Terror organization: ISIS

Status: Leader of ISIS

Role: He is the new leader of ISIS since August 2023. He is the fifth Caliph of the terror organization. The new spokesman of ISIS, Abu Hodhayfa al-Ansari, released a voice note that the Shura council selected to be the new Caliph of the organization.

Location: Unknown, somewhere between Syria and Iraq

Activities:

The so-called “Islamic State” named Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as its leader on 27 July 2023. the previous leader of the group, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, was killed during clashes in Syria’s Idlib province, the terror group said in an undated audio recording published on Telegram on 27 July 2023. Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi

Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi s the fifth person to head the terrorist group since it declared an Islamic caliphate across large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group’s first self-styled “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself during a US operation in Idlib in 2019. The two subsequent IS leaders, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi and Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, were killed in February and November 2022, respectively.

As usual, little is known about Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi and there are no known photographs of the new ISIS leader in existence. The name “Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi” is a nom de guerre (literally “war name”), the assumed name, as one under which a person fights. This nom-de-guerre indicates that he claims to trace his lineage from the Prophet Mohammed, giving him religious clout among fellow militants. If this claim were disproven, his position as the religious leader of the “caliphate” could be called into question.

Known as “the Kufan”, ?af? [full name Abu ?Amr ?af? ibn Sulayman ibn al-Mughirah ibn Abi Dawud al-Asadi al-Kufi] (706–796 CE; 90–180 AH), was one of the primary transmitters of one of the seven canonical methods of Qur’an recitation (qira’at). His method via his teacher Aasim ibn Abi al-Najud became the most popular method across the majority of the Muslim world. The qira’at or the readings, or methods of recitation, are named after the leader of a school of Qur’an reciters. Each qira’a derives its authority from a prominent leader of recitation in the second or third century hijri who in turn trace their riwaya or transmission back through the Companions of the Prophet. Iin Hafs is seen “the riwaya of Hafs ibn Sulayman ibn al-Mughira al-Asadi al-Kufi of the qira’a of ‘Asim ibn Abi’n-Nujud al-Kufi from Abu ‘Abdu’r-Rahman ‘Abdullah ibn Habib as-Sulami from ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan and ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib and Zayd ibn Thabit and Ubayy ibn Ka’b from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.” These all go back to the Prophet. The difference under a riwaya are so slight as to be almost unnoticeable. They are mainly in intonation and diction rather than voweling or inflection. But this is the level of care and precision which these people had.

Al-Hashimi, also transliterated Al-Hashemi, Hashemi, Hashimi or Hashmi, is the pronoun form of Hashim and originally designated a member or descendant of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh. Prophet Muhammad was a member of this Arab tribe; his great-grandfather was Hashim ibn Abd Manaf, for whom the clan is named. Members of this clan are referred to as Hashemites or Hashimis. This refers in particular to the Sharifs of Mecca, the rulers of Mecca from the 10th century until 1924. As descendants of Hasan ibn Ali they belonged to the Bani Hashim.

Prophet Muhammad was born into Mecca’s powerful tribe, the Quraysh, also spelled Kuraish, or Koreish, the ruling tribe of Mecca at the time of the birth of the Prophet. The Quraysh were prosperous merchants controlling Mecca and trade in the region. Muhammad was born into the Hashemite clan of the Quraysh tribe. Presently the keys to the Kaaba are held by the Quraysh clan. Surah 106 in the Quran is directed at them.

The group’s new leader takes the helm of an outfit much depleted since the days when it held sway over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, and controlled the fate of millions in the region. It ascended to the top of the region’s Islamist terror outfits shortly after breaking away from another renowned jihadi group, al-Qaeda, in 2014. When ISIS was at the peak of its power in 2015, it controlled vast territory in Iraq and Syria, which it used to launch attacks in the Middle East and beyond. Those terrorists ruled with medieval brutality, with ISIS fighters beheading journalists and innocent civilians. The group’s grip on the region was eventually broken in 2019 in an effort led by US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq.

Even though ISIS no longer controls significant territory, there are still tens of thousands of hardened terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria who are bent on reestablishing their terror state. In fact, in the last quarter of 2022, ISIS claimed 72 attacks in Iraq and Syria, including several IED attacks. In 2022, US forces were involved in 108 partner and 14 unilateral operations, killing 466 ISIS operatives and detaining 215 others.