Khaled Ahmed: The slow poison of Osama

By Dilip -

Since Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan fondly remembers the founder of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, as a “martyr” of the faith, it is only relevant to talk about this “sacred” relationship.

Osama bin Laden’s Syrian mother was one of the many wives of his millionaire Yemeni father. While his brothers went to the West for higher education, Osama preferred going to Jeddah’s Abdel Aziz University where his fondness for Islamic studies was spurred by two charismatic teachers, Muhammad Qutb and Abdallah Azzam — the first an Egyptian, a brother of the great Ikhwan leader, Syed Qutb and the second, a Palestinian who merged the Qutb doctrine of jahiliyya (ignorance) with modern jihad against the West.

Osama came to Peshawar in 1980 to conduct jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. By 1984, Osama got used to spending a lot of time in Peshawar, renting a number of guest houses in the city, and frequenting the office of Al Jihad, the Arabic newspaper that his mentor Azzam was bringing out from Peshawar. (Azzam later gave Pakistan a university in Islamabad that only spread extremism in a state that needed moderate thinking.) Osama’s jihad against the Soviets received a setback in 1989 when the mujahideen suffered a defeat at Jalalabad....

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/osama-bin-laden-imran-khan-pakistan-pm-6499818/

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