treasury sanctions is what is not in them: self-evidently present at that meeting with Al-Dari in Syria would be representatives of the Bashar al-Asad regime, which coordinated large parts of the Iraqi insurgency, the Islamic State included, from the get-go. The Treasury sanctions went on to describe Al-Dari’s financial support not only to “his own Sunni insurgent group, the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade”, but giving $1 million to an identified ISI operative who recruits foreign fighters to funnel into Anbar through the Syrian border—one of the key processes helping the Islamic State in which Asad’s secret police was intimately involved, as is unmentioned in the sanctions notice. Al-Dari died in 2015 in Turkey.)

[10] Al-Jamilat (“The Beautiful Ones”) was one of the most strategically located tribes that turned on the IS movement and joined the Sahwa, and Al-Jamilat continued resisting IS during the 2014 rampage. Al-Jamilat is based in a crucial zone around Fallujah, in western Anbar province, about thirty-five miles east of Baghdad. Karma is about ten miles north-east of Fallujah. During one of the most storied battles of the whole Iraq war, the November-December 2004 fight in Fallujah, designated Operation PHANTOM FURY by the Americans, which overthrew the IS movement’s first major effort at territorial control and governance, Karma was a key supply line for the insurgents, and even after jihadist rule in Fallujah itself was toppled, Karma remained essentially under jihadist control. In February 2007, for example, the Coalition discovered a factory making car bombs laced with chemical weapons, specifically chlorine, in Karma. The U.S.-led Coalition began Operation PHANTOM THUNDER in June 2007 to clear the zones held by jihadists around Baghdad, and the operation to cut off the western Anbari supply lines for the insurgency in the capital was codenamed ALLJAH. When this operation began, Karma was “the most challenging” town for Multi-National Force West, the Coalition command headquarters covering some of the urban centres of the insurgency, including Fallujah, Ramadi, Al-Qa’im, and Haditha. By August 2007, most of these zones in western Anbar had been nominally cleared—in some areas, the IS movement had been genuinely crushed; in other places, the IS jihadists had left behind enough people to inflict costs on the Coalition and the Sahwa, while preserving their forces and withdrawing into the deserts. Even after Karma was liberated and violence levels drastically reduced, it was not completely secure, and the “blessed Karma operation” Al-Badawi refers to is one such incident: on 26 June 2008, an IS(I) suicide bomber—apparently disguised in an Iraqi police uniform—infiltrated a meeting in Karma of “dozens” of tribal shaykhs and blew himself up, murdering about twenty Iraqis, including “the town’s administrative director and at least two chiefs of major Sunni tribes in the area”. It can be assumed that one of these chiefs was the head of the Jamilat tribe, who had given bay’a to the IS movement soon after the announcement of “the State” in late 2006 and then changed his mind soon after, joining the Sunni Arab tribal revolt against IS.

[11] “Armed groups” is a translation of “al-jamaat al-musalaha”, which could more loosely be translated as “armed factions”.

[12] IS’s outlook clearly departs sharply from the Christian notion that “the last shall be first, and the first last” [Matthew 20:16].

[13] The reference is to the Iraqi government and security forces, who are majority Shi’i, if only because Iraq is a majority-Shi’i country. Ibn al-Alqami was the last vizier of the Abbasid caliphate and he was a Shi’i: in Sunni polemical historiography, Al-Alqami is said to have opened the gates of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258, leading to the sack of the city and the destruction of the Abbasid Empire. This sectarian myth recurs in IS propaganda. Zarqawi mentioned Al-Alqami in his letter to Bin Laden in January 2004 laying out his plans to ignite a sectarian war, and in May 2005 Zarqawi made the vizier the centrepiece of a speech calling for total war against the Shi’a. Abu Umar al-Baghdadi mentioned Al-Alqami in his second speech in February 2007, and five months later, in his fifth speech, Abu Umar leaned heavily on the myths about Al-Alqami as a framing device.

