Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and founder of al Qaeda in 1988,[1] believed Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdrew support for Israel and withdrew military forces from Islamic countries.[2][3] He was indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
In 1974, at the age of 17, Laden married his first wife Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria.[4][5] Osama bin Laden married at least four other women;[6] he fathered between 20 and 26 children.[7]
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Osama Mohammed bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.[8] In a 1998 interview, later televised on Al Jazeera, he gave his birth date as 10 March 1957.
His father was the late Mohammed bin Laden (1908 – 1967) from Yemen.[9] Before World War I, Mohammed had emigrated from Hadhramaut, on the south coast of Yemen, to the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he began to work as a porter. Starting his own business in 1930, Mohammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the Saudi royal family during the 1950s.
His mother is Hamida al-Attas (b.1934) from Syria. Osama was the only son of Mohammed bin Laden and his tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas, née Alia Ghanem,[10] who was born in Syria.[11]
Though there is no definitive account of the number of children born to Mohammed bin Laden, it is generally put at 58.[12] Various accounts place Osama as his seventeenth son. Mohammed bin Laden was married 22 times, although to no more than four women at a time per Sharia law.
Osama's parents divorced soon after he was born, according to Khaled M. Batarfi, a senior editor at the Al Madina newspaper in Jeddah who knew Osama during the 1970s. Osama's mother then married a man named Muhammad al-Attas, who worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in the new household with three stepbrothers and one stepsister.[10] Osama and his family moved to the Al-Musharifah neighbourhood of Jeddah several years after he first enrolled at Al-Thager Model School.[13]
Bin Laden was raised as a devout Wahhabi. Osama's father ensured that he was regularly attending school. Osama attended schools with some Western curricula and culture and that there was no evidence that Osama ever received full time education in a religious madrassa. Osama likely was educated for some of his primary school years in Syria and that may have been in connection to his mother's frequent visits to Latakia, Syria. By the time Osama was an 8th grader, "he was a solid if unspectacular student." Osama's mother remembered that he was "not an A student. He would pass exams with average grades."[14]
In the mid-1960s, around age 10, Osama briefly attended Brummana High School, a Quaker school in Brummana, Lebanon, along with several of his half brothers.[14] Five former administrators and students said Osama attended for less than a year before returning home; they did not say or recall why he left. This was not due to poor behavior or grades.[15] Renee Bazz, a former administrative staff member, said that Osama went to another school in Lebanon before he attended Brummana.[16] British comedian and journalist Dom Joly claimed on an episode of BBC's Would I Lie To You? that he attended Brummana High School with Osama.[17]
He seemed to have stayed in Latakia for a period. He moved back to Jeddah in the following September.[16] From 1968 to 1976 Osama attended the élite Al-Thager Model School.[18] Osama was probably in the fifth or sixth grade when he began attending Al-Thager.[19] In the 1960s, King Faisal had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, so that by the early seventies it was common to find members of the Muslim Brotherhood teaching at Saudi schools and universities. During that time, bin Laden became a member of the Brotherhood and attended its political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups.
Bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979 from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both in interpreting the Quran and charitable work.[20] A close friend reports, "we read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation." [21] Sayyid Qutb himself, author of Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq, or Milestones, one of the most influential tracts on the importance of jihad against all that is un-Islamic in the world,[22] was deceased, but his brother and publicizer of his work, Muhammad Qutb, lectured regularly at the university. So did another charismatic Muslim Brotherhood member, Abdallah Azzam, an Islamic scholar from Palestine who was instrumental in building pan-Islamic enthusiasm for jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and in drawing Muslims (like bin Laden) from all over the Middle East to fight there.[23]
Osama was described by University friend Jamal Khalifa as extremely religious. Neither man watched movies nor listened to music, because they believed such activities went against the teachings of the Qur’an. During his University career he witnessed many world-changing events, especially in 1979. First he watched the Iranian Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomieini successfully overthrew Iran’s Western supported government to install an Islamist state. Then he saw the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by radicals in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government’s dependent response and reliance on Western power. It was not until the French special forces came in that the government was able to regain control of Mecca’s holiest site. Bin Laden was disgusted with his government’s lack of ability to protect the sacred city, and began to see the royal family more and more as corrupt. Finally, he ended 1979 ready to fight off the invading Soviets in Afghanistan.
