THE BIN LADENS
The rise of the bin Laden family to a position of unprecedented wealth
and power paralleled the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a modern state.
Bin Laden’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, was born in the Hadramut region
of Yemen in or around 1905. He left home in 1925 (again, the date
is uncertain) and settled in Jeddah, a major city in western Saudi Arabia.
4 OSAMA BIN LADEN
There he held menial jobs, fi nally settling down in the construction business,
a fi eld for which he demonstrated an aptitude. He founded his own
company in 1931, according to the Binladen Group offi cial history. 2 He
began building houses, worked as a bricklayer for the Arabian American
Oil Company, and eventually secured government contracts. His ability
to work with both foreign investors and the monarchy, which needed but
distrusted outsiders, earned Mohammed bin Laden a fortune. Oil profi ts
funded numerous royal palaces and the roads that connected them, which
Mohammed built. His willingness to loan money to the profl igate monarchs
ensured that he remained in their good graces. Eventually, bin
Laden’s fi rm received lucrative contracts to renovate the Mosque of the
Prophet in Medina and the Grand Mosque in Mecca, both centers of a
lucrative pilgrimage industry.
Like most wealthy Saudis, Mohammed bin Laden sired many children
by numerous women. Islam allows a Muslim man up to four wives if he can
provide equitably for all of them. Those men who could afford it easily circumvented
the limit through the practice of serial marriage. Divorce occurs
more easily and carries less stigma under sharia (Islamic law) than it
traditionally has in the Christian West. Sharia does, however, require a
man to provide for his former spouses. By most accounts, Mohammed bin
Laden fathered 54 children by 22 wives. To his credit, he assured each of
them a comfortable standard of living, in some cases far above what they
had enjoyed in their families of origin. He provided them with a steady income
and/or remarried them to respectable men in his employ.
When Mohammed died in a plane crash, in 1967, the monarchy placed
his holdings in trust. Fortunately for the family, his eldest son, Salem,
proved as shrewd a businessman as his father. He ingratiated himself with
successive Saudi monarchs and established the Saudi Binladen Group,
which he transformed from a construction fi rm into an international
holding company with diverse assets around the world. Where Mohammed
was serious and devout, Salem was happy-go-lucky. However, he had
inherited his father’s good sense and work ethic. He managed to balance
the life of an international playboy abroad with that of a serious businessman
at home. When he died in an aviation accident in 1986, he left the
Binladen Group in such good shape that his younger brother Bakr could
take the helm without a hitch and continue to maintain and grow the family
fortune. 3
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 5
OUTLINE OF A LIFE
The undisputed details of Osama bin Laden’s life are relatively few. He
was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, though the exact month is not
agreed. In 1968, he attended Al Thagr High School in Jeddah. He married
his fi rst wife in 1974 and attended King Abdul Aziz University, also
in Jeddah, where he studied economics but did not earn a degree.
Bin Laden’s mother, Alia Ghanem, belonged to a poor Syrian family
who married her at the age of 14 to Mohammed bin Laden in 1956, when
the construction magnate was in his fi fties. She gave birth to bin Laden
about a year later. Mohammed divorced her, probably soon after the boy’s
birth, as the two had no further children together. 4 She remarried and had
several more children with her new husband.
As the 17th or 18th of Mohammed’s sons by a junior wife, bin Laden
does not appear to have suffered any disadvantage or lower status in the
patriarch’s vast extended family, although he did live away from the bin
Laden compound because of his mother’s remarriage. 5 There is no evidence
that her new husband mistreated the boy or that their relationship
was diffi cult. However, as an adult, bin Laden never mentioned him in any
of his public statements. Those who knew bin Laden as a child and young
man have also said practically nothing about his stepfather. He appears to
have had little hand in raising the boy and no great infl uence upon him.
Saudi parents shape the lives of their children just as American parents
do, although the number of wives and offspring complicates a father’s
relationship with his children. Born just nine years before Mohammed’s
death, bin Laden must have had limited contact with a father whose business
required him to lead an itinerant life. Mohammed also had to divide
what time he had for family among his 54 children. By every account,
however, he was a loving if austere parent who treated his sons equally,
raising them to be devout Muslims and expecting them to work at an early
age. However, the sheer number of his wives and children coupled with
the construction projects he regularly visited throughout the kingdom
probably allowed Mohammed little time with any of his children. Most interaction
consisted of formal gatherings of the boys seated on the fl oor
as the family patriarch quizzed them on the Qu’ran. 6 He also took them to
construction sites with him. When the boys reached adulthood, Mohammed
employed them in his growing company.
