Mohammed al-Dulayi (Jihadi Militant, Egypt)

• Full name: Mohammed Magdi Mohammed Abdullah al-Dulayi
• Pseudonym: N/a
• Alternatives: Mohammed al-Dali, Mohammed al-Dalay
• Location: Sinai
• Affiliation: Islamic State’s Province of Sinai [DaIWS]

Mohammed al-Dulayi is a senior operative of the Islamic State’s Province of Sinai [DaIWS; Dawlat al-Islamiya Wilayat Sina’a] from Egypt’s Kafr el-Sheikh governorate. In the early 2010s, he studied at the Cairo University.¹ Dulayi became involved in Islamist activism and attended the massive 2013 sit-in protest by Muslim Brotherhood supporters at Raba’a al-Adawiya.² In January 2015, he went to the Sinai and joined the DaIWS.³ His family and Brotherhood activists wrongly claimed that he had disappeared after security forces had snatched him from his home.⁴

Within the DaIWS, Dulayi eventually became the chief of Islamic law enforcement.⁵ In December 2016, he threatened attacks against Egypt’s Ahmadi and Sufi communities in an interview published in the Naba’a newsletter of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham].⁶ In March 2017, Dulayi appeared in a video distributed by the DaIWS in which he again railed against Sufism.⁷ Dulayi was identified as the main instigator of the Nov. 24, 2017 massacre of 311 worshippers at a Sufi mosque in the village of Rawda.⁸ He had earlier publicly threatened to attack the mosque.⁹