Word: binning
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...King Abdel Aziz University in Jidda, bin Laden, according to associates, was greatly influenced by one of his teachers, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who was a major figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has played a large role in the resurgence of Islamic religiosity. Bin Laden, who like most Saudis is a member of the puritanical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, had been pious from childhood, but his encounter with Azzam seemed to deepen his faith. What's more, through Azzam he became steeped not in the then popular ideology of pan-Arabism, which stresses the unity...
...bin Laden at age 22 was quick to sign up to help fellow Muslims in Afghanistan fight the godless invading Soviets in 1979. For hard-liners like bin Laden, a non-Muslim infringement on Islamic territory goes beyond the political sin of oppression; it is an offense to God that must be corrected at all costs...
...first, bin Laden mainly raised money, especially among rich Gulf Arabs, for the Afghan rebels, the mujahedin. He also brought in some of the family bulldozers and was once famously using one to dig a trench when a Soviet helicopter strafed him but missed. In the early 1980s, Abdullah Azzam founded the Maktab al Khidmat, which later morphed into an organization called al-Qaeda (the base). It provided logistical help and channeled foreign assistance to the mujahedin. Bin Laden joined his old teacher and became the group's chief financier and a major recruiter of the so-called Arab Afghans...
During the same years, the CIA, intent on seeing a Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, was also funneling money and arms to the mujahedin. Milton Bearden, who ran the covert program during its peak years--1986 to 1989--says the CIA had no direct dealings with bin Laden. But U.S. officials acknowledge that some of the aid probably ended up with bin Laden's group anyway...
...exhausted Soviets finally quit Afghanistan. With his mentor Azzam dead at the hands of an assassin and his job seemingly done, bin Laden went home to Jidda. The war had stiffened him. He became increasingly indignant over the corruption of the Saudi regime and what he considered its insufficient piety. His outrage boiled over in 1990. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, bin Laden informed the royal family that he and his Arab Afghans were prepared to defend the kingdom. The offer was spurned. Instead, the Saudis invited in U.S. troops for the first time ever. Like...