The call “Allahu Akbar” has come to signal a threat to many people around the world, but for some, it is the key to heaven – namely those belonging to the Islamic State (IS), and other organizations. Various groups share the principle of jihad— holy war – for the sake of Allah even if they disagree on the jurisprudential references to the methods and mechanisms of jihad. Their ultimate mission: to enforce Sharia and establish the caliphate state.

The call “Allahu Akbar” has come to signal a threat to many people around the world, but for some, it is the key to heaven – namely those belonging to the Islamic State (IS), and other organizations. Various groups share the principle of jihad— holy war – for the sake of Allah even if they disagree on the jurisprudential references to the methods and mechanisms of jihad. Their ultimate mission: to enforce Sharia and establish the caliphate state. Yet no other jihadist organization has ever achieved what IS has accomplished thus far, since the failed, oppressive Arab regimes in which IS exists, cannot defeat it and the international powers do not want to eliminate it, due to their political interests.

Although it is classified as a terrorist organization because it kills, slaughters and robs innocents and calls for a caliphate state in Muslim countries, IS has managed to attract thousands of people from around the world – some escape their boring, dull lives in search of adventure, some want power in the new state and future, while others go only seeking the pleasure of Allah. IS has captivated and moved young men and women around the world, including Egyptians.

Waging jihad

Islam Yakan graduated from the Lycee School in Heliopolis area and enrolled in the Faculty of Law. According to a blog article entitled ‘Going for Jihad,’ Yakan only went to university during exam time – he entered this college based on his scores rather on his wish. His childhood friend Sharif says Yakan was a normal, fun and lighthearted person who loved to go out and travel. His family was very religious and his sister was veiled, but they did not have any political orientation. When he was a sophomore, Yakan discovered an interest in physical fitness, and dreamt of being a sports coach outside Egypt. Every day, he would go to a gymnasium next to his house, until the manager made him a coach. After a while, he was qualified to coach professionally on the international level. He also got the chance to work in famous gymnasiums, but refused because of his beard and because he did not want to train women or listen to music, according to his blog.

According to Sharif, Yakan took part in the revolution and in protests against the Military Council. He hated the Muslim Brotherhood because they did not apply the correct methods of the Quran and because they mix religion with politics. In 2014, a friend of Yakan died in a motorcycle accident and Yakan felt it was a sign and that he could die at any moment. So, he grew out his beard and increased his readings of the Quran, but he still behaved normally. In his blog, Yakan thanked Allah for saving him from the ignorance he was living in, and said that after his religious commitment, he was in the company of righteous brothers who used to make missionary tours. “We talked to young people about prayer, the Quran, not looking at or mixing with women, smoking, alcohol and all this kind of stuff,” wrote Yakan.

Among these brothers was Mahmud Ghandour who shot missionary videos with Yakan and posted them on YouTube. “In early 2013, we saw the humiliation, servitude and weakness of Muslims and Islam in Syria, Burma, Palestine and everywhere, and we instinctively thought of fighting jihad,” said Yakan. “But we did not know how to do it.” His friend says Yakan told them he wanted to wage jihad for the sake of Allah, and they all marveled at the idea but doubted that their friend could do it.

Sharif says Yakan secluded himself in a mosque throughout the month of Ramadan in 2013, and he only kept in touch with him via Facebook, but he disappeared in the last ten days of the month. Later on, Sharif found out through another friend that Yakan had travelled to Turkey and from there to Syria to join IS.

Yakan says Abu Qaaqaa, his brother in Islam, was a sports coach who decided to go fight jihad in May 2013, and was later killed in Syria. He was the one who fueled the desire in his brothers’ hearts, including Yakan.

Sharif was confident that his friend was nothing like IS fighters because to him he was incapable of slaughtering anyone, and even when he saw the picture of Yakan next to a beheaded head, he could not believe he had actually done something like that, but only published the picture for fame.

“Yakan was very empty from within,” says Sharif. “When he went deep into religion, he committed that act. He used to go to mosques in his area and listen to Sheikh Hussein Yacoub and others. He started hating Christians and inciting against them, and felt the need to enforce Sharia. He started to regret normal things, like his pictures in the gym, which he eventually removed. I was attached to Yakan even after he left, and I felt that he had been wronged and brainwashed, and that his deep involvement of religion came at the wrong time, which is why he was mixed up.”

From football to IS

Ghandour, 24, graduated from a private school in the Pyramid area to join the Faculty of Law. His uncle, Gamal Ghandour, is a well-known international football referee. Ghandour himself was a referee for the second division league until his license was revoked after he travelled to Syria to fight jihad in late 2013, with his friend Yakan.

