Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Bradford G. Martin, Muslim Brother-

hoods in 19th Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 2003); S. A. A. Rizvi, A History 

of Sufism in India. 2 vols. (New Delhi: Munshiram 

Manoharlal, 1978–1983); J. Spencer Trimingham, The 

Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1971).

al-Qaida

 

(also al-Qaeda; Arabic: the base, 

foundation)

The most infamous of the radical Islamic organiza-

tions to emerge in the late 20th/early 21st century 

is al-Qaida. It gained worldwide notoriety for the 

suicide attacks conducted by 19 of its members 

against the World Trade Center in New York City 

and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sep-

tember 11, 2001, that resulted in the immediate 

deaths of 2,974 civilians and rescue workers, plus 

countless other victims in the United States and 

abroad in the aftermath of the attacks. The effects 

of this catastrophe were still being felt globally 

nearly a decade later.

Al-Qaida’s beginnings date back to the mid-

1980s amidst the chaos caused by the Soviet 

Union’s 1979 occupation of a

Fghanistan

 and 

the civil war that ensued there when the Soviets 

finally left in 1989. Al-Qaida’s founding members 

were drawn from young a

rab

 volunteers who 

wanted to assist the a

Fghan

  m

ujahidin

 in their 

fight against the Soviet military and its Afghan 

communist allies. They created the Arab Mujahi-

din Services Bureau (Maktab al-khadamat li’l-muja-

hidin al-Arab, MAK) in 1984, based in Peshawar, 

p

akistan

. Its leaders were U

sama

 

bin

  l

adin

 (b. 

1957), one of the wealthy sons of Muhammad bin 

Ladin (1906–67), s

aUdi

 a

rabia

’s leading building 

contractor, and Ayman al-Zawahiri (b. 1951), a 

surgeon who came from a prominent Egyptian 

family of doctors, politicians, and scholars. Al-

Zawahiri was a leader in the Jihad Group that had 

assassinated Egyptian president a

nWar

 

al

-s

adat

in 1981; in the 1980s he was seeking to recon-

stitute the group in exile after serving time in 

prison. Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri had both been 

inspired by the radical Islamic ideology of s

ayyid

q

Utb

 (d. 1966), a leading member of the m

Uslim

b

rotherhood

 who had been executed in 1966 for 

conspiring against Egyptian president J

amal

  a

bd

al

-n

asir

 (r. 1953–70). Another person who had 

greatly influenced the Arab Mujahidin, especially 

bin Ladin, was Abd Allah Azzam (1941–89), a 

charismatic Palestinian member of the Muslim 

Brotherhood and an advocate of global 

Jihad

 and 

martyrdom

. He had first met bin Ladin while 

serving as imam at the King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud 

University mosque in Jeddah, s

aUdi

 a

rabia

, dur-

ing the early 1980s. He subsequently became an 

effective recruiter of Arab volunteers to fight in 

Afghanistan.

The Afghan Mujahidin and their Arab allies, 

funded by Saudi Arabia and the U

nited

  s

tates

through the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI), 

considered the Soviet withdrawal from Afghani-

stan a God-given victory. The Arab jihadists, who 

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