6 OSAMA BIN LADEN
As a younger son of his father’s very junior wife, bin Laden had even
less contact with his father than did his older stepbrothers. When his father
died, the nine-year-old bin Laden was still at an age when boys idolize
their fathers, something he would continue to do his entire life. In a 1999
interview, as a grown man, he demonstrated both his adulation for his
father and his propensity for mythic exaggeration. “It is with Allah’s
grace,” bin Laden concluded, “that he would occasionally pray in all three
mosques [in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem] in one day.” 7 Devout though
he was, Mohammed bin Laden would have been hard pressed to pull off
such a feat given the distances between the mosques.
Considerably less is known about bin Laden’s relationship with his
mother. Given the seclusion of women in Saudi Arabia and their lack of
political rights, her silence comes as no surprise. Bin Laden’s neighbor and
childhood friend Khaled Batarfi described her as a “moderate Muslim.
She watches TV.” He also insisted that bin Laden obeyed her more than
did any of her other children, although he refused to give up jihad, placing
duty to Islam above fi lial devotion. Bin Laden has remained in touch
with her throughout his years of exile and hiding. 8 As noted, she came
from a relatively poor family in Syria, which probably benefi ted from her
marriage to the Saudi billionaire. Bin Laden spent some time with her family,
but he does not seem to have been particularly attached to them.
LIFE AMONG THE BIN LADENS
Bin Laden grew up in the household of his mother and away from the bin
Laden compound in which most of his half brothers and half sisters lived.
However, by all accounts, his siblings included him in their activities. This
acceptance does not seem to have changed even as bin Laden became
more religious. Large, wealthy Saudi families tended to produce at least
a couple of zealous sons, whom they tolerated and perhaps encouraged
the way large Catholic families used to encourage one child to become a
nun or priest. His less pious siblings no doubt found his disapproval of their
dress and behavior burdensome, and he could be a wet blanket, especially
at the beach. 9
Osama bin Laden did travel abroad with other family members. In 1970,
he accompanied his eldest brother, Salem, the new head of the family
business, on a trip to Sweden, and the following year he made the same
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 7
trip as part of a family outing that included Salem and 22 of his siblings.
Besides being very friendly, bin Laden made little impression on the owner
of the hotel where he stayed, save for the profl igate manner in which he
and his brother lived. They parked their Rolls Royce on the street illegally,
laughing off the daily fi nes, and discarded their expensive Christian Dior
and Yves St. Laurent white dress shirts after one wearing. He did not, however,
join his brother at the local nightclub. 10
Bin Laden went to London at age 12, according to a close friend, and
may have made other journeys to Europe, as well. By one account, bin
Laden made one trip to the United States to seek medical treatment for one
of his sons. 11 In the absence of corroborating medical or customs evidence,
this story cannot be accepted. If by chance the trip did occur, it would have
been of limited duration, giving him little real exposure to American life.
THE TRAUMAS OF CHILDHOOD
The experts have combed bin Laden’s childhood and youth for signs of
trauma or interrupted development to explain his extremist behavior as
an adult. Loss of his father at such a tender age was no doubt a blow, but
many children have lost parents far more involved in their lives than Mohammed
bin Laden was in his son’s. By the time bin Laden was old enough
to be aware of his surroundings, his mother had remarried, so there is no evidence
that he really experienced being the only child of a single mother.
Claims that Alia had been scorned by the bin Ladens as a very junior wife
are unsubstantiated. She certainly enjoyed a much higher quality of life
with the man to whom Mohammed married her after the divorce than she
would have with any likely husband from her own community.
Assertions that bin Laden was isolated from his siblings growing up
seem equally unfounded. He was a toddler when his parents divorced and
naturally stayed with his mother. As he grew older, however, he spent ample
time with his siblings. He may have felt isolated from them because
of his different address, but there is no evidence in available records or
from personal testimony to support this claim. “Osama was perfectly integrated
into the family,” his sister-in-law wrote in her autobiography.
