Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, July 2014
“[L]isten, O ummah [community] of Islam. Listen and comprehend. Stand up and rise. For the time has come for you to free yourself from the shackles of weakness, and stand in the face of tyranny, against the treacherous rulers—the agents of the crusaders and the atheists, and the guards of the [J]ews. O ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into two camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy—the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the camp of the [J]ews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the [J]ews.” Aaron Y. Zelin, “‘al-Furqān Media presents a new audio message from the Islamic State of Iraq’s Shaykh Abū Bakr al-Ḥussaynī al-Qurayshī al-Baghdādī: ‘Announcement of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām,’” Jihadology, last modified October 28, 2013, http://jihadology.net/2013/04/09/al-furqan-media-presents-a-new-audio-message-from-the-islamic-state-of-iraqs-shaykh-abu-bakr-al-%E1%B8%A5ussayni-al-qurayshi-al-baghdadi-announcement-of-the-islamic-state-of-iraq-an; “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: The man who would be caliph,” The Week, September 13, 2014, http://theweek.com/article/index/267920/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-the-man-who-would-be-caliph.