[6] His father Adnan Abd al-Munim al-Janabi, a Sunni, worked for OPEC, his mother was a Shi'ite, while Salam himself became skeptical of religion.

At 16 years old Salam returned to Austria alone in order to study at the Vienna International School[8] where he became fluent in English[9] in addition to German and his native Arabic.

When he went through his yearly allowance from back home in a month, his family brought him to Iraq in 1995,[6] where Salam continued his study of architecture at the University of Baghdad.

[8]After graduation, he worked for the Baghdad office of a Beirut, Lebanon, architectural consultancy and as an occasional interpreter for foreign journalists before and during the invasion of Iraq, when he became a successful English-language blogger under the name Salam Pax and a contributor to The Guardian beginning from 4 June 2003.

[11] In his blog, Salam discussed his friends, disappearances of people under the government of Saddam Hussein, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and his work as an interpreter for journalist Peter Maass.

[12] Subsequent entries discussed the chaotic postwar economy, and a June 1, 2003, post[13] appeared to celebrate an anarchist effort, centered in the western Al-Adel Neighborhood of Baghdad, to provide free Internet access to all of Iraq.