Al-Azaim Foundation’s linguistic branches usually feature a number of either ideologues or speakers to present their audio and video contents. For instance, the Pashto branch frequently releases audio lessons and sermons read by ISKP Mufti, Abu Fateh Khorasani (Ziauddin Zarkheredi), and other top ideologues, such as Abu Abdulrahman and Abu Huzaifa. In contrast, the Tajiki branch employs several speakers who deliver concise statements on a number of different issues, mostly motivational ones addressing supporters.

However, Al-Azaim Foundation’s Farsi branch features one young and versed religious figure, Zaid Badri.

The personal background of Zaid Badri is not known, and the only details available about him are deduced from Zaid Badri’s propaganda products featured in his own channels and in Al-Azaim’s. He emerged in late 2022 when he started to publish some videos commenting on the right aqeeda (creed) that is being propagated by the Islamic State. The series counted 14 episodes and became the first media product of Zaid Badri. In the videos, Zaid Badri appears masked and holding a gun; however, he does not provide any detail about his background, and the videos do not bear the logo of Al-Azaim Foundation, hinting that he produced such lessons alone.

Around the same time, Zaid Badri published another round of 14 lessons about the importance of jihad and the ruling of fighting while waging it. Similarly to the religious lessons, this series also did not feature Al-Azaim Foundation’s mark but were independently recorded. The series was subsequently complemented by other smaller series - five to seven episodes long - commenting on other aspects of jihad, such as answering to scholars who undermine the importance of jihad; limiting jihad to inner struggle; or arguing that the time of jihad has ended in certain geographical areas. Zaid Badri refutes all these positions by claiming that the Islamic State, today, is the only group upholding the concept of jihad.

Zaid Badri’s speeches, coupled with his apparently young age, were widely circulated online among Farsi and Dari-speaking ISKP supporters, such as in the main unofficial pro-ISKP Telegram channel Bazargasht-e-Khilafat, with hundreds of ISKP supporters allegedly from Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Self-declared online students of Zaid Badri started to circulate a message praising Zaid Badri’s skills and commitment to IS ideology, asking other youngsters to follow his example. The poster was written in Tajiki language and translated into Farsi, too.

Evidently, Zaid Badri entered into contact - or was directly recruited - by Al-Azaim Foundation’s Farsi wing between early-mid 2023, as he started pumping out new audio series bearing the introduction of Al-Azaim Foundation, where the latter explicitly mentioned that the program was provided by the ISKP media wing and presented by Zaid Badri. Hence, Zaid Badri released two main series: a 28-episode-long series on the Afghan Taliban and another 11-episode-long series on the characteristics of the khawarij (those ostracized from the fold of Islam). While the latter is the audio summary of an ISKP book published in Farsi language in May 2022, mostly criticizing the Afghan Taliban, the former is a long series explicitly framed in order to challenge the new regime in Afghanistan and Afghan Taliban’s policies by juxtaposing them to the Islamic State. In both series, Zaid Badri amplifies ISKP message aimed at eroding support for the Afghan Taliban and luring militants into the folds of ISKP. Around the same time, Zaid Badri also started to translate from Arabic language into Persian some editorials of the Islamic State’s al-Naba weekly newsletter, including numbers from 397 to 417 (June-November 2023).

Zaid Badri also collaborated with Mubarezeen Media, another pro-ISKP media affiliated with Al-Azaim Foundation publishing in Pashto, Farsi, and Tajiki languages. The media house published a brief religious series featuring Zaid Badri around the same time he started collaborating with Al-Azaim Foundation.

Al-Azaim Foundation also broadcasted again the 14 lessons in jihad published by Zaid Badri by adding Al-Azaim Foundation’s introduction at the beginning, hence elevating Zaid Badri’s production to official ISKP propaganda. The same treatment was reserved for all other pre-Al-Azaim Foundation propaganda products published independently by Zaid Badri.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Zaid Badri became evident between March and April 2024, after the Crocus City Hall attack claimed by the Islamic State in Moscow. Shortly after the attack, prominent jihadi scholar and Tajik national Sheikh Abu Muhammad Madani termed the attack a conspiracy made by Russian and Tajik authorities and condemned it because it resulted in the killing of many civilians. Abu Muhammad Madani, who had studied in Uzbekistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, according to his personal biography, was revered by Tajik supporters of ISKP as a beacon of religious knowledge; while he never openly declared his support for IS, he frequently used terminology and ideology aking to IS, paralleling its themes and anti-state rhetoric. However, after he rejected the Crocus City Hall attack, thrice, he was takfired (ostracized and sentenced to death), by ISKP when Al-Azaim Foundation published a 4-page-long book against him, followed by a shorter audio version. A couple of weeks later, another ancillary media of Al-Azaim Foundation, Risana al-Hadeed published a 56-page-long book that reinforced its criticism against Abu Muhammad Madani.

