Besides pan-Islamic anti-colonialism (with an emphasis on the US) and anti-Zionism, the ideology of Osama bin Laden is more specifically a radical variant of the ideology of the Sa'udi royal family, Wah'habism. In this post I shall discuss its history and characteristics, especially in relation to the Kingdom of Sa'udi Arabia (KSA) and its relations with the US.
An Islamic law code is a Shari'a, the Way, and all Islamic fundamentalists support nations being ruled by a Shari'a. In Sunni Islam four Shari'as evolved: Hanafi, the oldest and loosest in interpretation, Melki, prominent in North Africa, Shafi, prominent in Southeast Asia, and the most recent and strictest, Hanbali. The ideology of Wah'habism is that the Hanbali Shari'a should be imposed, as it is in KSA and Qatar. The Hanbali Shari'a accepts only the Qur'an and selected parts of the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammed) as legitimate foundations for law.
Although the Hanbali code had been around for several hundred years already, the Wah'habist movement dates from 1740 when an itinerant Muslim mullah, Mohammed ibn Wah'hab encountered a minor tribal chieftain, Mohammed ibn Sa'ud, founder of the Sa'udi royal family, under a palm tree in the small village of Dhariyah, now a suburb of Riyadh, capital of KSA. They formed an alliance and ever since the al-Sa'ud have attempted to spread acceptance of the Hanbali Shari'a to wherever they came to rule, although until the twentieth century this area of control was usually only in the central Najd, the central part of the Arabian peninsula.
The founder of modern KSA was Abdulaziz ibn Abdul-Rahman al-Sa'ud, whose birth and death years were the same as Joseph Stalin's. Early in the twentieth century he began a drive to unify the Arabian tribes under his rule and did so by a combination of conquests and marriages, ultimately resulting in 43 sons, some of whom constitute the current ruling elite of KSA. In 1924, Abdulaziz (known inaccurately in the West as Ibn Saud) conquered Mecca, Medina, the holy cities of Islam, driving out the long-ruling Hashemites who were given the booby prizes of Jordan and Iraq by the British (there was always a split at Whitehall, with the dominant "Lawrence of Arabia" faction favoring the Prophet-descended Hashemites and a minority faction, led by Kim Philby's dad, St. John, favoring the Sa'udis.) At this time Abdulaziz took the title, "Malik" (king) and by 1932 had established the current approximate boundaries of KSA.
Although very strict and fundamentalist (he forbade music, among other things), Abdulaziz faced an even more fundamentalist revolt in 1929 which he succeeded in suppressing with the aid of Philby. In 1979, the same tribes would revolt, seizing control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, complaining of US domination and corruption (they demanded US removal, no women in universities, no soccer, no TV, and no rights for Shi'is, who were simultaneously revolting in the Eastern Province). They would be defeated by the National Guard, headed by current Crown Prince, Abdullah, leader of the more fundamentalist faction of the Sa'udi royal family that opposes the more pro-US and corrupt faction led by King Fahd.
The US became involved in KSA because of oil, although at the time of the crucial decision it was not known how rich in oil KSA would prove to be. It was at the 1928 conference at Achnacarry Castle in Scotland, owned by Walter Teagle of Royal Dutch Shell, that Shell, the future BP (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), and the future Exxon (New Jersey Standard) reached the Red Line Agreement whereby they divided up the Middle East by drawing red lines on a map. The British companies were more interested in Iran and Iraq where oil had already been discovered and left KSA for New Jersey Standard. Oil was only discovered there in 1936 which would eventually lead to the formation of ARAMCO out of four US majors to pump and refine oil in KSA, and which would eventually lead KSA to found OPEC with Venezuela in 1960. In 1948 KSA initiated profit-sharing and eventually nationalized the oil in the ground.
In any case, anybody who has read this far can figure the rest out. The leadership of KSA eventually became corrupted by the US alliance and besotted with petrodollars. The upshot has been an increasingly strong internal opposition based on traditional Sa'udi Wah'habism. The royal family supported anti-Soviet Wah'habist mujaheddin in Afghanistan, and with Osama bin Laden's participation in that war, well, the rest is history.
BTW, one Sa'udi king who was more resistant to the US was King Faisal who engineered the initial oil price hike of 1973 to punish the US for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Faisal was assassinated by a crazed nephew who was wreaking vengeance for Faisal's having executed his brother for attacking a TV station and killing guards. Faisal was the smartest and most respected of the 43 sons of Abdulaziz, being his representative at age 16 to the Versailles Conference. His mother was from the al-Sheik family, descendents of Mohammed al-Wah'hab. Barkley Rosser
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu