Yahya al-Bahrumi

Like many jihadists, Bahrumi constructed a new name from his first name ("Yahya" from John) and his national origin ("Bahrumi", means Roman Sea, from the Arabic for sea (bahr ) and Roman (rumi )).[1] "Bahrumi" is not Arabic for Greece, his ancestral land, but at the time of Muhammad, the Mediterranean would have been a "Roman sea".

Born to a conservative Texas family of Greek ancestry—his father a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and physician—as a child al-Bahrumi suffered from benign tumors and brittle bones. As a teenager, he eschewed discipline and academic achievement in favor of recreational drugs, but did extremely well on standardized tests.[2]

He converted to Islam while in college shortly after the 2001 September 11 attacks, and left Texas to study Arabic in Damascus, where he developed a proficiency in that language. He met his British wife Tania, (also pro-jihadi) online and married in March 2003, before leaving for Texas, then Syria, and London where he followed a Jordanian who had proclaimed himself a caliph, known as Abu Issa, before falling out with him and returning to Syria. Returning to Texas he worked at a server company, Rackspace, but was arrested in April 2006 and sentenced to 34 months in prison for accessing the passwords of a Rackspace client, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, intending to hijack its website. Relocating in Egypt, he conducted online seminars in Arabic and English that did "much to 'prepare' Westerners" for ISIL's declaration of a caliphate, and had sufficient prestige that European jihadists came to Egypt to learn from him in person.[1] After the fall of the Islamist Morsi government in 2013, he and his family moved to northern Syria, where jihadis were fighting the Syrian government. In the harsh wartime conditions, his wife and children became sick and his wife demanded they leave.[3] Al-Bahrumi remained in Syria while his wife and children left and settled in Texas with his parents. His wife Tania later said that she and the children had been tricked into entering Syria, and that she had telephoned her mother-in-law as soon as possible and asked her to contact the US FBI, who later told her that she would not be charged with joining an extremist organisation if she returned to the US. She never saw John again, and heard that he had remarried, and later that he had been killed. She said that she had married as the only way to get away from her "dyshunctional" religiously conservative family, realised later that she was in an abusive marriage, and later worked with the counter|-extremism group Faith Matters in the UK.[4] Tania later divorced her husband, renounced jihadism, and attends a Unitarian church.[5]

Al-Bahrumi believed in the restoration of the Caliphate, and that after the naming of a new Caliph, whoever does not pledge loyalty (bay'ah) to him "has incurred a great sin".[6] In writings that have appeared on jihadi websites, Al-Bahrumi urged Muslims to emigrate to the Islamic State, to not disavow the term irhabi (terrorist), and called for the killing of Muslim leaders outside of the Islamic State.[2]

He believed that "it is permissible and righteous" for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands to steal from and defraud non-Muslims ("take the wealth of the kuffar by force or through deception"), but that non-Muslim who are obedient to the caliphate should not be robbed or defrauded.[7]

Graeme Wood quotes Al-Bahrumi:

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam ... we fight you, not simply to punish and deter you, but to bring you true freedom in this life and salvation in the Hereafter, freedom from being enslaved to your whims and desires as well as those of your clergy and legislatures, and salvation by worshipping your Creator alone and following His messenger.[1][8]

It is believed that Bahrumi died during the 2017 Mayadin offensive, aged 33.[9]

• Wood, Graeme (2016). The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State. Random House. ISBN 978-0812988758.