Tag Archives: Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad

Islamic State Profiles its “Hidden Figures”

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 January 2025

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Islamic State Introduces the Fifth “Caliph”

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 August 2023

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The ‘Strategic Plan’ of the Islamic State

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 August 2022

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The 2007 Islamic State Book “Informing Mankind” of its Justifications for the Caliphate

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 November 2021

The Islamic State movement published an 87-page book, “Informing Mankind of the Birth of the Islamic State” or “Informing the People of the Birth of the Islamic State” (I’lam al-Anam bi-Milad Dawlat al-Islam), on 7 January 2007. The document was released by Al-Furqan Media Foundation, the central Islamic State propaganda institution, and first appeared on the World News Network website. A rough translation of the book appears below.

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The Capture of the Islamic State “Finance Minister” and the Impact of Leadership Losses

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 October 2021

This article was originally published at European Eye on Radicalization

Sami Jassim al-Jaburi (Haji Hamid) | IMAGE SOURCE

Mustafa al-Khadhemi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, announced on the morning of 11 October that the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) had arrested Sami Jassim al-Jaburi (Haji Hamid), the effective finance emir of the Islamic State (ISIS), in “a complex external operation”. Continue reading

Islamic State Bids Farewell to the Caliph

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 November 2019

The 207th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), published on 7 November 2019, devotes its main editorial to Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), the first “Caliph” when the “Caliphate” was declared in June 2014, who was killed on 27 October 2019.

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Islamic State Response to the Leaking of Abu Sulayman al-Utaybi’s Testimony

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 November 2018

On 24 November 2013, the day after Al-Qaeda leaked the full testimony of Abu Sulayman al-Utaybi, the chief judge of the Islamic State (IS) who made various charges against the leadership after he defected in 2007, a pro-IS response was issued, signed by one Mu’awiya al-Qahtani, entitled, “Refutation of the Letter Attributed to the Judge Abu Sulayman al-Utaybi—May God Accept Him—with Evidence and Proofs”. A translation of Al-Qahtani’s document is given below.

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Profile: First Spokesman of the Islamic State Movement

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018

The predecessor organization to the Islamic State (IS), the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), used to run a “Prominent Martyrs” or “Distinguished Martyrs” series: essentially obituaries for important members of the IS movement. In the forty-sixth edition, on 18 August 2010, ISI profiled Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the first official spokesman and the deputy of the Media Department until he was killed in 2006. A translation of Abu Maysara’s biography was issued by Ansar al-Mujahideen forum and is reproduced below with some minor editions for transliteration and some interesting points highlighted in bold. Continue reading

The First Islamic State Beheading Video

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 December 2017

The Islamic State (IS) triggered the war against its “caliphate” by disseminating footage of its jihadists beheading an American journalist, James Foley, on 19 August 2014. Over the next three months, five more Western hostages were decapitated on video. This was shocking to many, but it should not have been. IS began producing snuff videos like this a decade earlier.

The first video beheading by the Islamic State movement—known at the time as Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad or JTJ (the Group of Monotheism and Holy War)—was released on 11 May 2004; the murderer in the video was IS’s founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; and he gave a brief statement to accompany his crime, later published under the title, “A Word in the Tape of the Beheading of Nicholas Berg (Kalima fi sharit nahr Nicholas Berg)”. Berg was an American civilian who went to Iraq as a freelance engineer.

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Islamic State Denies Targeting Jordan With Chemical Weapons (2004)

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 December 2017

The founder of what is now the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, gave a speech on 30 April 2004, entitled, “Blowing up the Intelligence Headquarters: A Response to the Lies of Jordanian Intelligence”.

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