“He was not strikingly different from the other brothers, just younger
and more religious.” 12
8 OSAMA BIN LADEN
His mother corroborates this assessment, describing bin Laden as “a
shy kid, very nice, very considerate. He has been always helpful. I tried
to instill in him the fear and love of God, the respect for his family, neighbors
and teachers.” 13 His close friend Khaled Batarfi claims that bin Laden
was very attached to his mother, especially after the death of his father.
“She was all that there was there,” he observed. “He was so obedient to
her . . . maybe because he wasn’t close to his father.” 14 Such attachment
and even lifelong intimacy between a boy who had lost his father at a
young age and his mother hardly seems unusual.
Any conclusions about how traumatic events might have shaped
Osama bin Laden must be highly speculative. 15 Perhaps the hardest thing
for Americans who witnessed the devastating attacks of 9/11 to accept is
that people who become terrorists do not necessarily do so as the result
of childhood trauma or some psychological pathology. While the foot
soldiers of terrorist movements tend to come from economically and/or
socially marginalized groups, the leaders usually do not. They are better
educated and more affl uent than those they order to die for the cause. An
impressive body of scholarship on the Holocaust corroborates the conclusion
that ordinary people are quite capable of extraordinary acts of cruelty
and destruction under the right circumstances. 16
EDUCATION
Mohammed bin Laden sent many of his sons abroad to be educated. In
the 1950s and 1960s, Saudi Arabia had few good secondary schools and
hardly any institutions of higher learning. Some of the bin Laden boys attended
boarding school in England, Lebanon, or Syria and then went on
to universities in Europe or the United States. Osama bin Laden had the
least exposure of any of them to foreign education. With the exception of a
brief stint lasting less than a year during 1967 at a Quaker boarding school
in Lebanon, he was educated entirely within Saudi Arabia, a fact that
may have contributed to his narrowly conservative outlook. 17 He probably
returned to Saudi Arabia as result of his father’s death and did not return
to the school. None of his school records are available to researchers, so it
is diffi cult to reconstruct his life during the elementary years. His mother
said that he was “not an A student. He would pass exams with average
grades. But he was loved and respected by his classmates and neighbors.” 18
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 9
Bin Laden’s high school years are better documented, although the record
of this phase of his life is also incomplete. After he returned home in
1967, his mother enrolled him in Al Thaghr Model School in Jeddah,
where he completed his secondary education. Like most Al Thaghr students,
bin Laden commuted from his mother’s home. Far from being a conservative
madrasa, the elite private school dressed its students in English
prep school uniforms and offered a modern curriculum using Western educational
methods. By all accounts, bin Laden was an unremarkable student.
He earned average grades, was reluctant to volunteer answers, but
responded well when called upon. “He wasn’t pushy at all,” recalled his English
teacher. “Many students wanted to show you how clever they were.
But if he knew the answer to something he wouldn’t parade the fact. He
would only reveal it if you asked him.” 19
While at Al-Thaghr, bin Laden fell under the infl uence of a Syrian
physical education teacher with Islamist sympathies if not direct ties to
Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood. The young man invited bin Laden
to join a small Islamic study group, using sports and extra credit as incentives.
The teacher exposed the boys to extremely conservative ideas,
advocating a return to traditional Muslim values and the merging of politics
and religion. These ideas appealed to bin Laden’s conservative bent,
and he soon joined the school religious committee, playing a prominent
role in its activities. He grew his beard and dressed modestly, refusing to
wear shorts even on the soccer fi eld. 20
In 1976, Osama bin Laden matriculated at Abdul Aziz University in
Jeddah. There he studied economics but left after a few years without
earning a degree. According to his best friend at the time, bin Laden was
already quite religious, refusing to watch movies or listen to music, which
he considered haram (forbidden by Islamic law). The same friend noted
that he and bin Laden both encountered political Islam at university.
