The fatwas, Yahya claimed, were based not on evidence but on mere opinion. (The United States has stopped more than 100 others in the process of preparing to travel, or to act on behalf of the Islamic State in America.) Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? Yahya was deeply devoted to the idea of the caliphate, he said, and showed a staggering mastery of Islamic law and classical Arabic language and literature. Western jihadists find their way to violence many different ways, but they often match a profile. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But he was no mere foot soldier; his religious scholarship, connections, and standing distinguished him—even if I didn’t then understand their full extent. On Mohamed Atta’s last full day of life, he shopped at Walmart and ate dinner at Pizza Hut. The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. (As if to show that he could terrorize by imagery alone, Adnani also referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as an “uncircumcised geezer.”) But Adnani was not merely talking trash. But in the United States, groups like these exist only in the fever dreams of Islamophobes. Zawahiri has not pledged allegiance to Baghdadi, and he is increasingly hated by his fellow jihadists. In time, though, Zarqawi surpassed his mentor in fanaticism, and eventually earned his rebuke. In Islam, the practice of takfir, or excommunication, is theologically perilous. “If a man says to his brother, ‘You are an infidel,’ ” the Prophet said, “then one of them is right.” If the accuser is wrong, he himself has committed apostasy by making a false accusation. He projected calm even in his most grotesque opinions, and wore the label irhabi (“terrorist”) with pride: This word (“terrorist”) has also been cast as an insult and has been received as such. Yahya and Tania liked pot, and the Libertarians were the closest thing to an anti-prohibitionist party in the United States. Related Story The Zoolander Theory of Terrorism If al-Qaeda wanted to revive slavery, it never said so. Territory Tens of thousands of foreign Muslims are thought to have immigrated to the Islamic State. In the United Kingdom, more than 100 fighters have waged jihad after contact with a group called Al Muhajiroun; in Belgium, Sharia4Belgium has recruited numerous Islamic State fighters. Many of his Facebook friends were English speakers, and few were Greek. Australia has criminalized attempts to join or travel to the Islamic State, and has confiscated Cerantonio’s passport. But Cerantonio, like many supporters of the Islamic State, doesn’t acknowledge that caliphate as legitimate, because it didn’t fully enforce Islamic law, which requires stonings and slavery and amputations, and because its caliphs were not descended from the tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh. Cerantonio quoted a Prophetic saying, that to die without pledging allegiance is to die jahil (ignorant) and therefore die a “death of disbelief.” Consider how Muslims (or, for that matter, Christians) imagine God deals with the souls of people who die without learning about the one true religion. I pointed out that this means the vast majority of Muslims in history, and all who passed away between 1924 and 2014, died a death of disbelief. Baghdadi’s Islamic State achieved that long before June 29, Cerantonio said, and as soon as it did, a Western convert within the group’s ranks—Cerantonio described him as “something of a leader”—began murmuring about the religious obligation to declare a caliphate. Cerantonio said a faction arose that was prepared to make war on Baghdadi’s group if it delayed any further. They prepared a letter to various powerful members of ISIS, airing their displeasure at the failure to appoint a caliph, but were pacified by Adnani, the spokesman, who let them in on a secret—that a caliphate had already been declared, long before the public announcement. “If he’s legitimate,” Cerantonio said, “you must give him the baya’a.” Related Story How ISIS Territory Has Changed Since the U.S. Since September, authorities have been investigating the three men on suspicion of supporting terrorism. On the day I met Choudary, Abu Rumaysah tweeted out a picture of himself with a Kalashnikov in one arm and his newborn son in the other. Abdul Muhid, 32, continued along these lines. “He and John are enemies,” I was told by someone who knows them both—“until the Day of Judgment.” Tim wore shorts and a T-shirt, and a crisp draft of air conditioning escaped as he said good morning. “Some procedures aren’t covered, such as vision.”) This provision of social welfare was not, he said, a policy choice of the Islamic State, but a policy obligation inherent in God’s law. The Apocalypse All Muslims acknowledge that God is the only one who knows the future. Yahya met with Adnani near Aleppo and warned him that Baghdadi would be in a state of sin if he did not promote himself to caliph immediately.
– What Yahya Abu Hassan has described as the "best day of his life" involved sneaking his emaciated, pregnant wife and three sick young kids through a barbed-wire fence over the Syrian border to Turkey, where he didn't even say goodbye before they were whisked to safety. That day in September 2013 was the day Hassan ditched his family to devote himself to helping ISIS set up a caliphate, his story told in a preview for a longer article by Graeme Wood appearing in the Atlantic's next issue. Wood details Hassan's reputation as one of the most revered "teachers" among jihadist circles, known for his "staggering mastery of Islamic law and classical Arabic language and literature," as well as his fluency in English. When Wood first heard about Hassan in 2014 while researching a previous Atlantic article about ISIS, he was curious about his origin story and started poking around. First he found links to Hassan and his extreme views, but further detective work involving nomenclature and Google searches led to an astonishing discovery: a DOJ release about the 2006 conviction of data technician John Georgelas, who used to live in Texas not far from Wood, and who Wood determined was Hassan. What Wood found out next about the Greek-American is fascinating. An in-person conversation Wood had with Georgelas' father, Tim, about John—who Tim describes as once an easily swayed "follower" who experimented with psychedelic drugs—is especially revealing, as is Wood's scrutiny of Georgelas' relationship with his ex-wife, once a fellow jihadist. Most chilling is Georgelas' current ISIS role, in which it's speculated he may now hold the second most-powerful position. "He knows how to speak to Americans, how to scare them, how to recruit them—how to make the Islamic State's war theirs," Wood writes. Read the deep dive at the Atlantic.