Editing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (section)

===Early years===
Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai was born in Samarra, Iraq in 1971, the third of fourth sons belonging to the  Al-Bu Badri tribe. His father, believed to be a farmer, taught him religion and would often lead children in the neighborhood chanting Qur'an. One of his uncles served under Saddam's security forces, while his brother was an officer in the Iraqi Army. He was described as religious in his youth.

He had to retake his high school certificate as he scored 481 out of 600 possible points as a student at Samarra High School. His nearsightedness disqualified from military service. He attended the Islamic University of Baghdad where he studied Islamic law and the Qur'an, later earning a BA, MA, and PhD.

Some believe that al-Baghdadi was already an Islamic revolutionary during the rule of [[Saddam Hussein]], but other reports contradict this. He was a mosque cleric and imam around the time of the US-led invasion in 2003. He played football for the mosque's football club. He was described as quiet, to the point where he was described as the "invisible sheikh".

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Baghdadi helped to found the militant group ''Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah'' (JJASJ), in which he served as head of the sharia committee. Al-Baghdadi and his group joined the [[Mujahideen Shura Council]] (MSC) in 2006, in which he served as a member of the MSC's sharia committee. Following the renaming of the MSC as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which became the Iraqi branch of [[Al-Qaeda]]. In 2006, al-Baghdadi became the general supervisor of the ISI's sharia committee and a member of the group's senior consultative council. He would later be captured by American forces and held prisoner at Camp Bucca (and later Abu Ghraib) in 2004, but this did not last long and he would soon be released.

As leader of ISI, al-Baghdadi was responsible for masterminding large-scale operations, such as the August 28, 2011 mosque [[Suicide Bombing|suicide bombing]] in Baghdad that killed Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi. When [[Osama bin Laden]] was killed, he directed the ISI to carry out a large number of attacks in a rampage of vengeance. This included a bombing in the city of Hillah in May 2011 that resulted in 24 deaths and 72 injuries, and a wave of suicide attacks in Mosul in August that killed 70 people.