They read Sayid Qutb’s Milestones, and In the Shade of the Quran. They
also attended lectures by Sayid’s brother Mohammed Qutb, who taught
at the university. 21
WORK
Like all his brothers, bin Laden worked in the family business. Following
his father’s death, the king placed Mohammed’s assets in trust. Within
10 OSAMA BIN LADEN
a few years, however, Mohammed’s oldest son, Salem, reasserted control
and managed the family business until his death in 1986. An effective manager,
Salem cultivated his relationship with the monarchy and so maintained
the privileged position his father had acquired. Salem doled out
responsibility and incomes to his brothers and sisters according to their
needs and abilities. Even though they earned more than enough from
company profi ts and investments to live comfortably, most bin Laden sons
chose to work anyway.
As with so much of his life, the precise details of bin Laden’s work history
remain unclear. He recalls traveling with his father to construction
sites around Saudi Arabia, but he provides no details as to which sites or
how often he visited them. Bin Laden’s construction of cave complexes
and camps during the Afghan war against the Soviets and his road building
in Sudan indicate that he had acquired considerable knowledge of
the construction trade. Between the time he quit university and his departure
for Afghanistan, he probably managed some construction projects for
the family company. He seems to have adopted his father’s hands-on
approach to management. His close friend noted that when bin Laden
worked with his brothers, he “used to go to the bulldozer, get the driver
out and drive himself.” 22
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Although he revered his father, Osama bin Laden disagreed with Mohammed’s
practice of serial marriage, which he considered contrary to the
spirit if not the letter of Islamic law. He confi ned himself to the four wives
the Prophet allowed, since providing for all of them equally on his income
would not be a problem. Like any young man with raging hormones, he
wished to become sexually active, but, unlike his brother Salem, he was
not willing to have sex outside marriage. As a result, he married young. Bin
Laden was just 17 when he wed his cousin, Najawa Ghanem, who was 14.
According to custom, she took the name of her eldest male child, Abdullah,
and was commonly addressed as “ Umm Abdullah.” “ Umm” in Arabic
means “ mother of ”; “abu” means “ father of.” Bin Laden went on to marry
three other women: Umm Hamza, Umm Khaled, and Umm Ali. Contrary
to popular belief, the conservative brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia
does not deny women an education or even a profession. Two of bin
Laden’s wives were highly educated and pursued careers of their own.
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 11
Umm Hamza was a professor of child psychology, and Umm Khaled taught
Arabic grammar. 23 All four women bore bin Laden children, with the fi rst
and youngest having the most. According to one reliable source, he
had 11 children with his fi rst wife, 1 with his second, 4 with his third, and
3 with his fourth—a total of 19. 24
Bin Laden’s four wives did not share the same home. When he lived in
Saudi Arabia and, later, Sudan, they occupied different apartments in the
same building. When he moved to Afghanistan, they lived in different
cottages within the same walled compound. Although the wives generally
got along, tensions occasionally arose. According to Zaynab Ahmed Khadr,
daughter of one of bin Laden’s followers who lived in the same compound
with him in Kandahar, bin Laden favored Umm Hamza and often confi
ded in her. Seven years older than bin Laden, Umm Hamza, the university
professor, may have had a wisdom and maturity that he appreciated.
This attention made Umm Abdullah, his fi rst (and therefore senior) wife,
very jealous. She was three years younger than bin Laden, quite beautiful,
but poorly educated. She and bin Laden quarreled often. He does seem
to have tried to placate her as much as his itinerant life would allow. For
example, despite his professed hatred of Western secularism, he allowed
her to buy American perfume and lingerie. 25
True to his convictions on marriage, bin Laden never initiated a divorce
from any of his wives. His fourth wife, however, chose to leave him.
The split took place while the entire family was living in Sudan after his
Saudi citizenship was revoked in 1994. Umm Ali and bin Laden had never
gotten along well. 26 Separation from her family, the lower quality of life
in Sudan, and the prospect of perhaps never returning to Saudi Arabia no
doubt added to her unhappiness. She asked bin Laden for a divorce, which
he granted, and she returned home with their three children. He then
married a Yemeni woman, who bore him at least one additional child.
