Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda

By Rick Alan Ross

On a September morning in 2001 nineteen members of a militant extremist group called “al-Qaeda,” (“the base”) led by Osama bin Laden, hijacked four American passenger jets and then crashed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. 2,977 lives were lost.[i] Osama bin Laden would later arrogantly boast, “These events were great by all measurement”.[ii]

Bin Laden's followers believed their criminal acts were part of a “holy war” or “jihad,” which cast them as “martyrs” and those they despised and would destroy as “infidels”.  Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary compared the cult of personality built around Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and said it was “similar to the Nazi phenomenon”.[iii]

Al-Fadl, once an active bin Laden devotee, told a jury about the culminating event, which effectively marked the conclusion of his indoctrination. He was instructed to “follow the rule of the emir”.[iv] The rule was clarified through a secret rite, an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda called the bayat. This oath signified not only each recruit's submission to al-Qaeda, but also dependency upon bin Laden himself for guidance. Stephen Kent, a professor of the psychology of religion at the University of Alberta concluded, “The common refrain of former cult members is that they would've died for their leader, suicide for a holy cause is not as mysterious as it first seems”.[v]

Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the hijackers appeared to enter into a trance state before stepping onto the plane through a constant repetition of prayers. Jim Siegelman, co-author of the book “Snapping” explained, “Saying a prayer a thousand times -- that's just a way of jamming anything human from coming into his brain.”[vi] Al Qaeda devotees often videotaped their own suicides. On such tapes the suicide bombers can be seen listening to audiocassettes of chanted praises given for those willing to die, before boarding trucks loaded with TNT. Flo Conway commented that such thought-stopping techniques could potentially compromise a person's ability to think. She said, “The hardest thing to understand is that the mind itself can be captured and made into a machine”.[vii]

Bin Laden like other cult leaders told his followers they would reap supernatural rewards if they were willing to commit suicide. Bin Laden promised they would receive “a martyr's privileges...guaranteed by Allah.” In a 1996 decree bin Laden claimed that fighting the United States would “double” those supernatural rewards and told Americans that his followers would “enter paradise by killing you”.[viii]

Al Qaeda eerily echoed the beliefs and behavior of a destructive cult from the distant past led by Hassan i Sabbah (1034 – 1124), a religious mystic and terrorist.  Hassan's Order of Assassins, like al-Qaeda, deployed suicide killers. And the group believed that through this ultimate sacrifice they would enter the gates of Heaven. Hassan, like bin Laden, allowed his followers to experience pleasures on Earth before their deadly missions.[ix] The assassins drank wine, used hashish and enjoyed sex with courtesans. Centuries later, al-Qaeda's hijackers drank heavily and sought prostitutes before their suicide attacks.[x] Both bin Laden and Hassan used their followers like puppets to fulfill their own agenda.

Osama bin Laden did not share the same humble beginnings of many cult leaders. He was the son of a billionaire from Yemen, who built a business empire based in Saudi Arabia. Osama's mother, a Syrian, was his father's fourth wife. But like other cult leaders before him he may have felt estranged and isolated. A family friend explained, “In a country that is obsessed with parentage, with who your great-grandfather was, Osama was almost a double outsider”.[xi] According to his half-brother Yeslam bin Laden, there are 54 siblings within the bin Laden family, which ultimately included 20 different mothers. Each wife was given a separate house. And because Osama bin Laden was the only child of his mother, he had very little contact with his extended family. Ironically, bin Laden's mother was not an Islamic fundamentalist, but rather a sophisticated and well-traveled woman who refused to wear a burka (enveloping outer garment worn by some Muslim women) and instead favored Chanel suits.[xii] Like many Arab children of his class, bin Laden's early life was filled with nannies, tutors and servants. In 1968 bin Laden's father died leaving his 13-year-old son $80 million dollars[xiii]. Eleven years later he graduated from King Abdul-Aziz University, with a degree in civil engineering.[xiv] As a young man he was known to frequent nightclubs in Beirut and enjoyed free spending. According to one acquaintance he was “a heavy drinker who often ended up embroiled in shouting matches and fistfights with other young men over an attractive night-club dancer or barmaid”.[xv]  

