Al Qaeda: Profile and Threat Assessment
Abstract
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt, and it has spawned numerous Islamist movements throughout the region since, some as branches of the Brotherhood, others with new names. For example, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas traces its roots to the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1988. Osama bin Laden was born in July 1957, the seventeenth of twenty sons of a Saudi construction magnate of Yemeni origin. Many Saudis are conservative Sunni Muslims, and bin Laden appears to have adopted militant Islamist views while studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There, he studied Islam under Muhammad Qutb, brother of Sayyid Qutb, the key ideologue of a major Sunni Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. Another of bin Laden's instructors was a major figure in the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Dr. Abdullah Azzam. Azzam is identified by some experts as the intellectual architect of the jihad against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and ultimately of Al Qaeda itself; he cast the Soviet invasion as an attempted conquest by a non-Muslim power of sacred Muslim territory and people.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 10, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA477777
Entities
People
- Kenneth Katzman
Organizations
- Library of Congress