Osama bin Laden β , a militant and founder of Al-Qaeda in , [ 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.
His father was Mohammed bin Laden , from Yemen. Starting his own business in , Mohammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the Saudi royal family during the s. Although there has been widespread speculation that his maternal family is Alawite , they have claimed to be Sunni Muslims.
Osama bin Laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim. Bin Laden attended schools with some Western curricula and culture. No evidence has been found that he ever received full-time education in a religious madrassa. He was likely 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 bin Laden was an 8th grader, "he was a solid if unspectacular student". His mother remembered that he was "not an A student. He would pass exams with average grades. In the mids, bin Laden briefly attended Brummana High School , a Quaker institution in Brummana , Lebanon , along with several of his half brothers.
He seemed to have stayed in Latakia for a period. He moved back to Jeddah in the following September. During that time, bin Laden became a member of the Brotherhood and attended its political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups. Despite his major subject, at university his main interest was religion ; he was involved in both interpreting the Quran and charitable work. He was the one who most affected our generation. 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 Osama from all over the Middle East to fight there.
