Word: al-zarqawi
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...Roots Al-Zarqawi is born Ahmed Fadil Nazal al Khalayleh in October 1966. His father is a minor municipal official in the Jordanian town of Zarqa. The family is well respected but poor...
...Street Thug Dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, al-Zarqawi becomes a local bully, with a fondness for tattoos and no interest in religion. He is briefly jailed for drug possession and shoplifting...
...Unwelcome Home Returning to Jordan in 1993, al-Zarqawi helps set up an extremist Islamic group but is jailed for possession of explosives. In prison, he memorizes the Koran and immerses himself in an extremist brand of Islam known as Salafism...
...deeply spiritual exercise, designed to make believers feel closer to God. In al-Zarqawi's case, baser instincts may be at work. "People like al-Zarqawi try to portray themselves as very close to the Prophet in order to legitimize their other actions," says al-Fadl. Those who have observed al-Zarqawi at close quarters suggest that this is the logical next step in his evolution as a jihadi. Once a street thug in his hometown of Zarqa, he turned himself into a mujahid, or holy warrior, in Afghanistan, and then an emir, or military chieftain, in Iraq. "At some...
...went out of his way, for example, to set up a council of jihadist groups, under the leadership of Abu Abdallah Rashid al-Baghdadi, a previously unknown figure. The objective, says the official, is to put an Iraqi face on the jihad. "He's savvy enough to realize he's a foreigner in Iraq," he says. Last week's video bore the council's name, Shura al-Mujahedin, although the black flag of al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, was occasionally visible...