Born on July 30, 1957 (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)

Terrorist

Osama bin Laden is known throughout the world as the terrorist mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, airplane attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which killed several thousand people. In the United States and throughout much of the West (countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Canada), bin Laden is seen as a vicious terrorist, someone who "hates freedom," in the words of U.S. president George W. Bush (1946–; served 2001–). Established governments in many Middle Eastern countries also identify bin Laden as a terrorist threat. Yet there are many people in the Middle East who consider bin Laden a hero. Bin Laden and his followers represent the extreme side of Islamic fundamentalism, a religious movement which began in the Middle East in the late 1970s. Extreme Islamic fundamentalists...