Jihadists seem to be jumping on the hipster bandwagon with their latest icon. Introducing, the modern jihadist: he’ll cut your head off then go get a grande soy latte. Check it out…
Islamic State jihadists ruling over much of Syria and Iraq have a new icon, whose fashionably styled curly hair and black-rimmed glasses contrast strikingly with the pose in which he has been photographed: astride a horse, and waving a shining scimitar above his head.
Identified by friends as a young Egyptian university graduate from a well-off Cairo family, Islam Yaken, he has been both lionised and demonised back home as the “hipster jihadi”.
Although he is said to have once been a supporter of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood former president, Mohammed Morsi, his friends say there was little to suggest his sudden change of life direction a year ago.
His page on the social media site VK suggest a young man apparently obsessed with his body – it is dominated by a series of pictures of him in a gym, showing off his toned physique.
Now he uses Twitter to glorify the “Caliphate” of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, and to post gory pictures including one of two heads in a basket, which he compares to the heads of sheep that can be ordered for the table in specialist Egyptian restaurants.
Read more: Telegraph
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