Saturday, December 20, 2014

Pastry chefs

Basim sent me this: "Sheikh al-Masri is a moderate Islamist advocate, who makes a living from a pastry shop he owns in the area of Abi Samra in the northern city of Tripoli. "


Abu Ali al-Shishani: From pastry chef to ‘Islamic State’ emir. He added, in the midst of these events “I told myself that jihad began in Syria so I left Lebanon where I worked as a pastry chef” and headed to Syria."

Tunisian pastry chef Slim Gasmi died on a Syrian battlefield and was lionized with a hashtag: #martyrdomofabuqatada. By the time he was killed in April more than 1,500 miles from home, he had transformed into a warrior with a long beard and a nom de guerre, Abu Qatada, celebrated on a radical jihadist Twitter feed."