But bin Laden would eventually become completely fixated on religion, first through Wahhabism, a very strict Islamic sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and later creating his own idiosyncratic amalgam of beliefs much like other cult leaders. Osama bin Laden also saw himself as someone on a divinely mandated messianic mission. His holy war against the “infidels” began in Afghanistan. First he fought the Russians and a mythology soon developed around him. The former playboy was now cast as a heroic figure. However, bin Laden spent most of the war as a fund-raiser in relative safety. “He was not a valiant warrior on the battlefield”, according to one source who said that bin Laden actually “fought in only one important battle”.[xvi] 

According to the Cult Information Center of Great Britain, al-Qaeda indoctrinated its members and formed a closed, totalitarian society.[xvii] This was accomplished by putting recruits through months spent within isolated training camps.[xviii] These camps served much like cult compounds, which historically have produced “brainwashed” followers after periods of isolation, information control, coupled with rigid indoctrination. One captured al-Qaeda member Al-Owhali testified that he was first trained within an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan for a month and then moved to a “jihad camp”. Only after the conclusion of his training was the possibility of a “mission,” discussed, which might lead to his “martyrdom”.[xix] This evolving process of training coincides with the often deceptive pattern of coercive persuasion used by groups called “cults”. Initiates may not come to know the group’s ultimate goals and their role within that agenda until the group has manipulated their thinking and molded a new mindset.

Osama bin Laden once admitted this to his supporters in a discussion recorded on video tape, “The brothers who conducted the operation [2001 World Trade Center attack], all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America, but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the plane.”[xx]

Much like Jim Jones used Christianity bin Laden operated through a façade of “Islamic beliefs” and the cause of “liberation”.  His disciples were told that Muslims were under attack and Islam itself was in danger. “The snake is America” bin Laden told al-Qaeda members, “and we have to stop them. We have to cut the head of the snake”.[xxi] But bin Laden’s brand of religion wasn’t accepted by the establishment in Saudi Arabia. In 1991 the Saudi royal family officially expelled and denounced bin Laden. And he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. From '91 to '96 he lived in Sudan, until that country also asked him to leave.[xxii]

Islamic scholars have denounced the religious premise of bin Laden’s violent beliefs. “It violates the very foundations of Islamic law,” said Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University.[xxiii] The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdallah al-Sheik also questioned what the al-Qaida leader taught his flock. “Jihad for God's sake is one of the best acts in Islam, but killing oneself in the midst of the enemy, or suicidal acts, I don't know whether this is endorsed by Sharia [Islamic law] or whether it is considered jihad for God. I'm afraid it could be suicide.”[xxiv] Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis of Princeton wrote in a 1998 article for Foreign Affairs, at no point do basic Islamic texts even consider “the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders”. Sheik Muhammad Rafaat Othman who teaches Islamic law at the most prestigious Islamic school in the Middle East, Cairo's Al-Azhar University stated emphatically, “You can expose yourself to a situation where you might get killed. But you can't knowingly take your life. Attacking innocent, unarmed people is forbidden. Prophet Muhammad demanded that we not kill women, children or the elderly. Attacks should be against soldiers and armed civilians. I don't see any evidence of exceptions to this rule”.[xxv]  Despite the established beliefs of Islam bin Laden, like Shoko Asahara, created his own spin on religion. In a video distributed amongst his supporters he said, “Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically.” He then referred to the Trade Center’s twin towers as a “legitimate target” and his hijackers as “blessed by Allah”.[xxvi]

Four Al Qaeda members were later found guilty of staging the 1998 suicide bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing 224 people. Bin Laden was charged in the 308-count indictment as the leader of the conspiracy. A $5-million reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.[xxvii] Ultimately Afghanistan would become both bin Laden’s refuge and new home. When the fanatical religious sect known as the Taliban needed money, bin Laden gave its leader Mullah Omar three million dollars.[xxviii] He had basically bought himself a safe haven for planning and launching terrorist attacks.

After 9/11 Osama bin Laden was a hunted man. It took the CIA years to pinpoint his exact location, but finally in 2011he was found inside Pakistan. The al-Qaeda leader was living comfortably in an affluent suburb of Islamabad within a walled villa. A military operation was organized and an elite American military group (Navy Seals) raided the compound by helicopter at night. Osama bin Laden “resisted” and was killed by a bullet to the head. A military detachment then buried him at sea.[xxix]

[xxix] MacAskill, Ewen, “Osama bin Laden: It took years to find him but just minutes to kill him,”  The Guardian, May 2, 2011.

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