Ayman al Zawahiri

Al Qaeda leader Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri was born on June 19, 1951, in Maadi, Egypt. Born into an upper-class family of doctors and scholars, al Zawahiri was a studious boy who joined his first Islamist group at age 14. He graduated from Cairo University in 1974 and received his master’s in surgery in 1978.

By 1979, al Zawahiri had joined the radical Islamic Jihad and had gone to Afghanistan to resist the Soviet Union’s occupation. It was there that he met Osama bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda. In 1997 he was charged with the death of 62 tourists in Egypt and sentenced to death in absentia.

In 1998, al Zawahiri formally merged Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al Qaeda, issuing a joint statement with bin Laden. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, al Zawahiri appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. His whereabouts remain unknown, although he is believed to be in tribal Pakistan where he regularly releases videos and statements.

Now the recognised leader of Al-Qaeda, al Zawahiri leads with a clear plan for maximising the gains of Islam across the world.

Can you pray for him? He is a man who desperately needs God’s work of grace and the transforming power of the Spirit. Do we believe he is beyond God’s reach? Imagine if this man’s life was transformed through encounter with Jesus Christ. Pray for dreams and visions, for a revelation of the True and Living God, that the hand of evil being exercised through his plans and purposes would be stayed. Cry to God for mercy on this man.