In regards to his Islamic learning, Bin Laden was sometimes referred to as a "sheikh," considered by some to be "well versed in the classical scriptures and traditions of Islam",[24] and was said to have been mentored by scholars such as Musa al-Qarni.[25] He had no formal training in Islamic jurisprudence however, and was criticized by Islamic scholars as having no standing to issue religious opinions (fatwa). A claim circulates that Osama had received a letter of acceptance to Oxford University, but turned down the school due to his interest in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Bin Laden is reported to have married at least five women,[6] although he later divorced the first two. Three of Osama bin Laden's wives were university lecturers, highly educated, and from distinguished families. According to Wisal al Turabi, bin Laden married them because they were "spinsters," who "were going to go without marrying in this world. So he married them for the Word of God".[4][5] His known wives were:
Bin Laden fathered anywhere from 20 to 26 children.[7] The children of his first wife, Najwa, include Abdallah (born c. 1976), Omar, Saad and Mohammed. His son Mohammed bin Laden (born c. 1983) married the daughter of the former al-Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef (aka Abu Haf) in January 2001, at Kandahar, Afghanistan.[38]
The FBI described Osama bin Laden as tall and thin, between 6'4" and 6'6" (193–198 cm) in height and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg). Interviewees of Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall.[39] He had an olive complexion, was left-handed, and usually walked with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and did not wear the traditional Saudi male headdress, generally white.[40]
In terms of personality, bin Laden was described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man.[41] His soft voice was also a function of necessity. Interviews with reporters had reportedly left his vocal cords inflamed and bin Laden unable to speak the following day. His bodyguard contended Soviet chemical weapons were to blame for this malady; reporters have speculated that kidney disease was the cause.[42]
The author Adam Robinson has alleged that bin Laden supported Arsenal Football Club, visiting the team's stadium twice when he visited London in 1994.[43]
In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced they were bestowing official Afghan citizenship on him, as well as Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman.[44]
Bin Laden's "wealth and generosity ... simplicity of ... behaviour, personal charm and ... bravery in battle" have been described as "legendary."[45] According to Michael Scheuer, bin Laden claims to speak only Arabic. In a 1998 interview, he had the English questions translated into Arabic.[46] But others, such as Rhimaulah Yusufzai and Peter Bergen, believe he understood English.[47]
Bin Laden had been praised for his self-denial, despite his great wealth – or former great wealth. While living in Sudan, a lamb was slaughtered and cooked every evening at his home for guests, but bin Laden "ate very little himself, preferring to nibble what his guests left on their plates, believing that these abandoned morsels would gain the favor of God."[48]
Bin Laden was said to have "consciously modeled himself" since childhood "on certain features of the Prophet's life", using "the fingers of his right hand," rather than a spoon when eating, believing it to be Sunnah "the way the Prophet did it, ... choosing to fast on the days that Prophet fasted, to wear clothes similar to those the Prophet may have worn, even to sit and to eat in the same postures that tradition ascribes to him."[49]
At the same time, other actions of his were motivated by concern for appearances. Bin Laden was known for his media savvy, using the Islamic imagery of the cave in Tora Bora "as a way of identifying himself with the prophet in the minds of many Muslims," despite the fact the caves in question were tunnels dug with the modern technology of earth moving machinery to store ammunition.[50] He had dyed his beard to cover the streaks of gray. In 2001 he restaged a recitation of a poem intended for Arab television when he wasn't satisfied with the original video results done before an audience at his son's wedding dinner. The second take, done the next day after the wedding was over, had a handful of supporters crying in praise to simulate the noise of the full room the day before.[51] "His image management extended to asking one of the reporters, who had taken a digital snapshot, to take another picture because his neck was 'too full'".[51]
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