Ghandour is believed to be in Iraq now. There were rumors in April that he was dead, but soon enough, he and Yakan denied it through a satirical video made in a typical IS way. Ghandour had previously directed and filmed several videos, beginning with his YouTube videos featuring him imitating Egyptian and foreign songs, and ending missionary videos for youth in which he appeared with Yakan.

Ghandour’s Facebook page shows that in 2010 and 2011 his attention was focused on music, poetry and girls. He even talked comfortably about having sex. Nevertheless, his page was also filled with Quran verses and prayers. In November 2011, Ghandour talked about his participation in the events of Mohamed Mahmud Street, and in July 2012, he mentioned his boycott of the presidential elections between Ahmed Shafik and Mohamed Morsi. After several months, he participated in a missionary video asking youth to stop cursing.

The contradictions in Ghandour’s life were clear, especially in his writing in 2013 before his first departure to Syria. He kept writing about girls while at the same time inviting his friends to pray and obey Allah, cursing more than once in the process. He proudly announced his participation in the Rabia sit-in in July 2013 and ridiculed people’s constant talk about breaking it up in August. He mocked Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood and the revolutionaries and supported Mohamed El-Baradei. Yet he also participated in the June 30 events against the Brotherhood. At that time, Ghandour was unemployed and unhappy.

It was said that Ghandour travelled at the end of the year. In February 2014, he announced his wish to fuel jihad in Egypt, and then he recognized Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, rejected ignorance and his bad company, and disappeared completely until May.

In June 2014, he was arrested after his return to Egypt on a charge of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he later mocked. After his release in September, he filled his Facebook page with calls and praises for Jihad and martyrdom, the ways to heaven and repentance. In December, he posted a picture of himself in Rome before leaving accompanied by Yakan to Anbar in Iraq.

Sharif says both Yakan and Ghandour grew deeply religious at the same time. After Ghandour’s release, Sharif tried to see him, but the Yakan was afraid. Sharif says Ghandour tried to travel to Libya after the slaughter of Egyptians there last February, but he could not. Sharif excuses Ghandour on the pretext that he did not know anything about religion and that because they had weak personalities, eyes were on them to lure them to IS.

The camera is not enough

Quais, 31, used to be a photojournalist before he decided to fight jihad in Syria under the Al- Nusra Front. “I cannot measure his transformation,” says Mahmud, his friend and colleague. All I can say is that we have reached a very bad situation that would make some take up arms and go fight jihad. The brothers who went to Syria might have gone to Sinai had the organization appeared there.”

Mahmud says Quais, whose Islamic nickname is Aba al Waleed al Masri, saw that this idea of bad and wrong was clear in Syria because the Alawites – who rule in Syria – were godless according to the view of the Sunni scholars.

The major turning point in al Masri’s life was on October 6, 2013, when violent clashes broke out along the Dokki Bridge. The police hit a huge pro-Morsi march and al Masri was badly injured while performing his job as a photographer. A while back, he told his friend he wanted to quit because he could not express his opinion, and because he was compelled to photograph and communicate the views of “a bunch of lying people.”

“I went to him and took him to more than a hospital until one hospital accepted to take him in,” says Mahmud. “A gas bomb hit him from close range and he suffered a double fracture in his leg and needed plates and screws. Photographers are humans too and they have feelings. When we see a stronger party using weapons against a weaker party who only wants to express views, we naturally support the latter, even if we disagree with it.”

Al Masri had surgery and was forced to stay home for six months. “I kept in touch with him for four months, says Mahmud, because I was responsible for delivering his salary. And then he started writing and publishing different things on social media. We had a normal life. We were moderate but inherently religious. Al Masri did not have a wife or kids, and he lived with his father and siblings,” he added.

Al Masri had participated in the revolution in his hometown of Alexandria and then he started practicing photography before he became a professional. Before that, he had had many jobs such as a snorkeling coach in Sinai, a volunteer teacher with a civil organization, as well as a  volunteer helping flood victims in Mersa Matruh.

Al Masri and Mahmud had a discussion that there were brothers worthier of going to Jihad for, and also that Jihad was an individual rather than a collective duty. Mahmud was surprised to learn that his friend knew all the fighting parties in Syria, such as the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front and IS. At the time, the events in Egypt were ambiguous, and al Masri believed that his weapon should be aimed at a godless person, not a Muslim, and the Syrian regime was to him godless.

“Jihad suited him well,” says Mahmud. “Al-Nusra Front was not that tight because they were an extension of Al-Qaeda and their sheikhs belonged to Al-Qaeda which followed prophetic speeches that banned burning people and killing children and the elderly, while IS had a different thought because for them, it was like a punishment: a burned man for a burned man and a slaughtered man for a slaughtered man.”

No one joins IS alone; there must be nominations and interviews and some kind of arrangement. There is often someone who might chat with the person wishing to fight jihad, to  see how the  thinks, and, if he is ready, nominates him.