[14] The word translated as “extremism” is “ghulu”, which literally means “exaggeration”, meaning those who take things too far. The word translated as “ignorance” is “jahl”, the root word of “jahiliyya”, meaning the period of pre-Islamic ignorance.

[15] “Abu Jahl”, which translates as “the Father of Ignorance”, is the epithet given in Islamic Tradition to Amr ibn Hisham, who is cast as the leader of the militant pagans of the Quraysh tribe around Mecca, who was killed in the Battle of Badr in 624. (Even combing away the miraculous elements to the Battle of Badr—the intervention of angels to make up the difference in troop numbers, for example, which is actually not recognisably in the Qur’an, though it has evolved in the Tradition—it is very unlikely that the battle took place at all. If it did, it almost certainly never took place near the current city known as Mecca in modern Saudi Arabia, nor along the faultline Tradition suggests, since Islam had not been forged by this point and the arguments Muhammad’s followers were having were with other Abrahamic monotheists, not pagans.)

[16] Abu Risha is a reference to Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a tribal leader in Anbar whom the IS movement assassinated in September 2007 shortly after he publicly declared his involvement in the Awakening.

[17] This is an interesting paragraph in general from Al-Badawi, given the interest this blog has had in the Islamization of Saddam’s regime, especially its security sector, and the effect this had in shaping the insurgency after 2003—and the thorny question of whether this would have made Islamic militancy a problem in Iraq’s future no matter what. Probably the most infamous of the former Saddamist military officials to join IS is Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr), about whom there are many myths, but the key part of his biography is that he was a jihadist before he joined IS in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad. This pattern can be seen with the other “repentant officers”, as IS calls them, such as Fadel al-Hiyali (Abu Mutaz al-Qurayshi or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani), a crucial senior official in the caliphate period, who had earlier done a lot of military training, working in tandem with his friend, Abdurrahman al-Qaduli (Abu Ali al-Anbari), a cleric and one of the most important IS operatives there has been in shaping the group’s ideology. IS had been quite open about this process: when Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), the first proto-caliph, made his speech announcing “the State” in 2006, one thing he was sure to include was an invitation to “groups of former Iraqi Army officials, from the rank of Lieutenant to Major”—if they could pass an exam proving their knowledge of the Qur’an and aqeeda (creed). In terms of Abu al-Bashair [also transliterated Abu al-Basha’ir or Abu al-Bashaer], the Commander-in-Chief or Chief of Staff, (قائداً لأركان), his real name was it seems Muhammad al-Nada al-Jaburi, also known as Al-Ra’i (The Shepherd), and he was succeeded by Al-Khlifawi after Abu al-Bashair was killed in late 2008. The interesting thing about Al-Nada/Abu al-Bashair is that the IS movement in 2008 sought to make a public figure of him: when Al-Badawi mentioned him in this “interview”, it was the second time Abu al-Bashair had come up in a prominent place in IS’s messaging. A month earlier, the emir himself, Al-Zawi, had mentioned Abu al-Bashair as among the “honoured martyrs”.

[18] Al-Badawi/Abu Hamza succeeded Zarqawi in June 2006 as head of Al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen (MSM), the jihadist conglomerate dominated by Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) as Zarqawi’s group had been called since October 2004. In November 2006, a month after “the Islamic State” had been declared, Al-Badawi swore allegiance to the leader of “the State”, Al-Zawi/Abu Umar, and formally dissolved Al-Qaeda on Iraqi territory. The nominal dissolution of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a point reiterated in public messaging by Al-Qaeda’s then-deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2007 and 2008, as part of a political program to shield the Islamic State from Sunni criticism that it was an alien interloper. But the evidence is that the leaders of “the State”, Al-Badawi and Al-Zawi, retained their loyalty to Al-Qaeda Central, however frayed communications were, and that the successor to “the Two Shaykhs” (Al-Shaykhan) after they were killed in 2010 held to this allegiance until Al-Qaeda expelled ISIS from its ranks in 2014.