In addition to avoiding divorce, bin Laden remained faithful to his
wives. He never kept a concubine or resorted to sex outside marriage. Unlike
some religious puritans, he did not consider sex part of man’s baser
nature, to be indulged in solely for procreation. He simply held that it belonged
within marriage. He seems to have taken a bride at such an early
age in order to have an acceptable outlet for his healthy sex drive. Outside
the home, he held scrupulously to the separation of the sexes. To avoid
the temptation of lustful thoughts, he would even avert his eyes when a
maid entered a room.
12 OSAMA BIN LADEN
By all accounts, bin Laden was a strict but loving father who spent as
much time as possible with his children. He would take them into the desert
on camping trips, help them with their homework, and play games and
sports with them. Although he enforced his core Islamic beliefs, bin Laden
indulged his children in ways that contradicted his rigid pronouncements.
According to the daughter of one of his associates in Afghanistan, he allowed
his daughters to listen to music, which he apparently enjoyed himself,
even though he condemned it as haram (forbidden by Islam). He also
let his sons play Nintendo. 27 This account differs sharply from that given
by his sister-in-law when he lived in Saudi Arabia. She insisted that bin
Laden “did not like to listen to music or to watch TV, and he prevented
his children from doing so.” 28 Perhaps in this one regard, the years had mellowed
him, or perhaps he allowed his children a few luxuries in the harsh
conditions of Afghanistan.
CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY
If reconstructing the details of bin Laden’s life presents serious challenges,
then discerning the nature and development of his personality and character
poses even more formidable problems. In most societies, only the
closest family members and a few trusted friends know a person across the
majority of his or her life. In the tight extended family and kinship groups
of Saudi Arabia, the number may be considerably larger, but family members
are more reluctant to talk to outsiders about a relative. When the relative
becomes notorious, cast out by family and country, they close ranks
even more tightly. The closed, secretive nature of the kingdom exacerbates
the diffi culty in gathering information, as does as the majority Wahhabist
sect’s opposition to celebrating birthdays and taking photographs. What
remains to be gleaned by the biographer are a relative handful of impressions,
most from people interviewed after the man’s reputation had grown
to mythic proportions.
As a youth, Osama bin Laden made little impression on those around
him. Were it not for his unusual height, he might have attracted little attention.
Friends and teachers remember him as being introverted and
quiet, intelligent but not particularly invested in school work. One teacher
described him as “more courteous than the average student.” 29 His intense
religious devotion seems to have developed after his father’s death,
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 13
but even that was not unusual for Saudi Arabia. Nothing known about
his behavior during childhood and adolescence suggests that he would
develop into a murderous fanatic. Far from being inherently violent, he
seems to have avoided confrontation. When a friend pushed away a bully
about to strike bin Laden, bin Laden stopped the friend from fi ghting. “I
went running to the guy, and I pushed him away from Osama and solved
[the] problem this way,” Khalid Batarfi recalled. “But then Osama came
to me, and said, ‘You know, if you waited a few minutes, I would have
solved the problem peacefully.’ ” 30
Witnesses disagree on his leadership ability. Most accounts of his charismatic
qualities come after he had become infamous in the West and revered
in parts of the Muslim world. As an adolescent and a young man,
he seems to have been deeply impressionable, perhaps seeking the father
fi gure he had lost as a child. One of his closest friends described bin Laden
as “a good soldier; send him anywhere and he will follow orders.” However,
the same friend also declared him to be “a natural leader,” one who
“leads by example and by hints more than direct orders.” 31 However,
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United
States, had a much lower opinion of bin Laden leadership ability. “I
thought he couldn’t lead eight ducks across the street,” Bandar declared. 32
Bin Laden fell easily under the spell of strong personalities who could
appeal to and perhaps manipulate his inherent piety. The Syrian physical
education teacher in high school recruited him for his study group and
launched him on the path to jihad. Mohammed Qutb inspired him with
the teachings of his brother Sayyid. Abdullah Azzam persuaded him to
go to Pakistan to help fund and organize the war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan. There he fell under the sway of the fanatic Egyptian doctor
Ayman al-Zawahiri. Azzam and Zawahiri competed for bin Laden as a prize
to be won for his personal wealth and the money he could raise for their
respective causes. They sometimes treated him as a valuable asset, not
as an equal.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Bin Laden’s aversion to most things secular left him few options for hobbies
and pastimes. He did, however, develop a passion for raising and racing
horses. He is also an accomplished rider. He raised horses on his Saudi
14 OSAMA BIN LADEN
farm before leaving for the Afghan war against the Soviets. When he
moved to Sudan, he attended races there, although he probably did not
bet on the outcome. In the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, horses were an
essential part of the struggle, fi rst against the Soviets and then against
the Americans.
