Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (), or more fully Abu Muhammad Essam al-Maqdisi (), is the assumed name of Essam Muhammad Tahir al-Barqawi (), an Islamist Jordanian-Palestinian writer. A Qutubi 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 whoever believes in it to be an apostate, but he is 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. The writings of Maqdisi still have a wide following; a study carried out by the Combating Terrorism Center of the United States Military Academy (USMA) concluded that Maqdisi "is the most influential living Jihadi Theorist" and that "by all measures, Maqdisi is the key contemporary ideologue in the Jihadi intellectual universe". The Tawhed jihadist website, which he owns, continues to operate; the USMA report describes it as "al-Qa`ida's main online library". Background Maqdisi was born in 1959 in the city of Nablus, West Bank. At a young age his family immigrated 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. He began to travel around Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in order to visit with numerous religious students and sheikhs. However he came to believe that many of these religious figures were ignorant of the true state of affairs in the Muslim world. He then began to study the writings of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna and the methods of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maqdisi travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and met many of the Afghan 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