Al Masri traveled to Turkey on a tourist visa. There are other ways to Syria, via Lebanon and in particular Jordan because those countries don’t require a visa, but then he would have to cross Assad-controlled areas.  Lebanon had more entry points because of its wide border with Syria. Turkey remained the easiest and the best way.

Al Masri told Mahmud he had decided to work in Turkey. Later, he told him that he was staying in a mountainous area that had Muslims and that he was teaching them Arabic. The story seemed logical to Mahmud.

In the summer of 2014, Mahmud received a phone call from a friend telling him that he heard that al Masri had died. Mahmud sent a message to those who shared the news of his death, and they told him that al Masri had been in Syria for some time and wanted to be in the front line. In an attack against the Syrian army, he was in the front line, but suddenly in a counterattack his colleagues retreated so he stayed alone and got killed. After his death, Al Masri’s family was harassed by security.

“He left his will for me and another friend but not for his family,” says Mahmud. “It was very difficult for me, and I was shocked when I heard the news. I expected something like that but I did not believe it. I do not know how he took such a decision so easily. He was not violent and always wanted to do good, even with strangers. But, in certain moments, you make decisions you cannot take back. Losing hope also contributes to this. If I knew I would get arrested for no reason, be killed in prison or go to jail without a fair trial, I would think of killing people who want to kill me.

All the events we photographed, such as the Rabia sit-in dispersion and earlier events, and all the injustice and oppression we witnessed forced him to do what he did. There is nothing easier than attracting unjustly detained people who suffered in prisons, especially journalists, photojournalists and children. This encourages them to become possible terrorists. They are going to take up arms in the face of the state. And even though it is a failed and desperate idea, it will happen inevitably without the need for IS to come here.”

Individual duties

“The transformation that makes people want to go wage jihad for the sake of Allah in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Chechnya happens when they get to know their religion,” says Hussein, a revolutionary who was hit more than once in violent clashes with the police and the army. “The teachings in our countries say jihad is a collective duty, but it is actually an individual duty and anyone who is into religion would know that.”

Hussein, 23, is a friend of Abdurrahman Sayyed, 20, who was executed with five others last May in the Arab Sharkas Village case even though they, at the time of the incident, were in prison on a charge of affiliating with the terrorist Ansar Bait al-Maqdis organization.

What IS has done since its emergence in 2013, says Hussein, and what former Jihadism Sheikhs such as Sheikh Abu Musab al-Suri, whom Islamists consider a jihad philosopher, prove that jihad is an individual duty which contradicts what the Sheikhs of the regime and of Al-Azhar instill into youth.

Hussein and Sayyed were raised in the Islamic tradition, and the latter always wanted to go fight jihad since he was a child. In 2012, Sayyed received first-aid training by the Egyptian Medical Syndicate to help the injured after the revolution. He also travelled with them to Syria as a first-aid assistant and stayed there for nearly a month and a half in late 2012 and early 2013. Hussein received similar training and travelled with a medical convoy to Libya in March 2011, but he could not continue.

Hussein argues that the video that was published after Sayyed’s death of Sayyed singing Islamic songs amongst a group of young men in Syria while wearing jihadist uniforms, was in 2012 before the emergence of IS. Sayyed had a heart injury which prevented him from going for Jihad.

Sayyed was arrested in March 2014 at a tourism company in the 6^th of October neighborhood where he and two others – they all were later executed in the same case – were trying to get a visa to Turkey. Hussein claims that they were severely tortured and forced to sign confessions on crimes they did not commit. He believes that Sayyed was randomly arrested just to close the case.

Hussein too was arrested on fabricated charges and was detained in the Aqrab prison for 48 days in 2014. He thinks that the reason for his arrest was his participation in the revolution. Although he has many injuries from the revolution, Hussein hopes to go fight jihad and join IS, but not only for religious regions. “The Aqrab prison is enough to force you to take up arms. The disciplinary cell is 10×6 and the normal cell is 17×14 and it contains three people. The killings, arrests and disappearances are all motives. The global order supports the killing of Muslims while human rights organizations only denounce and condemn,” he says.

Hussein believes that the caliphate state called for by IS has merely applied Sharia. He claims that IS treats the Christians in Mosul and Raqqa in accordance with Sharia since it allows them to practice their rites and only takes a contribution from them. Even before the emergence of the caliphate state, says Hussein, the stupidity of the regime, especially the massacres witnessed by the Islamic current, such as the Rabia massacre, pushed young people to take up arms.

While Hussean believes that taking up arms is difficult, he insists that Islam permits it in order not to let a godless regime steal Muslims’ money and honor and in order to restore their rights. “All Muslim countries are our land, and it is the godless regime that has divided them. Sharia should be enforced in all Muslim countries.”