RADICAL IN SEARCH FOR A CAUSE
By the standards of Saudi Arabia and his social class, Osama bin Laden
does not stand out. He was more religious than most of his contemporaries
but within the bounds of a very conservative theocratic society.
Although wealthy by any standard, he did not live the life of an international
playboy as did his eldest half-brother, Salem. Growing up, he never
wanted for anything, but neither did he live a life of luxury. He had the
ability to earn a university degree but little interest in doing so. He preferred
an active life to the classroom or a profession. Had circumstances
been otherwise, he would probably have lived an unremarkable life of
quiet piety as a very junior member of the vast bin Laden family and been
given business responsibilities commensurate with his abilities, which
seem to have been quite modest.
The historical circumstances in which bin Laden grew up were, however,
exceptional. He came of age at a unique time of crisis and empowerment
in the Muslim world. The six-day Arab-Israeli War of 1967
humiliated the Arab world and discredited secular pan-Arab nationalism.
The Islamic revolution in Iran and the attack on Mecca’s Grand Mosque,
both occurring in 1979, demonstrated how much a small but determined
group of radicals could accomplish. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
also in 1979, gave devout Muslims a chance to wage a holy war in defense
of an Islamic state attacked by godless communists. Bin Laden saw in the
Afghan war an opportunity to put his beliefs into practice. The confl ict
may also have appealed to his restlessness for activity and his need for
attention. In that struggle, the man would graduate from radical to extremist;
he would become a myth in both the West and the Islamic world.
NOTES
1. Details based upon Saudi Arabia, A Brief History , http://www.mideastweb.
org/arabiahistory.htm (accessed July 1, 2009).
OSAMA BIN LADEN THE MAN 15
2. Excerpt of official history of Saudi Binladen Group, available on the company
Web site, http://www.sbgpbad.ae/default.asp?action=article&ID=20 (accessed
July 27, 2009).
3. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(New York: Penguin, 2008), provides the best account of the family’s rise to
wealth and prominence.
4. Coll concludes that the marriage lasted a “relatively short time,” although
the details are not certain.
5. Ibid., p. 151.
6. Ibid., p. 107.
7. Interview with Jamal Ismail for al Al Jazeera television aired in 1999,
cited in Yusef H. Aboul-Enein, “Osama bin-Laden Interview, June 1999: Entering
the Mind of an Adversary,” Military Review , September-October 2004, http://
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_5_84/ai_n7069249/?tag=content;
col1 (accessed, July 27, 2009).
8. Account of Khaled Batarfi in Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know
(New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 15, 240.
9. Coll, The Bin Ladens , p. 140. One source claims that Osama attended
another Lebanese boarding school prior to attending the Quaker one, but this
is not confirmed.
10. Account of Christian Akerblad, former owner of Hotel Astoria in Falun,
Sweden, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 11.
11. Coll, The Bin Ladens , p. 209.
12. Carmen bin Laden, Inside the Kingdom (2004), excerpted in ibid.,
pp. 20–21.
13. Osama bin Laden’s mother, Alia, quoted in ibid., p. 138.
14. Kahled Batarfi, quoted in ibid., p. 142.
15. Dan Korem, Rage of the Random Actor (Richardson, TX: International
Focus Press, 2005), pp. 146–150, suggests that bin Laden fits his definition of a
random actor prone to terrorist activity. Intriguing as the argument is, it is impossible
to verify.
16. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Special Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland. (Harper, 1993)
17. Coll, The Bin Ladens , p. 201.
18. Osama bin Laden’s mother, Alia, quoted in ibid., p. 139.
19. Recollection of Brian Fyfield-Shayler in Jason Burke, “The Making of
the World’s Most Wanted Man,” Observer, October 28, 2001, http://www.guard
ian.co.uk/news/2001/oct/28/world.terrorism (accessed July 28, 2009).
