Al-Qaeda's Religious Influences



  quran                        mosque                           islam symbol             





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Al-Qaeda is a multi national terrorist organization, however, it also has its religious motivaitons.  The religious motivations spur from the Quran, the holy text of the Islamic religion.  The Quran is interpretted by Sheiks and religious clerics, and then spread the word to the followers of Islam.  It comes in this interpretation of the Quran by the Sheiks and clerics that has led to this Jihadist, Holy war movement.  The Sheiks and clerics proclaim that a slaughtering appeared in the Quran in a Hadith by the Prophet Mohammed.  From this interpretation of the Quran the mujahideen and Jihadists see the slaughter as previous invasions of the Middle East.  Such invsions include the 1946 annexation of some of the Palestian lands to Israel, the 1988 Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the three wars that the United States have fought (The Persian Gulf War, The War on Terror in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq).  In addtion, this Holy war can be traced all the way back to the crusades of the fifteenth century.  During the Crusades, European religous figures spurred on knights to go down to the Middle East and take back the Holy land that belonged to them, this is what started the Christian versus Islam conflicts in the Middle East.