Al-Qaeda is the brainchild of Osama bin Laden. There was a strong connection between Osama bin Laden as a person and the influences in Osama's life that contributed to the ideologies of the global terror network Al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has been able to manipulate Islam to fuel his jihad. By analyzing the origin of bin Laden's distorted view of his faith, we gain further insight not only Osama bin Laden into but also the infrastructure of his terror network. .
Al-Qaeda is a multifaceted network that requires a solid infrastructure to thrive; the skills Osama bin Laden acquired throughout his youth in his family's construction company have attributed to the success of Al-Qaeda. Propaganda is a strategy that has been used throughout history as a motivational tool, and bin Laden had mastered the art of using propaganda to fuel his jihad. .
The roots of Al-Qaeda go back almost 20 years; this organization built its strength through being multigenerational. The origin of Osama bin Laden's extreme view of Islam and the distortion of the Koran's teachings can be traced back to his family and his life as an adolescent. In the book Osama bin Laden, author Michael Scheuer (2011), former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, indicated that the atmosphere in which bin Laden was raised was devout to the Islamic faith. Scheuer has given us great insight into how the bin Laden family was raised and the weight that religion carried in the household: Muhammad bin Laden, according to Steve Coll, was a man who "bequeathed to his children . . . a religious faith in a borderless world. " This surely rings true; after all, a part of every Muslim's belief is that God plans for Islam to become over time the whole earth's faith, and Osama repeatedly emphasized that "borders mean nothing. . . . the entire earth belongs to God. " But Muhammad bin Laden's role in Osama's religious development did not merely lie in inculcating theological tenet " though it did that " but in convincing him that every Muslim's duty was to act on the words of God and His Prophets to defend his faith.