20. Coll, The Bin Ladens, p. 147.
21. Ibid.
16 OSAMA BIN LADEN
22. Account of Jamal Khalifa in ibid., p. 17.
23. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 193.
24. Ibid., pp. 80–82.
25. Ibid., pp. 252–253.
26. Ibid., p. 194.
27. Ibid., pp. 253–254.
28. Account of Yeslam bin Laden in ibid., p. 20.
29. Account of Brian Fyfield Shayler in ibid., p. 8.
30. Account of Khaled Batarfi in Henry Schuster, “Boyhood Friend Struggles
with bin Laden Terror,”CNN, August 21, 2006, http://www.rickross.com/refer
ence/alqaeda/alqaeda77.html (accessed July 28, 2009).
31. Batarfi in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , pp. 13–14.
32. Korem, Rage of the Random Actor, p. 146.
Chapter 2
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S
WORLDVIEW
The complex beliefs, attitudes, and subconscious assumptions that make
up a person’s worldview develop over time. Formed from the prevailing
norms of society and shaped by family and friends, worldviews may be further
infl uenced by personal experience and world events. Depending on
individual psychology, a person may modify his or her views later in life
or become more convinced of their validity. In the case of Osama bin
Laden events conspired to turn his religious piety into a dangerous fanaticism
that grew more rigid as he aged.
SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Osama bin Laden did not begin life with a worldview. Like everyone
else, he was born into a family and a society with an ancient culture and
a prevailing system of norms, attitudes, and beliefs. These forces unconsciously
shaped him as he grew up in the bin Laden family within the
conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When he entered school, teachers,
mentors, and friends further molded his outlook, as did the events he experienced
directly through personal participation or vicariously through
the media of print and television. As he matured, he also encountered
18 OSAMA BIN LADEN
confl icting ideas and examples of how to live. Like any young person, he
had to reconcile these confl icts and integrate them into his own outlook
and system of beliefs. Understanding bin Laden’s worldview requires examining
the social and cultural context into which he was born and
then considering the people and events that shaped his thinking as he
matured.
Osama bin Laden grew up during a period of rapid and at times traumatic
transition in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East. The development
of Saudi Arabia from medieval kingdom into modern state
carried the bin Laden family from poverty to wealth. Mohammed bin
Laden had started as a day laborer and gone on to found a successful construction
fi rm, which his son Salem built into an international conglomerate.
Osama grew up as the impact of oil wealth began to be felt throughout
Saudi Arabia. He also witnessed some of the greatest shocks suffered by
the Islamic world and took what he saw as their lessons to heart.
CRUCIAL EVENTS
Among these events, none affected Osama bin Laden and his contemporaries
more than the defeat of four Arab armies by Israel during the
Six-Day War. In June 1967, Israel destroyed an Egyptian invasion force
in a preemptive strike. During the ensuing week, it defeated the armies of
Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The victory gave Israel control of the Sinai, Gaza,
the West Bank, and the Golan Heights and created another wave of
Palestinian refugees. The loss of East Jerusalem hit the Muslim world especially
hard. East Jerusalem includes the ancient city of David and the
holiest sites of Judaism and Christianity. It also contains the Mosque
of Omar, popularly known as “the Dome of the Rock,” the third holiest
site in Islam. Perched atop the mount where Solomon’s temple once
stood, the mosque enclosed a granite outcropping believed to be the point
from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven during his
famous night journey.
The Six-Day War was the third disastrous defeat suffered by Arab nations
at the hands of Israel. The worst humiliation had come in 1948,
when the newly created state defeated fi ve Arab armies in its battle to
survive. In 1956, the Israelis had triumphed with the help of France and
Britain, although they had been forced to return the Sinai in what came
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S WORLDVIEW 19
to be known as the Suez Crisis. The Arabs would suffer yet another defeat
in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Conservative Muslims gave the defeats
a theological interpretation. God had turned his back on Muslims who
had abandoned the suna (example) of the Prophet to embrace Western
ideas and values. Only by returning to the true path of Islam could Arab
Muslims regain the prosperity and the position of primacy in the Middle
East they had once enjoyed.
