Sublime

In Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (1941–89), professor of Islamic philosophy at King Abdulaziz University, used his influence among the country’s disaffected youth to promote an uncompromisingly belligerent interpretation of jihad that, he argued, was incumbent on all Muslims. “Jihad and the rifle alone,” Dr. Azzam proclaimed to his students. “

Othman was the director of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.

Assured that the Jordanians would protect him, “he just started spewing,” the official said. Suddenly the agency’s interrogators were filling notebooks with rare insider accounts of AQI’s command structure and tactics. One of Karbouly’s jobs, according to the former senior intelligence official, was to oversee incoming supplies for Zarqawi’s bomb f

This group, headed by a Saudi exile named Osama bin Laden and an Egyptian dissident (and former Muslim Brotherhood member) named Ayman al-Zawahiri, formed an organization dubbed al-Qaeda (“the base” or “the fundamentals”) that, ten years later, would turn its focus away from the corrupt leaders of the Arab and Muslim world—what the Jihadists term t

Bin Laden was, in other words, an infrastructure guy. He was essentially running a mujahidin base in Pakistan. In 1988 he formed a small organization to direct the jihad. It was called, fittingly, al-Qaeda al-Askariya (“the…

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