Yahya al-Bahrumi born John Thomas Georgelas, was an American-born convert to Islam, jihadist, Islamic scholar, and supporter of the Islamic State. He impressed Arab Muslims with his "mastery of Islamic law and classical Arabic language and literature", and was close to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the ISIL spokesman, chief strategist, and director of foreign terror operations. A supporter of the re-establishment of a Caliphate, al-Bahrumi had sufficient connections and support among Iraqi and Syrian Sunni extremists to plan to threaten Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with war if al-Baghdadi failed to declare a caliphate. Bahrumi was a member of the small, ultra-literalist Islamic legal school known as Ẓāhirī, and according to author Graeme Wood, the Islamic State's "leading producer of high-end English-language propaganda". In mid-2015, al-Bahrumi made his way to ISIL capital of Raqqah, and worked as a propagandist for the group.
Name
Like many jihadists, Bahrumi constructed a new name from his first name and his national origin and Roman ). "Bahrumi" is not Arabic for Greece, his ancestral land, but at the time of Muhammad, the Mediterranean would have been a "Roman sea".
Biography
Born to a conservative Texas family of Greek ancestry—his father a retired U.S. Air ForceColonel 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. He converted to Islam while in college shortly after the September 11 attacks, and left Texas to study Arabic in Damascus, where he developed a proficiency in that language. He met his wife Tania, 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. 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. Al-Bahrumi continued on in Syria but his wife and children left and settled in Texas with Al-Bahrumi's parents. His wife later divorced him, having renounced jihadism and attends a Unitarian church.
Views
Al-Bahrumi believed in the restoration of the Caliphate, and that once a new Caliph is named, whoever does not pledge loyalty to him "has incurred a great sin". In writings that have appeared on jihadi websites, Al-Bahrumi urged Muslims to emigrate to the Islamic State, to not disavow the term irhabi, and called for the killing of Muslim leaders outside of the Islamic State. He believed that "it is permissible and righteous" for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands to steal and defraud non-Muslims, but that non-Muslim who are obedient to the caliphate should not be robbed or defrauded. 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.
