Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi

Maqdisi served a five-year term in a Jordanian prison for allegations of jeopardising state security and recruiting jihadists to fight in Afghanistan. He was released in June 2014 by the Jordanian government, in a move speculated to be motivated by their opposition to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. On 21 September 2014, he advocated for the release of British hostage, Alan Henning. Al-Maqdisi said, "Henning worked with a charitable organization led by Muslims which sent several aid convoys to help the Syrian people. Is it reasonable that his reward is being kidnapped and slaughtered? ... He should be rewarded with thanks. ..We call on the (Islamic) State to release this man (Henning) and other aid group employees who enter the land of Muslims with a guarantee of protection ... according to the judgment of Shariah law," he said."

After they were released from prison, al-Zarqawi departed for Afghanistan while Maqdisi stayed in Jordan. He was later rearrested on terrorism charges for conspiring to attack American targets in Jordan. He was released again in July 2005, but arrested again after he gave an interview to al Jazeera. In 2009 he defended himself against "younger extremists accus[ing] him of going soft" by quoting the American Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which identified him "as a dangerous and influential jihadi theorist."

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Arabic: أبو محمد المقدسي ‎), or more fully Abu Muhammad Essam al-Maqdisi (‎أبو محمد عصام المقدسي), is the assumed name of Essam Muhammad Tahir al-Barqawi (‎عصام محمد طاهر البرقاوي), an Islamist Jordanian-Palestinian writer. A Salafi jihadi ideologue, he has popularized many of the most common themes of radical Islam today, like the theological impetus given to the notion of Al Wala' Wal Bara', being the first to declare the Saudi royal family to be apostates or considering democracy a religion, and thus who ever believes in it to be an apostate, but he's best known as the spiritual mentor of Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the initial leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, an ideological and methodical split emerged between Maqdisi and Zarqawi in 2004 due to Zarqawi's takfeer proclamations towards the Shia populations in Iraq. Maqdisi opted for a more cautious approach towards targeted Shia killings, attempting to stop Zarqawi's radical ideological movement before Zarqawi's methods become counter-productive.

Maqdisi travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and met many of the jihad groups there at the time. In Pakistan he was based in the city of Peshawar, a center for the Afghan Jihad, remaining there for three years as a professor of religion, where he first met the later notorious Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and also where he published some of his most famous books : Millat Ibrahim, considered to be his single most influential work, and Al-Kawashif al-Jaliyya fi Kufr al-Dawla al-Sa'udiyya, where he declared the Saudi state to be infidel. He also confronted the members of Takfir wal-Hijra and wrote a book refuting their extreme views. In 1992, he returned to Jordan. He began to denounce the Jordanian government and what he believed were the man-made laws being implemented there. He was also the first prominent Islamist scholar to brand the House of Saud as unbelievers or takfir, and to hold the adoption of democracy as tantamount to apostasy. His teachings gained many adherents and this earned him the attention of the Jordanian government, and he was arrested and imprisoned. During the years 1995–99 both he and al-Zarqawi were in prison together and he exerted a strong influence on al-Zarqawi, shaping his Islamist ideology. Their strategic plans were described by Fouad Hussein in his book Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of Al Qaeda.

Maqdisi was born in 1959 in the city of Nablus, West Bank. At a young age his family emigrated to Kuwait. He later studied at the University of Mosul in Iraq. It was during this time he began to take on an Islamist world view.