Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Arabic: أبو محمد المقدسي, romanized: ʾAbū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī; born 1959)—Abu Muhammad Assem al-Maqdisi (Arabic: أبو محمد عاصم المقدسي, romanized: ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿĀṣim al-Maqdisī), in full—is the assumed name of Assem ibn Muhammad ibn Tahir al-Barqawi (Arabic: عاصم بن محمد بن طاهر البرقاوي, romanized: ʿĀṣim Muḥammad Ṭāhir al-Barqāwī), an Islamist Palestinian writer and Salafi jihadi ideologue.
The jihadist website Tawhed, which al-Maqdisi owned at the time, remained operational as, according to the USMA report,[5] "al-Qa`ida [sic]'s main online library".
There, he met the later infamous jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and published influential works, including Millat Ibrahim and Al-Kawashif al-Jaliyya fi Kufr al-Dawla al-Sa'udiyya, the latter condemning the Saudi state as infidels.
[citation needed] He was also the first prominent Islamist scholar to brand the House of Saud as unbelievers or takfir, and to hold the adoption of democracy as tantamount to apostasy.
[11][12] In 2009, he defended himself against "younger extremists accus[ing] him of going soft" by quoting the American Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which identified him "as a dangerous and influential jihadi theorist.
"[13] Maqdisi served a five-year term in a Jordanian prison for allegations of jeopardising state security and recruiting jihadists to fight in Afghanistan.
..We call on the (Islamic) State to release this man (Henning) and other aid group employees who enter the land of Muslims with a guarantee of protection ... according to the judgment of Shariah law.
[16] Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi Arabian religious scholar, has endorsed Islamic extremists and convicted terrorists such as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, Eyad Qunaibi, Tareq Abdulhalim, Hani al-Sibai, Yusuf al-Ahmed, Abd al-Aziz al-Tarifi, Sulaiman Al-Alwan, Abu Qatada al-Filistini, and al-Maqdisi.
[17] Doğu Türkistan Bülteni Haber Ajansı[needs English IPA] reported that al-Filistini praised the Turkistan Islamic Party along with Abdul Razzaq al Mahdi, al-Maqdisi, al-Muhaysini, and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Because these legislators disbelieve in Allah and His divine law, it is the duty of every Muslim to fight them through jihad.”[27]Al-Maqdisi defines democracy as:“political philosophy that draws adherents to it, much like socialism and communism.
In fact, democracy is greater than the cogs that put it to work, for if the people would demand of their representatives to inject the law with a more Islamic flavor, they would be told it contradicts democracy.”[27]