Abu Bakr al-Janabi, a Twitter supporter of ISIS, has posted an English translation of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s first public speech. In one passage, the ISIS leader said:

Terrorism is to worship Allah as He ordered you. Terrorism is to refuse humiliation, subjugation, and subordination. Terrorism is for the Muslim to live as a Muslim, honourably with might and freedom. Terrorism is to insist upon your rights and not give them up.

But terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in Burma and the burning of their homes. Terrorism does not include the dismembering and disemboweling of the Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir. Terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in the Caucasus and expelling them from their lands. Terrorism does not include making mass graves for the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the slaughtering of their children. Terrorism does not include the destruction of Muslims’ homes in Palestine, the seizing of their lands, and the violation and desecration of their sanctuaries and families!

Terrorism does not include the burning of masājid in Egypt, the destruction of the Muslims’ homes there, the rape of their chaste women, and the oppression of the mujahidin in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. Terrorism does not include the extreme torture and degradation of Muslims in East Turkistan and Iran, as well as preventing them from receiving their most basic rights. Terrorism does not include the filling of prisons everywhere with Muslim captives. Terrorism does not include the waging of war against chastity and hijab (Muslim women’s clothing) in France and Tunis. It does not include the propagation of betrayal, prostitution, and adultery. Terrorism does not include the insulting of the Lord of Mightiness, the cursing of the religion, and the mockery of our Prophet (peace be upon him). Terrorism does not include the slaughtering of Muslims in Central Africa like sheep, while no one weeps for them and denounces their slaughter.

All this is not terrorism. Rather it is freedom, democracy, peace, security, and tolerance!

The Telegraph has a profile of the ISIS leader.

His friends remember him as polite and rather quiet. In fact, few took notice of the bespectacled student who would sit at the back of the classroom.

The only time he shone was on the football field, playing for the team from the local mosque where he would also occasionally, though not very impressively, lead the congregation in prayer.

“He was the Messi of our team,” said Abu Ali, a fellow player and worshipper at the mosque, making comparison with the Lional Messi, the Argentinian striker. “He was our best player.”

Born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri to a family of preachers, the now leader of the Islamic State, lived his childhood in the Sunni heartland town of Samarra north of Baghdad.

But it is in the Iraqi capital that he spent his formative years, studying for his undergraduate and masters degrees, and eventually his PhD at the Islamic University.

For more than a decade, until 2004, he lived in a room attached to a small local mosque in Tobchi, a poor and ramshackle neighbourhood of made up of Sunni and Shia Muslim residents on the western fringes of Baghdad.

Sitting in his living room with the curtains drawn, as his brother kept a careful watch for militias outside, Abu Ali said: “When Ibrahim al-Badri arrived in Tobchi he was 18-years-old. He was a quiet person, and very polite.”

“He wasn’t a preacher as people say,” he added, referring to a profile recently published by the Islamic State that heralds Baghdadi as a grand imam. “The mosque here had it’s own imam. When the imam was away, religious students would take his place. Badri would sometimes lead the prayers but not give any sermons.”

Abu Ali did though concede that: “He had a nice voice, which was just right for the prayers.”

He came to know Baghdadi through group activities put on by the mosque clergy: “We’d play football. In Saddam’s time we’d all travel to places outside Baghdad, such as Anbar district, for picnics, or go we’d go swimming.”

The jihadist-to-be had been a “conservative Salafi” practitioner of Islam, his former neighbour said: “I remember one incident where was a wedding in the area and men and women were dancing and jumping happily in the same room. He was walking past on the street and saw this. He shouted ’How can men and women be dancing together like this? It’s irreligious’. He stopped the dance.”

When he finished his PhD, which was focused on the study of sharia law, at the start of this millennium, Baghdadi married and, less than a year later, his wife gave birth to their first child. The boy is now approximately 11-years-old.

As the war drums rumbled against then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and then when the allies invaded in 2003, Baghdadi continued to live the life of a family man.

“He didn’t show any hostility to the Americans,” said Abu Ali. “He wasn’t like the hot blooded ones. He must have been a quiet planner.”