[19] The reference is to Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, two freelance French journalists abducted in Iraq by the Islamic Army on 20 August 2004 and released in December 2004. Their Syrian fixer, Mohammed al-Joundi, was released on 11 November 2004 by the American Marines as they dismantled the IS movement’s “emirate” in Fallujah.

[20] The term “ahl al-hall wal-aqd” is from the period in Islam corresponding to the medieval period in Christendom, and refers to the scholars/jurists (ulema) who—in theory—could elect and depose a caliph. The contest between the Caliph and the ulema over where power properly lies in an Islamic polity is a great theme of Islamic history. In practice, the people “who loose and bind”—or more loosely, “of problem-solving and contract”—were generally subordinate to the Caliph, and their approval a mere formality; there were period were this was not true, however. Within the Islamic State, ahl al-hall wal-aqd in effect refers to its Shura Council in the earlier phase and the Delegated Committee at the present time.

[21] It appears that Al-Badawi was referring to the story behind Hilf al-Mutayibeen, rather than the group formed to bridge the gap between Al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen and the Islamic State. See footnote seven.

[22] Abu Hurayra is, by Tradition, one of the Companions (Sahaba) of the Prophet Muhammad. His name means “Father of a Kitten”, a reference to his apparent love of cats. Abu Hurayra supposedly died in 681 and had become the most prolific compiler of Hadith.

[23] The Islamic State would somewhat invert this narrative by the time it came to publish its “Strategic Plan” in December 2009 or January 2010, claiming that the State declaration was intended to thwart a nationalist, autonomous project among the Sunni Arabs spearheaded by the local manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP).

[24] Abdallah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul is, in Islamic Tradition, the emblematic munafiq (hypocrite), a tribal chief around Medina who converted to Islam after the Prophet Muhammad arrived in the city with the hijra (emigration or exodus) in 622. Ibn Salul was supposedly Muhammad’s effective deputy in the city, and then reneged and abandoned Islam, initiating multiple rounds of fighting with the believers’ community, until around 627 when Ibn Salul roughly settled into the fold, though his loyalty was still suspect. With Ibn Salul’s death in 631, the “munafiq faction” perished and the tribes yielded to Islam. (Needless to say, in historical terms, even assuming Ibn Salul did exist and was a rival of Muhammad’s, events clearly did not unfold as the Tradition has it for the simple reason that Islam, as such, had not yet come into existence, and would not do so for more than a century.)

[25] Al-Badawi is quite correct about this: his emir, Hamid al-Zawi, had indeed stressed, again and again—as had Al-Badawi himself, and as would, later, the spokesman Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) and the “caliph” Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)—that “repentance” (tuba) was an option for Sunnis who joined the Awakening or otherwise collaborated with the Americans against IS, so long as they defected to IS before the jihadists caught up with them; otherwise they will be killed. This was not just messaging either: it occurred in practice, long before the Awakening. Soon after Saddam Husayn’s regime came down, the IS movement recruited from among what the jihadists themselves call “the repentant officers” (al-dubat al-tayibeen), those members of Saddam’s military-intelligence system who had abandoned Ba’thism and converted to jihadi-Salafism. These men provided the early IS movement with military skills, plus local social and geographic know-how, to run an insurgency. Among these early recruits were Fadel al-Hiyali (Abu Mutaz al-Qurayshi or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani) and perhaps most infamously Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr or Abu Bakr al-Iraqi). The Islamization of Saddam’s regime in its last decade or so, and the infiltration of Salafism into the army, meant IS had a large pool of recruits to draw upon.

[26] The word translated as “misguidance” is “al-dalal”, which could also be translated as “delusion”, “deception”, “perversity”, or “error”.

