Just a few weeks after he was released from federal prison in March 2012 on fraud convictions, Dearborn cleric Ahmad Jibril told his followers in a fiery sermon posted online:
“When your brothers in Syria speak, everyone today needs to shut their mouth and listen, because they’re proving themselves to be real men.”
Jibril’s talk was the beginning of a number of videos and online comments that have made him an internationally known inspirational figure for militants in Syria. Over the past two years, Jibril has become the most popular religious leader online for Westerners who’ve joined the battle against the Syrian government, according to a new report by a security center in England.
And most of his followers online among the Western fighters surveyed are with groups related to al-Qaida, the report said.
Jibril, 43, acts as a “cheerleader ... a benevolent father figure” to foreign fighters motivated by Islam, said the report released last month by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. Based in London, the center is a partnership with five universities and for the past year has been studying the role that fighters from the West are playing in the Syrian war. Titled "#Greenbirds: Measuring Importance and Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks,” the report created a database of 190 fighters from the West (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
Using social media sites, Jibril has built up a following among fighters who look to him for religious guidance, said the report.
“He provides the political and theological justification these guys are looking for,” said Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College in London and director of the International Centre, who was one of three authors of the report. “He’s someone who’s important to the movement. ... He articulates what they think. He provides comfort.”
Neumann and the report stressed that Jibril is not thought to be a terrorist himself. They didn’t find any evidence he’s a member of the militant groups fighting in Syria or is plotting a terror act.
Jibril could not be reached for comment. A man who answered the door at his home in Dearborn on Thursday did not comment.
The report comes amid growing concern among U.S. government officials about fighters in Syria. Visiting Detroit on Tuesday, the FBI’s national director, James Comey, said he’s concerned that Syria is drawing radicals in the way that Afghanistan drew them in the 1980s.
About 11,000 foreign fighters — 2,800 from the West —have poured into Syria since the conflict started three years ago, the center said.
Comey and others worry that after the fighters are done in Syria, they could harm the countries they come from, noting that foreign fighters in Afghanistan were part of groups or movements later tied to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“A concern ... is the emergence of Syria as a training ground for violent jihadists,” Comey said in Detroit. “There are now thousands of foreign fighters in Syria who are gaining training, gaining new relationships and are going to flow back out of Syria at some point.”
Stormy past
Born in metro Detroit to Palestinian parents, Jibril — whose name is spelled Jebril in court documents — lived and studied in Saudi Arabia for part of his youth. The report said he has a law degree from a school in Michigan. His father, Musa Jibril, also is a cleric.
Jibril has a history of making what prosecutors said were extremist comments, dating to at least 1995, according to a 2005 sentencing memo from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit. In November 1995, he sent a fax to CNN praising the bombing by terrorists of a building in Saudi Arabia used by U.S. military and civilian personnel, prosecutors wrote. The blast killed four Americans.
On a radical website he operated, “Ahmad Jebril encouraged his students to spread Islam by the sword, to wage a holy war, to hate and kill non-Muslims,” prosecutors said in the memo.
In his sermons and articles, Jibril makes anti-Shia comments and tells Muslims not to mix with non-Muslims. “If the West or their slaves are pleased with you, then something is seriously wrong with you,” he once said.
Jibril was kicked out of two mosques in metro Detroit for his radical views, according to a 2006 article in Beliefnet cited by the report. He also faced criticism when he gave sermons with a Muslim group at the University of Michigan-Dearborn about 10 years ago, the article said.
In 2005, Jibril and his father were convicted of 42 counts of fraud of almost $400,000 that included mail fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and failure to pay income tax.
Prosecutors said the two had a dozen rental properties, some of which they deliberately defaced in order to collect insurance money, according to court records. They were also convicted of trying to bribe a juror in their trial by offering to pay for a wedding if she helped acquit them.
Jibril was sentenced to 6½ years, part of which was served at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. The prison has been called Guantanamo North because many of the prisoners are Muslims whom prosecutors have tried to link to terror cases.
“Thirteen days after his release from prison, he tweeted support for the rebels, comparing them to soldiers in one of Islam’s earliest and most important conflicts, the Battle of Badr,” the International Centre’s report said.
Online success
Today, Jibril has more than 23,000 followers on Twitter, a Facebook page with 211,000 likes and a YouTube account whose videos attract thousands of views.
Almost 21% of the Western fighters surveyed in the report liked Jibril on Facebook, the highest percentage of any Islamic leader, the report said. And 60% of the foreign fighters surveyed followed him on Twitter, also the highest of any cleric.
A majority of those fighters are with ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusrah, two groups fighting in Syria that are related to al-Qaida. About 78% of Jibril’s Facebook likes are with the two groups, as are 86% of the fighters surveyed who follow him on Twitter, according to the report.
“He has been directly in touch with a number of foreign fighters, even with the families of fallen foreign fighters,” said Neumann. “He clearly cares about this very much. A lot of the foreign fighters find him inspirational.”
In December 2013, Jibril sent a direct message on Twitter to a family member of a Muslim fighter from England who was killed in Syria.
“When I read of him today, it made we weep,” he wrote. “May Allah be with you.”
The report added, though, that “Jibril does not openly incite his followers to violence” and that he is entitled to hold his anti-Western views.
Jibril is on supervised release until March 2015, according to court records.
The report also notes another Muslim leader who is popular with fighters, Musa Cerantonio, a convert to Islam from Australia.
The two are “the most prominent ... new spiritual authorities to whom Western and European foreign fighters are looking for guidance and inspiration,” said the report.
While Jibril himself “is not explicitly calling for violent jihad ... he provides the ideological fuel to allow people to justify to go to Syria and to join some of the jihadists,” Neumann said. “He adds fuel to the fire.”
Jibril’s social networking
A report titled "#Greenbirds: Measuring Importance and Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks,” released by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence in London, created a database of 190 fighters from the West (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Among the fighters surveyed:
- 21% liked Ahmad Jibril on Facebook, the highest of any leader.
- 60% followed Jibril on Twitter, also the highest.
- 78% of Jibril’s Facebook likes are with two groups related to al-Qaida: ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah.
- 86% of Jibril’s Twitter followers are with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah.