OSAMA BIN LADEN: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

OSAMA BIN LADEN: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
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Contents Page
Introduction 2
Early life 3
Education 3
Personal life 3
Ideologies 4
Militant activities 4
Al-Qaeda 5
Terrorist attacks 6
September 11, 2001 7
Criminal charge 8
Death 10
Notes 10
Bibliography 14
Introduction
Osama bin Laden or Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden shaped history in a negative way, as a top wanted life, fought too hard for what he believed in and just like the rest of many men and women who have gone to history books for their achievements, he went to history books for his terrorist activities.
He was the founder of the Islamic jihadist organization name Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for numerous attacks against American military and civilians as well as the September 11 attacks12, and was enlisted in the Most Wanted Terrorists and the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives lists by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. This paper is a short biography of bin Laden, covering his personal life, religious ideologies, involvements in militant activities and criminal charges.
Early life
Osama bin Laden was born in a very rich family in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on March 10, 1957. His father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was a construction tycoon and his mother, Hamida al-Attas was the tenth wife of this father4. He was the seventh out of 58 children of his father from his 22 marriages. His family was very close to the Saudi royal family and earned $5 billion from construction industry and Osama inherited about $25 to $30 million from those earnings.
Education
Osama, around age ten, attended Brummana High School in Lebanon6 for less than a year. He attended Al-Thager Model School from 1968 to 1976. By this time, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and got involved in political readings with Islamic study groups. In 1979, he received a civil engineering degree from the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. However, his main interest in university years was in religion, involving in jihad and in interpreting the Koran. He also had interest in charitable works, reading and writing poetry.
Personal life
Bin Laden got married at the age of 17 to Najwa Ghanem in Syria8. He had been married four times after that one to Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s), Khairiah Sabar (married 1985), Siham Sabar (married 1987), and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). He divorced his first wife before the September 11 attack. With his 5 wives, Osama fathered between twenty to twenty six children.
Ideologies
Osama bin Laden, along with some like-minded leaders issued two fatwas, stating that it is a duty for the Muslims to kill military personnel and civilians from the America and allied countries in order to withdraw their support for Israel and extract their military forces from Middle Eastern Islamic countries. With that thinking, he founded Al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden believed that to set the things right, only the laws of sharia should be implemented in the Muslim world and other traditional believes, like democracy, communism and socialism must be resisted. He strongly supported the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, mentioning it as the only Islamic country in the world. He had firm belief in violent jihad as the only solution against the perpetrated actions of the United States toward Muslims. He also opposed western immoral acts including intoxicants, homosexuality, fornication, usury and gambling. He ignited hatred against the Jews, declaring them as the leaders in treachery and enemies of Islam.
His resolve to achieve his ideologies and actions led him to him to be affirmed as a terrorist by journalists and researchers. His strategies and viewpoints evoked wars in the Muslim countries by his bigger enemies, like America, Britain or the Soviet Union.
Militant activities
Bin Laden started his confrontational activities in Pakistan to help the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. There he joined Abdullah Azzamand, the leader of the mujahedeen, and offered him money and material support. Together, they created the Maktab Al-Khidamat to help the fighters in Afghanistan with arms and money. He also trained the fighters who gathered together from across the Muslim world in the camps inside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. During this time, he became an idol to many Muslim fighters and civilians in the Arab world.
Al-Qaeda
By the year of 1988, bin Laden became more ambitious. He wanted to get involved in more military actions. That led to a separation between bin Laden and Azzam, and Al-Qaeda was formed. The major point of the separation was that Azzam wanted to integrate all the fighters from the Arab countries into the Afghan groups. Opposing the idea, bin Laden wanted to form a separate fighting force and thus, established Al-Qaeda on August 11, 1988. The requirements for joining Al-Qaeda as a member were: good manners, listening ability, taking an oath to follow the superior and obedience.
The deployment of the American military in the Saudi Arabia during the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait was the first issue when the activities of Al-Qaeda were initiated, starting with a plan to blow up some skyscrapers in the New York City by few Al-Qaeda members which was stopped by the FBI in 1990. Bin Laden was vocal against the American military in Saudi territory, blaming the Saudi monarchy for inviting the soldiers in the country. This led to his banishment from Saudi Arabia and in 1992; he went to live in Sudan.
Osama started his mujahedeen activities in Sudan as well as investing in agriculture and business. He was generous with poor and became famous among general people. However, due to his continuous criticism against the activities of the Saudi monarchy, King Fahd revoked the citizenship of Osama as well as making his family cut off his annual earnings of $7 million13. By this time, his involvement with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) increased. This helped him to organize the central leadership of the Al-Qaeda. However, the EIJ made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hosni Mubarak, the President of Egypt, leading to his expulsion by the group.
After that, it was difficult for bin Laden to continue living in Sudan. Also pressure from Egypt, America and Saudi Arabia was increasing for the Sudan government to expel him from the country. In 1996, he went to Afghanistan and successfully established a relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban. In August of the same year, he declared war against America. He idolized that the evils in the Middle East aroused from the attempts by the Americans to take over the zone; mostly based from Saudi Arabia as well the US support to Israel.
He started to raise funds from previous donors during the afghan war. He took over Ariana Afghan Airlines to transport arms, fighters, opium and cash throughout Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. The Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) helped him to create more training camps to train mujahedeen fighters from the Arab world.
Terrorist attacks
Al-Qaeda was first operationally activated in December 29, 1992 with a bombing attack in Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden. Two people were dead in the attack. After this attack, Al-Qaeda leaders issued a fatwa among the Al-Qaeda members, but not to general people, saying that killing innocent people is not wrong; rather this is a valid act as the victim would go to Jannah (paradise) or Jahannam (hell) based on his religious faith. Later years, the Al-Qaeda fighters assisted with the jihadis in Algeria. During this time, bin Laden offered financial help to many similar organizations and Islamists in Algeria to fight against the government. However, this was an unsuccessful attempt as the Islamism groups surrendered to the government after losing about 150,000-200,000 members. In 1997, he sponsored the Luxor massacre, leading to 62 deaths.
The major actions against the western world by the Al-Qaeda stated in 1998 when bin Laden, along with Ayman AL-Zawahiri issued a fatwa to declar war against America and its allies. The fatwa, known as World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, justified killing actions of the North American by mentioning individual duty for every Muslim in order to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from the grip of America and its allies. The fatwa also announced Americans as easy targets and the result would be seen shortly.
A series of bombing...