Osama Bin Mohammed Bin Awad Bin Laden 1957-2011 160lb /73kg – 6’-4” / 193-198cm buried Arabian Sea Founder of Al-Qaeda/ Kindite–Yemeni-descent (The Kindites established a kingdom in Najd in central Arabia unlike the organized states of Yemen;) Osama bin Muhammad bin Laden was born in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden when he was in his mid-forties a t that time, a university engineering graduate with computer skills, He was living with his four wives and some fifteen children in a small cave in eastern Afghanistan with no running water. Bin Laden was always on guard against assassins, commando raids, and air strikes and only a primitive heating system against the extreme cold of winter. Had he followed the path chosen for him by his father, bin Laden could have been a respected building engineering contractor in Saudi Arabia and a billionaire in his own right. Thousands of unnecessary deaths would of been prevented Instead he freely elected to abandon the life of affluence and commit himself to waging useless jihad under extremely harsh conditions. Osama bin Laden is not the only Islamist who has abandoned a good career and comfortable lifestyle in order to wage a jihad. Dr. Ayman al- dens right-hand man was in his late forties, could have been Egypts leading pediatrician but gave up a promising career and affluence to fight the Egyptian government Ernesto Che Guevara-the Argentinean doctor turned revolutionary fighter of the early 1960s-came close to being the kind of populist leader that the new Islamists are today At the time his father, Muhammad bin Laden, was a small-time builder and contractor who had arrived from Yemen in search of employment. Osama was one of numerous siblings his father had more than fifty children and Osama’s mother Hamida Al-Attas from Muhammad’s Tenth wife. Muhammad bin Laden was conscientious about education and advancement in life and tried to provide his children with proper schooling. During the 1960s the family moved to the Hijaz, western Saudi Arabia, and ultimately settled in AI Medina Al-Munawwara. Osama received most of his formal education in the schools of Medina and later Jedda, Saudi Arabias main commercial port on the Red Sea. He then refused political asylum in Western Europe (with a generous stipend) and ended up living in eastern Afghanistan not far from bin Laden. Although bin Laden and Zawahiri were the most notorious Islamist terrorists, there are hundreds like them. These dedicated commanders in turn lead thousands of terrorists in a relentless and uncompromising holy war against the United States and the West as a whole. The bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 were the latest but by far not the last shots in this rapidly escalating war of terrorism. What makes these individuals the leaders and symbols of the new Islamist upsurge-commit themselves to this kind of war? These leaders, were from the affluent and privileged segment of society, are highly educated and relatively westernized. They are not the underprivileged, impoverished, and embittered isolates who usually constitute the pool that breeds terrorists and radicals. These Islamist terrorist leaders were different from the typical European middle-class revolutionaries and terrorists-from the anarchists of the nineteenth century to the Communist revolutionaries of the late twentieth century-because the Islamists have become popular leaders of the underprivileged masses, while the European terrorists remained isolated from a generally hostile population Only To understand these Islamist leaders-particularly Osama bin Laden- It is important to understand their break with their past, their motivation, the fire in their veins, and warped since of purpose and the depth of their hatred of the United States and what it stands for.. OSAMA BIN LADEN, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their compatriots, mostly Saudis and Egyptians, was the product of the tumultuous 1970S and 1980s. Their entire lives, from their early years up until the time they rejected a luxurious lifestyle and embraced radicalism and militancy, were strongly influenced by key events unfolding in the Middle East-most importantly, the Arab prosperity and identity crisis that accompanied the oil boom in the 1970s, the triumph of revolutionary Islam in Iran, and the rallying cry of the jihad in Excerpts Bin Laden Yossef Bodansky RB private library and public domain 0
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 23:03:41 +0000
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