Was there a softer side to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, was confirmed dead at the weekend. When US forces found him, Baghdadi killed himself and his three children by detonating a suicide vest.

Baghdadi and his caliphate were responsible for countless atrocities: mass murder across the globe and the attempted genocide, mass rape and torture of minorities and dissenters in the Middle East.

But some obituaries have pointed to another side of Baghdadi.

A Washington Post headline first (rightly) described him as ‘Islamic State’s terrorist-in-chief’. This was then changed to the rather more flattering ‘austere religious scholar’.

They had it right the first time.

The Washington Post changed the headline on its Al-Baghdadi obituary from “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-Chief” to “austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State.” pic.twitter.com/cs243EVz7W

— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) October 27, 2019

The Times drew attention to Baghdadi’s sporting prowess and studiousness, describing him as a ‘promising young footballer and student of the Koran’.

The Times obituary of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: A promising young footballer and student of the Koran who became a terrorist, mass murderer and the world’s most-wanted man https://t.co/hXIy6n0HJf

— The Times (@thetimes) October 27, 2019

Bloomberg told a rags-to-riches story of ‘a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation’ who transformed himself into the ‘self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swaths of Syria and Iraq’.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi transformed himself from a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation into the self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swaths of Syria and Iraq https://t.co/CNI5XBsoai

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) October 27, 2019

Do we really live in a world of such moral uncertainty that we can’t even say the leader of ISIS was unequivocally evil?

Picture by: Thierry Ehrmann, published under a creative commons licence