Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declares himself leader of all Muslims—who don’t buy it
A FEW details looked out of place: the watch on the speaker’s right wrist, a fan whirring behind him and machine guns propped against the walls. Otherwise, as a thickly bearded, black-robed preacher slowly mounted the pulpit of the Mosque of Noureddin Zangi in the Iraqi city of Mosul on July 4th, the first Friday of Ramadan, the scene could have been set 750 years ago. Just as then, when the mosque’s builder and namesake ruled the surrounding region and rallied the faithful against Christian Crusaders in Palestine, the sermon was a rousing call for Muslims to fall in and join the jihad.