The suffering of Palestinians, the loss of the Dome of the Rock, and
ultimately the very existence of Israel became major factors in shaping
Osama bin Laden’s worldview. He ultimately blamed the United States
for creating and supporting this “Zionist-Crusader” outpost in the Middle
East. The relationship between the two countries has been more complicated
than the general public in both countries or the Arab world
realizes. While the United States had pressured Britain to allow more
Jewish refugees into what was then the Mandate of Palestine and was
among the fi rst to recognize the new state, which became independent
in 1948, it gave Israel little support during the two decades that followed.
Only in the aftermath of the Six-Day War did the relationship between
the two countries become close. The United States provided crucial support
in the form of military equipment and supplies during the Yom Kippur
War. American foreign policy has tried to steer a tortuous course
between the twin pillars of its Middle East policy: desire to placate Arab
states, which supply most of the Western world’s oil, and historic friendship
with Israel. The presence of a strong Zionist lobby, which now consists
of both members of the American Jewish community and conservative
Christians, who consider Jewish control of Israel a prelude to Christ’s
second coming, encouraged bin Laden’s belief in Jewish conspiracies.
When his worldview had matured, bin Laden explained what he saw
as the relationship between Israel and the United States. “The leaders
in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish
Zionist blackmail,” he told an interviewer. “They have mobilized their
people against Islam and against Muslims.” 1 After 9/11, bin Laden explained
that the Palestinian cause had in part motivated the devastating
attack. “We swore that America wouldn’t live in security until we live
it truly in Palestine,” he proclaimed. 2 Like many Islamist extremists, bin
Laden saw a broader Jewish-American conspiracy at work in the Middle
East. “What is happening in Palestine is merely a model that the
20 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Zionist-American alliance wishes to impose upon the rest of the region,”
he declared, citing “the killing of men, women and children, prisons, terrorism,
the demolition of homes, the razing of farms, the destruction of
factories.” Their ultimate goal, he warned, is to create a “greater Israel”
in the Middle East. 3
A series of events in 1979 profoundly shaped Osama bin Laden’s
worldview and launched him on the path of global jihad. In January of
that year, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeni led a revolution that
overthrew the Shah of Iran and replaced his government with an Islamic
Republic. The Iranian Revolution provided a powerful example for
groups committed to an Islamic revival throughout the Muslim world. In
November, Islamist radicals seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, site of
the Ka’ba, Islam’s holiest shrine, and proclaimed their leader the Mahdi,
the Muslim redeemer prophesied to come in the Islamic year 1400 (1979).
Saudi and French special forces recaptured the Mosque in a bloody 12-day
siege. Because violence within the shrine is strictly forbidden, the Saudi
government secured a fatwa (religious ruling or proclamation) from the
country’s leading cleric justifying the counterterrorism operation.
While it is not clear how this event affected the 21-year-old bin
Laden, the siege of the Grand Mosque challenged the monarchy’s theological
legitimacy, a theme he would take up later in life. 4 Years later he
criticized King Fahd’s handling of the incident. Bin Laden would later
claim that King Fahd had “defi led” the Grand Mosque in the way that he
conducted the assault to recapture it. “He showed stubbornness, acted
against the advice of everyone, and sent tracked and armored vehicles
into the mosque.” 5 This comment, offered in hindsight, may be the result
of bin Laden’s later break with the monarchy, or it may genuinely indicate
that the siege of the Grand Mosque began his disillusionment with
the house of Saud.
The third major event of the epic year 1979 would prove to be the most
critical. In December 1979, Soviet forces entered the central Asian country
of Afghanistan to prop up its communist puppet government. The
invasion began a 10-year war between the Soviets and Afghan insurgents
covertly supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The
confl ict would draw in foreign mujahedeen (holy warriors) from many
Muslim countries, especially those in the Arab world. Among these fi ghters
would be Osama bin Laden.
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S WORLDVIEW 21
TRADITIONAL ISLAM
Contrary to popular belief, Islam no more promotes violence than does
any other world religion. Like many other faiths, however, it has been
perverted by a minority of practitioners to promote their extremist agenda.
The high profi le of these extremists in the Western media has encouraged
the unfortunate belief that they speak for the majority of Muslims.
Clarifi cation of the religion’s core beliefs must, therefore, precede discussion
of how Osama bin Laden and his followers have appropriated
and misused them.
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