updated Sun. April 7, 2024
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The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (blog)
August 20, 2016
He received a PhD in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad and knows the scriptures and the tradition of Islam better than most jihadists. Osama Bin Laden had no religious credentials, and though he pretended to be an engineer, his college training was in business management; Ayman Al-Zawahiri was aÃâà...
BBC News
March 9, 2016
All accounts of his early life agree that he was a quiet, scholarly and devout student of Islam, taking a doctorate at the Islamic University of Baghdad. Some even say he was shy, and a bit of a loner, living for 10 years in a room beside a small Sunni mosque in western Baghdad. The word "charismatic" has never beenÃâà...
The New York Review of Books
June 11, 2015
He is said to have attended the Islamic University of Baghdad where he received his BA , MA , and Ph.D., with his doctorate focusing on Islamic jurisprudence as well as including studies of Islamic culture and history. He first attended the university during Saddam Hussein's “Faith Campaign,” when the IraqiÃâà...
BBC News
January 12, 2015
The Iraqi's followers claim he has a doctorate from the Islamic University of Baghdad, with a focus on Islamic culture, history, Sharia, and jurisprudence. This they use to portray him as a man of letters, theologically learned, and amply qualified to be a caliph or leader of the global Muslim community,Ãâà...
The Guardian
December 11, 2014
He had also obtained a PhD in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, and would draw on both to legitimise his unprecedented claim to anoint himself caliph of the Islamic world in July 2014, which realised a sense of destiny evident in the prison yard a decade earlier. “Baghdadi was a quietÃâà...
Newsweek
November 8, 2014
Now going by the name al-Baghdadi, he earned an Islamic studies degree from the Islamic University of Baghdad and became a cleric. To match the big last name, he needed an even more powerful first name, and settled on Abu Bakr. The most famous Abu Bakr was the prophet Muhammad's father-in-lawÃâà...
Huffington Post
September 26, 2014
As The New York Times reports, Baghdadi obtained a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad and began a career as a preacher. Baghdadi's first appearance on international radars was likely after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when reports say he was detained in Camp Bucca by U.S.Ãâà...
The Fiscal Times
September 9, 2014
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has emerged from the shadows of the Middle East to run ISIS, the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. Yet this elusive 43-year-old man, “the most wanted man in the Middle East” as The Guardian calls him remains “an evanescent figure behind the Islamic insurrection sweeping the SyrianÃâà...
Huffington Post
August 28, 2014
Having earned a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, al Baghdadi is more steeped in Islamic theology than either Bin Laden or Zarqawi. Starting his terror career as a rank and file insurgent fighting Americans in Fallujah, al-Baghdadi became the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq when the U.S. tookÃâà...
BBC News
July 31, 2014
Turki al-Binali's tract continued by highlighting that prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Baghdadi received his PhD from the Islamic University of Baghdad, with a focus on Islamic culture, history, sharia, and jurisprudence. Baghdadi preached at the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque in Samarra.
