Death of ISIS 'Grand Mufti' leaves group reeling

The killing of the self-proclaimed Grand Mufti of the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) will go a long way towards hastening the group's demise, experts told Diyaruna.

Turki al-Binali -- the group's top cleric, sharia judge and official in charge of recruitment -- had extensive relationships within ISIS, they said, and his death will trigger anxiety that may prompt foreign fighters to break ranks.

The international coalition announced al-Binali's death on June 20th, saying he had been killed in a May 31st airstrike in the Syrian town of Mayadeen.

The coalition statement described al-Binali as "a close confidant" of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said he "had a central role in recruiting foreign terrorist fighters and provoking terrorist attacks around the world".

Born in Bahrain in 1984, al-Binali was known by several aliases, including Abu Hammam al-Athari, Abu Sufyan al-Sulami and Abu Huthayfa al-Bahraini.

Bahraini authorities stripped al-Binali of his citizenship in February 2015, and the following year the US Treasury Department designated him as a terrorist.

Al-Binali also was listed under UN sanctions, which said he had been chosen as ISIS's "chief religious advisor" in 2014.

According to the UN, he had been the head of ISIS’s al-hesbah ("religious police"), served as a recruiter of foreign fighters, and was a member of al-Baghdadi’s inner circle of advisors.

Penetrating ISIS's inner circle

"The killing of al-Binali by international coalition forces is one of the severest blows dealt to the group of late," military analyst and retired Egyptian military officer Maj. Gen. Yahya Mohammed Ali told Al-Mashareq.

"The operation in itself will have ramifications in the group’s ranks as his assassination means al-Baghdadi’s small inner circle is being targeted," he said.

This tight, secretive leadership circle keeps a low profile, he said, so the success of this operation means "the group has become infiltrated to the maximum extent and that its key figures have become either useless or have been killed".

"The group is extremely vulnerable because it is no longer able to protect its top tier men," Ali said. "Consequently, its ordinary fighters will feel weak and vulnerable, because if killing members of that circle is possible, what chance of survival do they have?"

"The killing of al-Binali will have an impact not only in Syria, but in many other places as well," said political researcher Abdul Nabi Bakkar, a professor at Al-Azhar University's faculty of sharia and law.

A native of Bahrain, al-Binali "undoubtedly" wielded influence over some of the kingdom's youth, he told Al-Mashareq, "and his death deprives them of a leader" and lowers the odds they will join ranks with the extremists.

Disrupting a web of relationships

Al-Binali was one of the founders of ISIS in Libya and had extensive relationships there that enabled him to direct the groups that pledged allegiance to the ISIS’s "caliph", Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Bakkar said.

With his death, "ISIS will lose the relative control it had over the Libyan groups, and this is not in its interest", he said, as it will curb the group's expansion.

Al-Binali's death also will have an impact on the recruitment of foreign fighters, he added, noting that he was a senior recruitment officer and served as a sort of spiritual leader to dozens of foreign fighters in Syria.

"This will have a negative impact on their zeal in battle and push them to leave Syrian and Iraqi territory and plan to return home," Bakkar said.

"ISIS elements act based on the fatwas issued by the 'sharia judge', namely Turki al-Binali, and a large number of them consider those fatwas the main impetus to fight in the ranks of the group, Al-Azhar sheikh Mahmoud Abdul-Saadi told Al-Mashareq.

"Therefore, his loss will cause a large number of them to lose their motivation to fight, and the consequences resulting from this will start to show sooner or later in the course of the battles," he said.

Al-Baghdadi relied on him

ISIS has relied heavily on "distorted fatwas" that have no basis in Islam and are purely designed to serve its own interests, Abdul-Saadi said.

As "sharia judge", al-Binali was second in command to al-Baghdadi, he said, noting that the ISIS leader relied on him "to secure allegiances".

Al-Binali’s book, "Extend your hands and pledge allegiance to al-Baghdadi", was one of the key tools that helped "promote al-Baghdadi and secure the allegiance of a large number of terrorists in Libya, Syria and Iraq", he noted.

"By losing al-Binali, the group also will lose many of its media tools, since he was a regular writer for Dabiq magazine and al-Nabaa newspaper," he said.

"His sermons were very extreme and always called for fighting, for in his view all countries, even Muslim countries, have gone astray and can only be reformed by the sword," Abdul-Saadi said.

Al-Binali repeated these accusations on several occasions, he said, notably in a widely-circulated sermon titled, 'Ghurbat ul Islam' (The Estrangement of Islam).

As al-Binali moved between Bahrain, Beirut, Sharjah, Libya and Syria, he attracted "many followers and supporters of various nationalities", he said.

With his death, therefore, "the group will lose a key and vital tool that it used to influence and control them, and this will usher in lawlessness and wide-scale desertion", he said.