His early life is unknown. He converted to Islam in Indonesia in 2009[3] (he claimed that he converted to Islam after reading the works of Muslim Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb on the Internet), and then went to Libya to study Arabic.[1] When the Libyan civil war broke out in 2011, he was working for a Chinese company in Libya. He did not comply with the Chinese government's order for its citizens to evacuate Libya, and he joined the Libyan anti-government rebels[1] and threw himself into the Libyan civil war. In a speech in Tripoli on March 18 of that year, he publicly condemned Muammar Gaddafi's attack on Benghazi.[3] After the "birth of the new Libya", he went to Syria to fight against Bashar al-Assad's government forces. According to a video uploaded to YouTube on March 17, 2013, Bo Wang warned the government of China in Mandarin Chinese, urging it to abandon its support for Bashar al-Assad, otherwise "all Islamic countries in the world will unite to impose economic sanctions on the government of China."[2][1]