[27] Interestingly, the phrase used is literally “the Iranian system” (al-nizam al-irani), rather than the usual sectarian references to “the Rafida”. “Tawhid wal-Jihad” or “Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihad” (The Group for Monotheism and Holy War) refers to the name the Islamic State movement used between the summer of 2003 and October 2004, when IS’s founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), gave bay’a to Usama bin Laden and changed the group’s name to Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (formally: Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn). The incident being referred to is the kidnapping of  Fereidoun Jahani, an Iranian diplomat seized in the city of Karbala on 8 August 2004—not by IS directly, though soon enough handed over to them by the Islamic Army. The Islamic Army cited the clerical regime’s role in “inciting sectarian strife” and its “flagrant interference” in Iraqi internal affairs as their motivation for the abduction. Jahani was released on 27 September 2004. According to Jahani, the Islamic Army had demanded “the release of all Iraqi prisoners held in Iran”, only to discover “there were no Iraqi prisoners in Iran”, after which they “changed” their demands; to what, he does not say.

[28] The phrase used, “kasr shawkatihm wa-rad al-sa’a sa’aiyn”, literally translates as something like: “broke their fork [or barb] and retaliated [with] two stings”.

[29] The identity of this Abu Abd al-Rahman is unclear. Al-Badawi adding “may God have mercy on him” after Abu Abd al-Rahman’s name means he is deceased. Abu Abd al-Rahman kunya is quite a common one, though from context we can be sure it is not a reference to the lead 9/11 death pilot Mohamed Atta or the Egyptian jihadist who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and was killed in Khost in 1988. Al-Badawi adding that the man was also called “Abu Islam” and was involved in the Cole conspiracy helps narrow things down. The likeliest option seems to be that the Abu Abd al-Rahman being discussed was the “Abu Islam al-Masri” that Al-Qaeda announced on 3 August 2008 had been killed alongside three other jihadists, named as Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar (Abu Khabab al-Masri), Abd al-Wahab al-Masri, and Abu Muhammad Ibrahim bin Abu Faraj al-Masri—not to be confused with his father, Ahmad Salama Mabruk, who used the kunya Abu Faraj al-Masri. Umar was the best known and most-wanted of this set for his role in training the suicide bombers who drove the skiff into the side of the Cole and killed seventeen U.S. sailors. Umar had been falsely reported killed in one of the first U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, in January 2006 in Damadola, where the main target was Bin Laden’s deputy and successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The August 2008 Al-Qaeda statement did not say where the four “martyrs” had been killed or when, but according to three sources—two directly in Pakistani intelligence and one from their Taliban cut-out—the strike took place in Waziristan on 28 July 2008, and the main target was once again Al-Zawahiri, who was not present. The total fatalities from the strike were allegedly six, including some of the children—unclear if minors or militants—of the Al-Qaeda operatives.

[30] The Majlis al-Shura—Consultation Committee or Shura Council—is the name most of the Iraqi Islamist insurgent groups used for their executive body.

[31] When Al-Badawi discusses the reason the Islamic State movement has not carried out attacks inside Iran, he puts the blame on circumstances—having to fight the Americans and the Iraqi government security forces within Iran—and emphasises that the IS has threatened Iran explicitly in its messaging and killed numerous Iranian agents, particularly in the Shi’a militias constructed and controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). What Al-Badawi avoids mentioning is that Al-Qaeda had instructed the IS leadership not to attack Iran, and to avoid even public verbal threats against the clerical theocracy. Bin Laden wrote to Al-Badawi in October 2007—almost exactly a year before this “interview”—to tell Al-Badawi to cease public threats against Iran, “for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.” This was a reference to the fact Al-Qaeda’s military and religious leadership had been hosted in Iran since 2002, and Iran remains the gateway for Al-Qaeda in Pakistan to feed its “affiliates” in the Arab world. This letter and Al-Badawi’s “interview” came in the period after Al-Qaeda had publicly been dissolved in Iraq, which was another reason Al-Badawi cannot mention taking instructions from Al-Qaeda—apart from the embarrassment of carrying out orders to protect Iran, an ostensible enemy of the jihadi-Salafists. The reality was that, however attenuated, IS recognised Al-Qaeda as retaining a command relationship over it. In 2013-14, as IS and Al-Qaeda publicly feuded—ending with Al-Qaeda expelling IS from its network—all of this came out. IS’s spokesman Taha Falaha taunted Al-Qaeda on this point: “Let history record that Iran owes an invaluable debt to Al-Qaeda.”

