The video posted Saturday showed a portly man clad in a long black robe and turban with a long greying beard addressing worshippers at weekly prayers at Al-Nur mosque in central Mosul.
“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you. So if you see that I am right, assist me,” said the man, purportedly Baghdadi. “If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God.”
Text superimposed on the video identified the man as “Caliph Ibrahim”, the name Baghdadi took when the group on June 29 declared a “caliphate”, a pan-Islamic state last seen in Ottoman times, in which the leader is both political and religious.
The video is the first ever official appearance by Baghdadi, said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on Islamist movements, though the jihadist leader may have appeared in a 2008 video under a different name.
Baghdadi is believed to have been born in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971, and joined the insurgency against the US military following the 2003 invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. He spent time in a US military prison and eventually took over leadership of a group, then affiliated with Al-Qaeda and known as the Islamic State of Iraq, in 2010.
Influential Sunni Muslim scholar Yusef Al-Qaradawi, meanwhile, warned that the establishment of a caliphate by “a group known for its atrocities and radical views does not serve the Islamic project”. The title of caliph can only be “given by the entire Muslim nation”, not by a single group, the cleric added.
