Hipsters! The newest member of Iraq's jihad

The Islamic State, which now has control of much of Syria and Iraq, has gained a new poster-boy, a well dressed and fashionable young man who has been photographed wielding a scimitar while astride a horse, and is using social media to spread the militant Islamic Caliphate's agenda.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - He has been identified by friendsas, Islam Yaken, a young Egyptian university graduate from a well-off Cairo family who is known back home as a "hipster jihadi".

Please help bring Christ back to Iraq.

Though Yaken did support Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's former president and Muslim Brotherhood member, his friends say that there was little about him to suggest a change in life towards jihad.

Now he glorifies the new Caliphate and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its Caliph, on twitter, and posts gruesome pictures of decapitated heads.

"Islam Yaken's story is freaking scary,"  Aliya Mikkawi, a former schoolmate, posted on her own Twitter account. "He used to be at school with me."

Yaken attended the French Lycée in Heliopolis, an upmarket suburb of Cairo near the presidential palace, before going to the prestigious Ain Shams University to study law, graduating last year. He speaks Arabic, English and French.

Yaken acknowledges media attention, both the good and bad: "Some people insulted me but that's normal-it's just nonsense talk," he wrote.

"But there are two people who insulted our religion, and I advise them that when God opens up Egypt to us, if they are still alive, we will hit their delete button."

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'