Politic?

Journey To Martyrdom

An Arabic-language eulogy for an Islamic State fighter killed in a coalition airstrike is said to be a former electronics store worker from Alberta. MEMRI

"There is a lot we don't know about him. He's not somebody who was previously known to us or seen written about in ISIL materials or Canadian. The notice gives only his province, not his city or town."
"It'd be nice to know his legal name, his age, his city, when he was killed."
"ISIL is a recruiting outfit, almost first and foremost."
Elliot Zweig, deputy director, MEMRI

"That's a really long time to remain alive [among ISIL fighters]. If this is new [the death notice] and he left [Canada] back in 2013 or 2014, that's the longest I can think of in terms of being alive among these guys."
"The propaganda value of these guys can bring with their language skills or specialization is way more valuable than as cannon fodder."
"Those with media skills or web skills were more protected."
Michael Zekulin, terrorism researcher, Australian National University, Canberra

Now at the Australian National University, Michael Zekulin studied Alberta jihadis at an earlier date, when he was at the University of Calgary. Without a given birth name that he was known under in ordinary life, identifying the man who took a "Journey to Jihad" from his home in Calgary would be extremely difficult since the biographical details contained in a death notice posted in Arabic by the Al-Muhajireen Foundation, and interpreted through the auspices of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) , are too skimpy to lead to his detection.

The man memorialized in this recently-published death notice as an eulogy to a noble hero of ISIL gave a few details, but was mostly devoted to the epiphany he had undergone that led to his radicalization and eventual value as a public relations tool of the Islamic State. What is known about his pre-Islamic State life is that he was born in Alberta to Pakistani parents who raised him in a Muslim environment. Or as the notice put it: "He received a proper Islamic upbringing."

A relative owned an electronics store in Calgary, and Al-Kanadi as he identified himself, worked there. He went on the annual hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia where he mingled among immense crowds of Muslims whom he took to appear oblivious to grievances committed against Muslims in "Palestine, Iraq, and Syria". This led the man identified as Abu Abd Al-Aziz Al-Kanadi on a search for a 'true' Muslim country.

Which is odd, given that Saudi Arabia fits that designation to perfection; the originator of Wahhabism, and the Wahhabi madrassas reflecting that Salafist ideology that ultimately bred the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

His search led him to devour books and studies by Islamic clerics and scholars, according to the death notice; introducing him to major Islamist figures like Osama bin Laden and Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, co-founder of ISIL. Under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in his Islamic State caliphate urging Muslims to "pledge allegiance" and gather themselves to conduct jihad, Abu Abd Al-Aziz Al-Kanadi found his motivation and heeded the call to jihad, travelling through Turkey to ISIL territory.

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There he found his destined niche at last, assigned to the Islamic State's media unit, reflecting the value to their public relations file of his usefulness, with his fluency in French, English and Urdu, and the additional value he brought in his experience with electronic media equipment, the result of his familiarity with the electronic gear sold at his uncle's Alberta store. He won high praise in the death notice for having "convinced people to immigrate to the Islamic State".

Whether this man was connected to the "Calgary Cluster" representing a group of young Muslim men from Calgary who joined ISIL, is uncertain. Of the group, about five of their number have been identified and declared dead, while other known Canadian ISIL fighters originating in Edmonton, among them many who have been declared dead as well -- sparing Canada at least that number of terrorist-devoted returnees to contend with.