It became evident that the author behind the books - at least the Al-Azaim Foundation’s one - is Zaid Badri himself, who also provided the audio summary. Zaid Badri published three more detailed videos where he discussed in depth why the Islamic State takfired Abu Muhammad Madani, directly challenging the scholar. Since the two booklets represent the most significant and entirely original pieces of propaganda recently produced by Al-Azaim Foundation’s Farsi branch, they highlight Zaid Badri’s position as a key ideologue for ISKP. Furthermore, it is important to note that Zaid Badri’s propaganda and sermons are widely shared among supporters from Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and, in some instances, even among Iranian Kurdish supporters, who are present in Persian-speaking IS groups.

Among Zaid Badri’s most recent series, there is also a small audio-video production where he draws inspiration from ISKP propaganda and answers point-by-point sermons released by Afghan Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Zaid Badri’s supporters continue to share his propaganda production on different social media platforms and messaging apps, while the militant himself occasionally releases new audio messages.

Sheikh Hakeemullah was a prominent religious figure among TTP members from Bajaur tribal district, and was currently serving as senior member of the Shura (council) of Malakand shadow province of the TTP. According to a document published by the TTP in early 2024, Sheikh Hakeemullah was among the seven members who were part of the Shura under the leadership of Malakand shadow governor and senior TTP member Mawlana Azmatullah Mehsud, a veteran TTP founding member. In Afghanistan, Sheikh Hakeemullah was head of madrassa Manbah ul Uloom, located in Kunar province, where he used to teach religious subjects to locals and to TTP family members. He had achieved the status of Sheikh ul Hadith and also was an Hafiz, having memorized the Holy Quran.

Sheikh Hakeemullah was a native of Salarzai area of Bajaur tribal district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. His father was also killed in Kunar during an operation carried out by US and Afghan republican security forces. Since 2007, Sheikh Hakeemullah had been an affiliate of Afghan Taliban and TTP, working in Bajaur to exercise religious activities in line with Afghan Taliban’s ideology, gathering support for the Taliban. Subsequently, he moved to Afghanistan, where he was later captured by Afghan security forces and where he spent around nine years in the prison of Bagram, where many TTP and Afghan Taliban members were being held. Eventually, he was freed after August 15, 2021, with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, when several TTP members were released from the prisons of Pul-e-Charkhi and Bagram. While in prison, Sheikh Hakeemullah used to preach to other inmates and allegedly was able to recruit new members to the TTP from both Afghan and Pakistani prisoners.

Some TTP members accused Afghan Taliban member Haji Usman Turabi, former governor of Kunar and current police chief of Kapisa province, of conspiring against and assassinating Sheikh Hakeemullah. Retaining family links between Kunar and Bajaur, Usman Turabi is a prominent and controversial Afghan Taliban figure who is held in high esteem by Afghan Taliban for his involvement in defeating Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) in Nangarhar province in 2019. Usman Turabi is also close to Pakistan’s religious political party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). However, some TTP members particularly from Bajaur and Swat areas accuse him of having worked with the Pakistani state on multiple occasions. Usman Turabi had been previously appointed as governor of Kunar in 2021, but was later dismissed from the position due to malcontent from both local population as well as from TTP members living in Kunar, many of whom are from Bajaur and Swat areas. As a result of his activities against ISKP, Usman Turabi is also most wanted by ISKP, which in the past years tried to assassinate him on multiple occasions, succeeding in killing only his guards and personal commanders in Bajaur, where he frequently travels.

At the same time, some TTP members requested the intervention of Afghan Taliban authorities to solve the issue, specifically referring to a number of mysterious assassinations carried out in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces targeting TTP members. A number of TTP social media accounts also argued that Afghan Taliban should move to secure bases to TTP and Al-Qaida members in Afghanistan; protect religious scholars and influential leaders, either part of or sympathetic to the TTP; and provide a stable solution and settle the families of TTP and Al-Qaida members who migrated to Afghanistan.

Along with Muthanna Hassan, this circle of preaching ideologues also includes Noman Hejazi, Moinuddin Shami, and Obaidurrehman al-Murabati. The names of these four exponents often appear in the publications of as-Sahab Media Subcontinent (the media mouthpiece of AQIS); in Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind (the bimonthly magazine of AQIS); and Hitteen (AQIS occasional, detailed magazine).