[32] “Agents of the occupier” is a translation of, “umala al-muhtal” (عملاء المحتل). “Umala” can also be translated as “spies” or “infiltrators”, and sometimes as “clients”.

[33] What is translated as “leaders” here is “ruws” (رؤوس), literally “heads”.

[34] The reference here is to the attempt by Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed to blow up the airport in Glasgow on 30 June 2007. Though many believe—and Al-Badawi plays to the narrative here—that the Islamic State only began attacks in the West in retaliation for the invasion of Iraq, the group has in fact always had a global focus and was involved in terrorism in the West—and against Westerners, Western interests, and Jews—before the invasion. Al-Badawi’s admission that the Glasgow attack was the work of the IS movement was one of the few parts of this “interview” that got picked up in English-language media. What got less attention was Al-Badawi’s claim that there was to have been another attack, or at least a second part to the Glasgow attack, which was thwarted by sloppy tradecraft because the operatives in Britain made a telephone call to their commanders in Iraq on an unsecure line.

[35] Al-Badawi seems to be referring to a statement by President Bush on 1 September 2008, formally turning Anbar province over from the Americans to the civilian Iraqi government. During his brief statement, the President said: “Not long ago, Anbar was one of the most dangerous provinces in Iraq. Al-Qaeda was in control of almost every major population centre … Today, Anbar is no longer lost to Al-Qaeda”.

[36] The phrase for “Empire of evil and gambling” is “imbiraturiya al-shar wal-qimar”, which could also be rendered as “Empire of perversity and gambling”.

[37] Abu Layth, a Libyan born Ali al-Ruqay’i, was deeply involved in bringing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) into Al-Qaeda’s orbit, and rose to be an important military leader in Al-Qaeda. Abu Layth was killed in a drone strike in the border regions of Pakistan in January 2008.

[38] Ayro, the leader of Al-Qaeda’s Somali branch Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (usually simply known as “Al-Shabab”), was killed on 1 May 2008 in a U.S. drone strike. Al-Badawi’s mention of Ayro, and his addressing Al-Shabab as if it is an associated group, is interesting for two reasons. First, because it cuts against his own insistence just a moment earlier that “the State” is not Al-Qaeda: he speaks here as if the two groups are components within a single network—which is almost certainly true, despite ISI trying to present a public image to the contrary. Second, Al-Badawi is not only “telling on himself”, as might be said, but on Al-Shabab, too. At this time, in late 2008, Al-Shabab was still formally denying its Al-Qaeda affiliation: letters from Bin Laden’s compound show the leader explicitly advising Al-Shabab in the summer of 2010 to keep the fact it was under Al-Qaeda’s command structure hidden. Al-Shabab only publicly admitted to being a branch of Al-Qaeda in 2012.

[39] Zarqawi’s quote, “Nuqatil fi al-Iraq wa-‘uyununa ‘ala Bayt al-Maqdis”, which literally translates as, “We fight [or ‘are fighting’] in Iraq and our eyes are to/at/upon Jerusalem”. Capturing the meaning of this quite famous quote has seen it rendered a number of ways—“We fight in Iraq with our eyes cast towards Jerusalem”; “We are fighting in Iraq, but our eyes are set upon Jerusalem”; “We are fighting in Iraq while our eyes are on Jerusalem”, etc.—all of which are fine.