Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (1958-), was born Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi in Nablus, Palestine, which was then part of Jordan. He is known as the spiritual mentor of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who headed Jordanian and Iraqi terrorist organizations, which became the al-Qaeda "franchise", al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Maqdisi, however, eventually broke with the increasingly militant al-Zarqawi; al-Zarqawi endorsed the takfir ideology of killing all non-Muslims, which went beyond the core of salafism.

He was imprisoned, until 2008, by the Jordanian government, but continued to run al-Qaeda's Internet site, Tawhed, and is influential in the forming of jihadist ideology. Jordan did not elaborate on the reasons for the release.

Early life
While he was a child, his family moved to Kuwait, and he studied at the Mosul’s University in Iraq, where his Islamist identity grew.

Activism
In 1990, he met al-Zarqawi in Pakistan, and they cooperated for a time, forming, in 1992, the Bayt al-Imam (House of the Leader) for returnees from Afghanistan. It paralleled the Makhtab al-Khidimat (Services Office) set up, in Pakistan, by Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam.

They were arrested in in March 1994 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, counterattacking the legitimacy of the government at their trial. In Suwaqa prison, al-Maqdisi, assisted by Zarqawi, led a prisoner group as Zarqawi studied.