According to the biography of leading member of AQIS, Ustad Ahmad Farooq (killed in 2015 in Waziristan in an American drone attack) which has been written by the deputy amir of AQIS and Farooq's youth companion, Atif Yahya Ghouri, and published by as- Sahab Media Subcontinent in 2023, Muthanna Hassan was a student of Ahmad Farooq, who allegedly taught him media techniques and religious arguments around the ideology of AQ. Ahmad Farooq himself probably recruited Muthanna Hassan around 2009, when Farooq was placed in charge of AQ's media section in Pakistan, editing content in Urdu and English, at the suggestion of the deceased AQ leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In fact, Muthanna Hassan's first writing appeared for the first time in 2009, published in the Urdu language magazine Hitteen, whose current editor is Mawlana Obaidurrehman al-Murabati, and which also includes Moinuddin Shami and Noman Hejazi. Moinuddin Shami himself was a student of Ahmad Farooq, according to Yahya Ghouri. Muthanna Hassan's first writing was published in Hitteen just when Farooq had been put in charge of the production of the same magazine.

Unlike Atif Yahya Ghouri and Ibrahim Ghouri – Farooq's youth companions who joined AQ in Pakistan at the same time as Ahmad Farooq – Muthanna Hassan and Moinuddin Shami are part of Ahmad Farooq's second circle of recruits, when the latter had already climbed to the top of the organization. Since Ahmad Farooq was born in 1981, if they had met during Ahmad Farooq's progressive transition to AQ, it is possible that Muthanna Hassan is between 40 and 45 years old. This also seems to be confirmed by the only image released by the organization from a 2019 video series, although Muthanna Hassan is in profile.

As regards the background, judging from the contents of the sermons and writings, Muthanna Hassan appears as a strictly religious-political preacher, and not a strategist or military commander. In particular, his speeches focus more on religious arguments typical of an individual who studied in a madrassa, rather than in a university like Ahmad Farooq. In fact, Muthanna Hassan's first writing, published in the fifth issue of Hitteen in 2009, deals with the "cultural invasion" of the West in the Islamic world and whether it is possible to oppose it without resorting to jihad. In the same issue, a second piece discusses how Muslims in Pakistan are not taking the initiative to carry out jihad in the country, with weapons or propaganda.

In 2009, Muthanna Hassan also published his first booklet, again with Hitteen, which discussed the correct way to conduct jihad in Pakistan. In particular, the book distinguished between "legal jihad" (the one carried out by AQ, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban) and "illegal jihad", referring to some Kashmiri jihadist organizations historically aligned with Pakistani.

In 2010, Muthanna Hassan published a second booklet, again with Hitteen, which discussed the need to combat Western propaganda against Islam and AQ by waging an intellectual war. From 2010 onwards, Muthanna Hassan regularly writes for Hitteen and Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind. One of his most famous books is a short treatise on the role of the army in Pakistan, strongly criticizing the latter, accusing it of being the main obstacle to the creation of an Islamic state in Pakistan.

Muthanna Hassan has also been published frequently by as-Sahab Media Subcontinent, including a statement in which he called on Muslims in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan to unite to overthrow local governments.

The fact that today Muthanna Hassan holds a prestigious position as a religious-political ideologist of AQIS is demonstrated by the fact at the beginning of 2023, following a statement by the Grand Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Taqi Usmani, who underlined that in Pakistan jihad was illegal, Muthanna Hassan published a detailed text in which he positioned himself on the same level as Taqi Usmani, cordially rejecting the latter's theses.

The last appearance of Mawlana Muthanna Hassan has been in an article focused on elections in Pakistan on February 8, 2024, written for Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind, where he criticizes Pakistan’s system of government and the democratic process.

In the recorded videos and audios, Muthanna Hassan speaks Urdu with a strong Punjabi accent. Although it is not possible to trace the geographical origin, it is worth noting that Ahmad Farooq lived in Rawalpindi, where he gathered several disciples who he then took with him to AQ. It is therefore probable that Muthanna Hassan is originally from Rawalpindi or comes from another area of Punjab (from the accent it would seem Central or South) but he lived in Rawalpindi, where he met Farooq.

Muthanna Hassan appeared in only one video series, which began in 2019, in which he and Usama Mahmood, current leader of AQIS, discussed the history of Pakistan and the current political system. However, the faces of both were covered for security reasons.

Furthermore, Muthanna Hassan's voice also appeared in an audio series in which he discussed the importance of uniting efforts for jihad.