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Al-Qaeda is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Caliphate. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the US and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. The organization is designated as a terrorist group by NATO, UN Security Council, the European Union, and various countries around the world.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was a Saudi-born Islamic dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, his organization is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various other countries. He is most widely known as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
There were several video and audio recordings released by Osama bin Laden between 2001 and 2011.
Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh is a Yemeni citizen currently being held by the U.S. as an enemy combatant detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is accused of being a "key facilitator for the September 11 attacks" in 2001 in the United States.
War against Islam is a term used to describe a concerted effort to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means, or means invading and interfering in Islamic countries under the pretext of the war on terror, or using the media to create a negative stereotype about Islam. The alleged perpetrators are non-Muslims, particularly the Western world and "false Muslims", in collusion with political actors in the Western world. While the themes of the "War against Islam" mostly concern general issues of societal transformations in modernization and secularization as well as current international power politics, the Crusades are often given as its starting point.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, was an Egyptian-born militant and physician who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until his death in July 2022.
Adam Yahiye Gadahn was an American senior operative, cultural interpreter, spokesman and media advisor for the Islamist group al-Qaeda, as well as prolific noise musician. Beginning in 2004, he appeared in a number of videos produced by al-Qaeda as "Azzam the American". Gadahn, who converted to Islam in 1995 at a California mosque, was described as "homegrown," a term used by scholars and government officials for Western citizens "picking up the sword of the idea" to commit attacks in the West. American intelligence officials allege that he inspired the 2007 Osama bin Laden video.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call. He has held Spanish citizenship since the late 1980s following marriage to a Spanish woman. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing, which killed eighteen people in a restaurant in Madrid, and in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategist'.
Saʻd bin ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin, better known as Saad bin Laden, was one of Osama bin Laden's sons. He continued in his father's footsteps by being active in Al Qaeda, and was being groomed to be his heir apparent. He was killed in an American drone strike in 2009.
Hassan Ghul, born Mustafa Hajji Muhammad Khan, was a Saudi-born Pakistani member of al-Qaeda who revealed the kunya of Osama bin Laden's messenger, which eventually led to Operation Neptune Spear and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Ghul was an ethnic Pashtun whose family was from Waziristan. He was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council in 2012.
Hamza bin Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, better known as Hamza bin Laden, was a Saudi Arabian-born member of Al-Qaeda. He was a son of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and, following his father's death in 2011, he was described as an emerging leader of the Al-Qaeda organization.
There have been several videos released showing Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and reported founder of al-Qaeda, in conjunction with several other Islamic militant leaders, issued two fatawa – in 1996 and then again in 1998—that military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list until his death.
Osama bin Laden took ideological guidance from prominent militant Islamist scholars and ideologues from the classical to contemporary eras, such as Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Sayyid Qutb, Nizamuddin Shamzai and Abdullah Azzam. During his middle and high school years, bin Laden was educated in Al-Thager Model School, a public school in Jeddah run by Islamist exiles of the Muslim Brotherhood; during which he was immensely influenced by pan-Islamist ideals and displayed strict religious commitment. As a teenager, bin Laden attended and led Muslim Brotherhood-run "Awakening" camps held on desert outskirts that intended to raise the youth in religious values, instil martial spirit and sought spiritual seclusion from "the corruptions" of modernity and rapidly urbanising society of the 1970s in Saudi Arabia.
The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers of the Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared a holy war against the United States, and issued two fatāwā in 1996 and 1998. In the 1996 fatwā, he quoted the Sword Verse. In both of these fatāwā, bin Laden sharply criticized the financial contributions of the American government to the Saudi royal family as well as American military intervention in the Arab world.
SITE Intelligence Group is an American for-profit consultancy group that tracks online activity of white supremacist and jihadist organizations. It is led by the Israeli analyst Rita Katz and based in Bethesda, Maryland. From 2002 to 2008 Katz headed an organization called the SITE Institute.
Radwan Nammous, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Firas al-Suri, was a senior official in the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front, serving as the group's spokesman.
Al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, or AQSP, is an Egyptian militant jihadist organization possibly formed by a merger between al-Qaeda operatives in Sinai and Ansar al Jihad. It was Al-Qaeda's branch in the Sinai peninsula, and is composed of many Al-Qaeda factions in the area. AQSP made international headlines in November 2014 when the organization pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in a nine-minute audio speech released on Twitter.
al-Qaeda has five distinct phases in its development: its beginnings in the late 1980s, a "wilderness" period in 1990–1996, its "heyday" in 1996–2001, a network period from 2001 to 2005, and a period of fragmentation from 2005 to 2009.