What Is Al-Qaeda?

Af this point, if you still don't understand, read an explanation at FrontPagte.

Al Qaeda, an Arabic word meaning "the Base," was founded in approximately 1988 by Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, the latter a native Egyptian and a onetime member of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al Qaeda grew out of the Services Office, a clearinghouse for the international Muslim brigade that opposed the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, under the leadership of bin Laden and the Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam, the Services Office recruited, trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahideen, or "holy warriors," from more than fifty countries. Seeking to extend the Islamic jihad, or "holy war," beyond the borders of Afghanistan even after the March 1988 Soviet pledge to withdraw its forces, bin Laden created al Qaeda. The organization today supports Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, and Kosovo. It also trains members of terrorist organizations from the Philippines, Algeria, and Eritrea.

To prepare his recruits to wage jihad, bin Laden established training camps in various places, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kenya, and Sudan. He also set up a series of businesses - including two investment companies, an agricultural company, a construction business, and a transportation company - to generate income for al Qaeda and to provide cover for the group's activities.

Could this be the reason for the American Government's seemingly obsessive and "Islamophobic" pursuit of Muslim charities and businesses?
Set up to expel foreigners and apostates from the Arabian Peninsula, bin Laden has set sights to a grander ideal: to bring back the fallen Caliphate, restore Islamic rule and law, Sha'ria, and extend Islamic influence and the reign of Muslims over the entire world:

The U.S. government characterizes al Qaeda, whose worldwide presence consists of at least several thousand members and associates from perhaps 100 countries, as "an international terrorist group . . . dedicated to opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violence." Law enforcement has broken up al Qaeda cells in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Albania, Uganda, and elsewhere...
Al Qaeda's objectives, motives, and strategies are further detailed in an Al Qaeda Training Manual designed to instruct aspiring terrorists in the art of murdering "infidels." The manual was discovered by England's Manchester Metropolitan Police during a search of an al Qaeda member's home. "Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils," states this publication. "They are established as they [always] have been by pen and gun, by word and bullet, by tongue and teeth." The manual further exhorts jihadists to "pledge . . . to make their [the infidels'] women widows and their children orphans . . . to slaughter them like lambs and let the Nile, al-Asi, and Euphrates rivers flow with their blood . . . to be a pick of destruction for every godless and apostate regime."

In addition, the manual enumerates what it calls "Missions Required of the Military Organization." Among these are: "Assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists; . . . Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy; Blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin; Blasting and destroying the embassies and attacking vital economic centers; Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and out of the cities."

Finally, the manual explicitly declares that among al Qaeda's "long-term goals" is "the establishment of an Islamic state." But an "Islamic government would never be established except by the bomb and rifle," the manual informs. "Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it. The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes, does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun."

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