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Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah Abdullah (born 1984), better known as Abu Walaa, is an Islamic preacher based in Hildesheim, Germany. In 2016 he was arrested for supporting terrorism. [1] [2]
Born in al-Tamim, Iraq, he immigrated to Germany in 2001. He preached at the Deutschsprachiger Islamkreis Hildesheim e. V. (DIK) mosque founded in 2012, and took part as a speaker in a great number of Salafi events due to his popularity through his online video releases and his Facebook followers. He became known as a "preacher without face" (German : Prediger ohne Gesicht), because in many of his videos, his face would be hidden from the camera. [3] [1]
On the morning of November 8, 2016, the German police arrested Abu Walaa in Bad Salzdetfurth alongside four suspected accomplices in Hildesheim and North Rhine-Westphalia accused of supporting a foreign terrorist organization according to article 129b of the German Penal Code. [1]
He is suspected of being the head of an Islamic group, recruiting young Muslims in Germany to fight for jihad in Syria and Iraq for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS). The German authorities had long been investigating his activities. Based on testimony by Turkish-German Anil O., a young man fighting in Syria and arrested upon his return to Germany, the German prosecutor's office demanded Abu Walaa's arrest after Anil O. admitted he was influenced by Abu Walaa at his Hildesheim mosque for jihad.
Abu Walaa was convicted of support and membership in a terrorist organisation on 24 February 2021 by the Oberlandesgericht in Celle. He was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison. [4]
Abdullah el-Faisal is a Jamaican Muslim cleric who preached in the United Kingdom until he was convicted of stirring up racial hatred and urging his followers to murder Jews, Hindus, Christians, Americans and other "unbelievers".
Omar Bakri Muhammad is a Syrian Islamist militant leader born in Aleppo. He was instrumental in developing Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United Kingdom before leaving the group and heading to another Islamist organisation, Al-Muhajiroun, until its disbandment in 2004.
Abd Al Aziz Awda, also known as Sheik Awda, is a Palestinian cleric who, along with Fathi Shaqaqi, founded the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, also known as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Islamist paramilitary organization based in Damascus, Syria.
Jihadism is a neologism for militant Islamic movements that seek to base the state on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief held by some Muslims that armed confrontation with political rivals is an efficient and theologically legitimate method of socio-political change. It is a form of religious violence and has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of lesser jihad from the classical interpretation of Islam. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates of the early Muslim conquests, and the Ottoman Empire. There were also the Fula jihads in West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian militant jihadist who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
On 31 July 2006, two men placed two suitcases filled with bombs on regional commuter trains in Germany. Departing from the central station in Cologne, the bombs were timed to go off near Hamm or Dortmund and near Koblenz, and according to German investigators "would have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people ... on a much larger scale than the terrorist attacks on London subways and buses in July 2005." However, due to faulty construction, the bombs only failed to ignite, even as the detonators worked. According to the German prosecutor, at the time Germany had "never been closer to an Islamist attack than in this case."
Salafi jihadism, also known as jihadist Salafism and revolutionary Salafism, is a religious-political Sunni Islamist ideology that seeks to establish a global caliphate, characterized by the advocacy of physical jihadist attacks on non-Muslim targets. In a narrower sense, jihadism refers to the belief that armed confrontation with political rivals is an efficient and theologically legitimate method of socio-political change. The Salafist interpretation of sacred Islamic texts is "in their most literal, traditional sense", which adherents claim will bring about the return to "true Islam".
The Brixton Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre is a mosque located in Gresham Road in the Brixton area of South London. It is managed by Black British converts and is known for its history of controversy.
Foreign fighters have fought on all four sides of the Syrian Civil War, as well both sides of the War in Iraq. In addition to Sunni foreign fighters, Shia fighters from several countries have joined pro-government militias in Syria, leftist militants have joined Kurdish forces, and other foreign fighters have joined jihadist organizations and private military contractors recruit globally. Estimates of the total number of foreign Sunnis who have fought for the Syrian rebels over the course of the conflict range from 5,000 to over 10,000, while foreign Shia fighters numbered around 10,000 or less in 2013 rising to between 15,000 and 25,000 in 2017.
The Islamic State of Iraq was a Salafi jihadist militant organization that fought the forces of the U.S.-led coalition during the Iraqi insurgency. The organization aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia law in Iraq.
Ahmad Abousamra, known also as Abu Sulayman ash-Shami and Abu Maysarah ash-Shami, was a Syrian-American Islamic militant and ideologue who served as the chief editor of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's Dabiq magazine. In 2013, he was placed on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's 'most wanted list' and made the subject of a $50,000 reward because of his connections to a Massachusetts terrorism investigation centering on his alleged close associate Tarek Mehanna, who was arrested in 2009 and convicted of terrorism-related charges in a Boston court in late 2011. He was featured on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list for allegedly attempting to obtain military training in his trips to Yemen and Pakistan for the purpose of killing American soldiers overseas.
Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, better known as Abu Ali al-Anbari, was the governor for territories held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. Considered the ISIL second-in-command, he was viewed as a potential successor of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Lavdrim Muhaxheri, also known by the nom de guerreAbu Abdullah al Kosova, was a Kosovar Albanian Islamic State (IS) leader and recruiter of ethnic Albanian jihadi foreign fighters fighting in Syria and in Iraq. A former KFOR and NATO employee, he became an extremist and left for Syria in late 2012. He appeared in several propaganda videos, calling Albanians to join jihad, and uploaded photographs of himself appearing to decapitate a man, as well as a video where he kills a captive with a rocket. On 24 September 2014, the U.S. Department of State designated Muhaxheri as a global terrorist.
There has been an increase in incidents involving alleged radical Islamism in the Balkans since the 1990s.
Tareq Kamleh is an Australian citizen who fled to Syria as a medical doctor to join the Islamic terrorist organisation ISIS, where he performed pediatric work in Raqqa, Syria, in the Islamic State Health Service. On 29 April 2015 Kamleh was brought to Australian Government and media attention for a propaganda video he posted from Raqqa. The recruitment video was titled “health services in the Islamic state”, and includes Kamleh, among other medical professionals, urging fellow Muslim ‘brothers and sisters’ to join the Islamic State. Kamleh is currently wanted by the Australian Federal Police in connection to crimes carried out in Raqqa. Tareq Kamleh's whereabouts are currently unknown, although it is presumed he is dead.
Rawti Shax was a Kurdish cyberterrorist offshoot of the jihadist group Ansar al-Islam.
Die Wahre Religion was an Islamist Salafi organisation based in Germany that was founded in 2005 by Palestinian-born German Salafist Ibrahim Abou-Nagie. The organization is thought to have had around 500 active members. Die wahre Religion takes part in Koran distribution campaigns. The declared goal of the campaign under the name Lies! is to provide a Quran translation to every household in Germany. According to the founder, around 3.5 million copies were distributed by mid-2016. The organization was successfully banned in November 2016 by the German government following its proven recruitment of jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS.
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