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On September 11th, 2001, Al Qaeda, an international alliance of Islamic militant terrorist organizations, attacked the U.S. Al Qaeda's stated aims are to drive Americans out of all Muslim nations, destroy Israel, topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East and then install fundamentalist Islamic rule throughout the region and world.
Hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston bound for Los Angeles, CA crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Fifteen minutes later, hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston bound for Los Angeles, CA crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. Both towers collapsed, causing around 2,823 casualties and hundreds of injuries. Al Qaeda is responsible for this and three other hijacked planes on this day that caused over 3,000 total deaths.
15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qaeda (The Bases in English), a radical Sunni Muslim organization led by Osama bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on May 23, 2006. According to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa (religious decree), it is the duty of Muslims around the world to wage holy war on the U.S., American citizens, and Jews. Muslims who do not heed this call are declared apostates (people who have forsaken their faith).
In addition to its own members, al-Qaeda's network includes groups operating in as many as 65 countries throughout the world. Al-Qaeda supports other terrorist groups in two ways, both by training group members in its camps and by sending its own members to help these groups in their struggles around the world. Throughout the 90s, al- Qaeda provided its affiliated groups with financing and training primarily through its bases in Sudan and Afghanistan. Some 10,000 recruits are thought to have passed through the training camps there.
Most of al-Qaeda's members are veterans of insurgencies and terrorist campaigns in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kashmir, Mindanao, Chechnya, Lebanon, Nagorno-Karabakh, Algeria, and Egypt.
In addition to the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, al-Qaeda's anti-American attacks include the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
Ideology and Goals
The principal stated aims of al-Qaeda are to drive Americans and American influence out of all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia; destroy Israel; and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East. Bin Laden has also said that he wishes to unite all Muslims and establish, by force if necessary, an Islamic nation adhering to the rule of the first Caliphs.
According to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa (religious decree), it is the duty of Muslims around the world to wage holy war on the U.S., American citizens, and Jews. Muslims who do not heed this call are declared apostates (people who have forsaken their faith).
Al-Qaeda's ideology, often referred to as "jihadism," is marked by a willingness to kill "apostate" -and Shiite-Muslims and an emphasis on jihad. Although "jihadism" is at odds with nearly all Islamic religious thought, it has its roots in the work of two modern Sunni Islamic thinkers: Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb.
Al-Wahhab was an 18th-century reformer who claimed that Islam had been corrupted a generation or so after the death of Mohammed. He denounced any theology or customs developed after that as non-Islamic, including more than 1,000 years of religious scholarship. He and his supporters took over what is now Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism remains the dominant school of religious thought.
Sayyid Qutb, a radical Egyptian scholar of the mid-20th century, declared Western civilization the enemy of Islam, denounced leaders of Muslim nations for not following Islam closely enough, and taught that jihad should be undertaken not just to defend Islam, but to purify it.
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