Yahya al-Bahrumi

Yahya al-Bahrumi (; born John Thomas Georgelas; December 2, 1983 – October 2017), also known as Ioannis Georgilakis and with the kunya Yahya Abu Hassan , was an American jihadist, Islamic scholar and supporter of the Islamic State (IS). Having converted to Islam, he studied to the point of developing "a staggering mastery of Islamic law and classical Arabic language and literature". He was close to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the IS spokesman, chief strategist and director of foreign terror operations.

Al-Bahrumi proposed the idea of the re-establishment of a Caliphate, and had sufficient connections and support among Iraqi and Syrian Sunni extremists to plan to threaten Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with war if Baghdadi failed to declare a caliphate. About a year after a caliphate was declared in mid-2014, al-Bahrumi was able to join the Islamic State in its capital of Raqqa, where he became a "leading producer of high-end English-language propaganda" for IS. and maintained irhab (terrorism) was "declared obligatory" by "notable scholars" and "supported verbatim by the Quran itself." He was also a follower of the ultra-literalist Islamic legal school Ẓāhirī. It is believed that al-Bahrumi died during the 2017 Mayadin offensive, at the age of 33.

Name Like many jihadists, al-Bahrumi constructed a new name from his first name ("Yahya" for John), and his national origin ("Bahrumi" for Roman Sea or the Mediterranean); more precisely, his ancestral roots are from the island of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is known as in Arabic.

Biography John Thomas Georgelas was born in Bexar County, Texas on December 2, 1983 to Timothy Georgelas and Martha Karas. Georgelas was raised in a Greek American family that was conservative and wealthy, with a long military tradition. His grandfather and namesake was a colonel who was wounded twice in World War II and worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1958 until 1969, while his father is a retired United States Air Force colonel and physician. As a child, al-Bahrumi suffered from benign tumors and brittle bones. As a teenager, he eschewed discipline and academic achievement in favor of recreational drugs, but did extremely well on standardized tests.

Conversion and marriage He converted to Islam while in college shortly after the September 11 attacks, and left Texas to study Arabic in Damascus, developing a great profiency. He met his British-Bangladeshi wife Tania Joya (then known as Tania Choudhury) online. Like al-Bahrumi, she was born in 1983, suffered from benign tumors, and rebelled against her parents by using drugs and adopting strict Islamic practices and support for jihad. During their marriage, the two "often quarreled", but al-Bahrumi's self-confidence, vast knowledge of Islamic texts (he memorized both Hans Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic and al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi's Kitab al-'Ayn in a short period of time), and the Quranic judgement that "Men are in charge over women" (Q.4:34), led Joya to accept al-Bahrumi's decision making for many years. She determined that Yahya was a genius with gifts God had denied her, and she accepted her place in the world of jihad: Service to Yahya was her ticket to heaven. She endorsed slavery, apocalypse, polygamy, and killing. She aspired to raise seven boys as holy warriors — one to conquer each continent.

They met in person and married in the United Kingdom in March 2003. They left for Texas, then Syria, and London, where he followed a Jordanian veteran of the Afghan mujahideen who had proclaimed himself a caliph, known as Abu Issa, before falling out with him and returning to Syria. During this time in London, al-Bahrumi developed an interest in the thought of Ibn Hazm and Dhahiri legal methodology. Al-Bahrumi conducted online seminars in Arabic and English that did "much to 'prepare' Westerners" for the Islamic States' declaration of a caliphate, and had sufficient prestige that European jihadists came to Egypt to learn from him in person. Joya and his and children became sick and she demanded they leave. Al-Bahrumi allowed his pregnant wife and three children to return to Turkey though by now the border crossing was a combat zone. "As they reached the border, a Syrian government sniper fired at them, the bullets kicked up dirt nearby, and the two adults dragged three puking children, a suitcase and a stroller across the minefield, through a gap in the barbed wire and into Turkey."

Al-Bahrumi returned to Syria "without saying goodbye or waving", while Joya and his children recovered and settled in Texas with his parents. Joya later said that she and the children had been tricked into entering Syria, and that she had telephoned her mother-in-law as soon as possible and asked her to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who later told her that she would not be charged with joining an extremist organisation if she returned to the United States. She never saw al-Bahrumi again, and heard that he had remarried, and later that he had been killed. She said that she had married as the only way to get away from her "dysfunctional" religiously conservative family, realised later that she was in an abusive marriage, and later worked with the counter-extremism group, Faith Matters. Joya divorced al-Bahrumi in February 2015, she renounced jihadism, and as of 2017 attended a Unitarian church. She stopped hearing from al-Bahrumi in early 2017. In writings that have appeared on jihadi websites, al-Bahrumi urged Muslims to emigrate to the Islamic State, to not disavow the term irhabi (terrorist), and called for the killing of Muslim leaders outside of the Islamic State.

He not only defended irhab (defined as terrorism), but argues it is compulsory for Muslims.

For years past, the kuffar have ascribed Muslims with irhab and for years, Muslims have sought to shake this nomenclature (often for reason of comfort in dealing with the kuffar). The word ("terrorist") has also been cast as an insult and received as such. But irhab itself is something notable scholars have declared obligatory and supported verbatim by the Quran itself."

Graeme Wood quotes al-Bahrumi:

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam ... we fight you, not simply to punish and deter you, but to bring you true freedom in this life and salvation in the Hereafter, freedom from being enslaved to your whims and desires as well as those of your clergy and legislatures, and salvation by worshipping your Creator alone and following His messenger.

Drug use Although a devout Muslim, al-Bahrumi and his wife used cannabis and psilocybin psychedelic mushrooms as the definition of khamr (intoxicants) is a matter of Islamic scholarly debate. Yahya wrote a paper "heavily footnoted with classical Arabic sources", demonstrating (according to him) "beyond any possible interpreted doubt, that cannabis ... was used to a great extent in Muslim society without harm ..."

God as time In an essay from his time in Egypt circa 2011–12, Bahrumi propounded a Zahiri concept, that along with the 99 names of God in Sunni Islam, there is another divine attribute, God is also Time. This was based on the hadith, "Do not curse Time, for verily Allah, He is time"; but also explains (according to Bahrumi) God's eternalness and why two of his names are "the First" (al-Awwal) and "the Last" (al-Akhir).

Death It is believed that al-Bahrumi was killed during the 2017 Mayadin offensive, at the age of 33.

In popular culture The 2022 Discovery+ documentary A Radical Life presents the story of Bahrumi and his ex-wife, Tania Joya.

Footnotes