Salam Pax

Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem (Arabic: سلام عبد المنعم‎), aka Salam al-Janabi (Arabic: سلام الجنابي‎), under which he became the "most famous blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Along with a massive readership, his site "Where is Raed?" received notable media attention. The pseudonym consists of the word for "peace" in Arabic (salām) and in Latin (pax). His was one of the first instances of an individual's blog having a wide audience and impact.

Bio

Salam Abdulmunem (the name he uses now, based on Abd al-Munim) was born to a well-to-do secular family in Baghdad in 1973. 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. He came to Vienna, Austria, with his parents when he was 5, the family returned to Baghdad five years later, and Salam went back to Austria alone at the age of 16 in order to study at the Vienna International School where he became fluent in English in addition to German and his native Arabic.