Sara S
08-02-2008, 07:47 AM
From: [email protected]
In today's excerpt--the Muslim Brotherhood, a
precursor to Al Qaeda, had been
established in Egypt in 1928 as reaction against
British
colonial rule. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser succeeded
the British as a secular military
dictator of Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood had
continued
their struggle against Nasser. At the same time,
the ambitious Nasser began a long-term effort to
unseat the King of
Saudi Arabia by funding an insurgency, among other
things. So it was only natural that Saudi Arabia
provided some support to the Muslim Brotherhood as
a matter of self-defense, though that support was
given uneasily, and they had no great enthusiasm for
the Brotherhood's brand of fundamentalism. Due in
large part to this support, one of the better
secondary schools in Saudi Arabia had
as one of its teachers a Muslim
Brotherhood-influenced teacher--a gym teacher from
Syria. In 1972,
one of
that school's students was ninth-grader Osama bin
Laden, who was described by contemporaries
as "extraordinarily courteous," "shy," "an honorable
student," and "serious":
"Around 1971 or 1972, when Osama was in the eighth
or ninth grade, he was invited to join an after-school
Islamic study group led by one of Al-Thaghr School's
Syrian
physical education teachers. In recruiting candidates
for his after-school Islamic study group, [the Syrian
teacher] appealed
to five or six boys, enticing them with promises of extra
credit and organized sports. ...
"At first, the study group proceeded as the teacher had
promised. 'We'd sit down, read a few verses of the
Koran, translate or discuss how it should be
interpreted, and many points of view would be
offered.' ... Gradually, the teenagers stopped
memorizing the Koran and began to read and discuss
hadiths, interpretive stories of the life of the Prophet
Mohamed, of varied provenance, which are normally
studied to help illuminate the ideas imparted by the
Koran. Increasingly the Syrian teacher told
them 'stories that were really violent,' [a] schoolmate
remembered. 'It was mesmerizing.' The schoolmate
said he could remember one in particular: It was a
story 'about a boy who found God--exactly like us, our
age. He wanted to please God and he found that his
father was standing in the way. The father was pulling
the rug out from under him when he went to pray. ...
Finally, the boy shot the father.' ...
"During the next several years, Osama and the others
[in the group] openly adopted the styles and
convictions of teenage Islamic activists. They let their
beards grow, shortened their trouser legs, and
declined to iron their shirts (ostensibly to imitate the
style of the Prophet's dress), and increasingly, they
lectured or debated other students at Al-Thaghr about
the urgent need to restore pure Islamic law across the
Arab world. ...
"Saud Al-Faisal, a son of the king who would become
foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, complained years
later that Islamist teachers from Egypt and Syria
had 'misused' the hospitality offered them by
preaching politics. 'We dealt with them honestly, and
they dealt with us underhandedly.' "
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens, Penguin, Copyright
2008 by Steve Coll, pp. 144-149.
In today's excerpt--the Muslim Brotherhood, a
precursor to Al Qaeda, had been
established in Egypt in 1928 as reaction against
British
colonial rule. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser succeeded
the British as a secular military
dictator of Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood had
continued
their struggle against Nasser. At the same time,
the ambitious Nasser began a long-term effort to
unseat the King of
Saudi Arabia by funding an insurgency, among other
things. So it was only natural that Saudi Arabia
provided some support to the Muslim Brotherhood as
a matter of self-defense, though that support was
given uneasily, and they had no great enthusiasm for
the Brotherhood's brand of fundamentalism. Due in
large part to this support, one of the better
secondary schools in Saudi Arabia had
as one of its teachers a Muslim
Brotherhood-influenced teacher--a gym teacher from
Syria. In 1972,
one of
that school's students was ninth-grader Osama bin
Laden, who was described by contemporaries
as "extraordinarily courteous," "shy," "an honorable
student," and "serious":
"Around 1971 or 1972, when Osama was in the eighth
or ninth grade, he was invited to join an after-school
Islamic study group led by one of Al-Thaghr School's
Syrian
physical education teachers. In recruiting candidates
for his after-school Islamic study group, [the Syrian
teacher] appealed
to five or six boys, enticing them with promises of extra
credit and organized sports. ...
"At first, the study group proceeded as the teacher had
promised. 'We'd sit down, read a few verses of the
Koran, translate or discuss how it should be
interpreted, and many points of view would be
offered.' ... Gradually, the teenagers stopped
memorizing the Koran and began to read and discuss
hadiths, interpretive stories of the life of the Prophet
Mohamed, of varied provenance, which are normally
studied to help illuminate the ideas imparted by the
Koran. Increasingly the Syrian teacher told
them 'stories that were really violent,' [a] schoolmate
remembered. 'It was mesmerizing.' The schoolmate
said he could remember one in particular: It was a
story 'about a boy who found God--exactly like us, our
age. He wanted to please God and he found that his
father was standing in the way. The father was pulling
the rug out from under him when he went to pray. ...
Finally, the boy shot the father.' ...
"During the next several years, Osama and the others
[in the group] openly adopted the styles and
convictions of teenage Islamic activists. They let their
beards grow, shortened their trouser legs, and
declined to iron their shirts (ostensibly to imitate the
style of the Prophet's dress), and increasingly, they
lectured or debated other students at Al-Thaghr about
the urgent need to restore pure Islamic law across the
Arab world. ...
"Saud Al-Faisal, a son of the king who would become
foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, complained years
later that Islamist teachers from Egypt and Syria
had 'misused' the hospitality offered them by
preaching politics. 'We dealt with them honestly, and
they dealt with us underhandedly.' "
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens, Penguin, Copyright
2008 by Steve Coll, pp. 144-149.