RNA – The Takfiri terrorist group, ISIL, has published a picture of Turki al-Binali leading this past Saturday’s Eid al-Fitr prayers at the Nour mosque in their self-proclaimed capital city of Raqqah, Syria.
al-Binali, also known as Abu Sufyan al-Sulami, is a 31-year-old Bahraini Salafi scholar who moved to ISIL-occupied Syria around February 2014, and is presumed to be ISIL’s top religious authority after emerging as one of the extremists’ leading ideologues.
He quickly became an important personality and a key figure in ISIL, and he has been sent to several countries in the region to propagate ISIL’s radical Salafist message.
In 2013 and again in late 2014, a few months before it fell into the hands of the Takfiri terrorist group and its supporters, al-Binali was dispatched by ISIL to the Libyan city of Sirte, where he delivered a series of provocative lectures, which where broadcasted on various platforms, including on television and radio stations and on the Internet.
These lectures and slick video productions were aimed at winning adherents and recruits for the terrorist group and to provide religious justification for its bloody rampage across the region. This is evident because radio stations now play speeches by self-appointed “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and songs that encourage people to pledge allegiance to ISIL.
After preaching in Sirte’s central mosque, terrorists from Mali, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Palestine began to settle in the city, which was the hometown and stronghold of long-time Libyan dictator Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi, who was killed there on October 20, 2011.
Soon after his late 2014 visit, 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Sirte were abducted, and there was a wave of assassinations in the city.
The Bahraini government recently stripped al-Binali of his citizenship. His brother, Abdullah, also attempted to leave the country with the passport of one of his friends, but was arrested on charges of cooperation and joining ISIL.
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