A visiting New York Times magazine writer last year found 2,800 students enrolled in one school, ranging in age from 8 to 35. Most came from extremely poor backgrounds and spent their time memorizing the Koran. Subjects like math, computer science, or non-Islamic history were not taught. More advanced students reviewed the hadiths, or sayings and traditions of the Prophet Mohammad. Non-Arabic speakers, like the Afghan or Pakistani Pashtuns, or the students from former Soviet republics like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and some Chechens, learned or brushed up on their Arabic. Graduate students studied how to issue fatwas, or religious edicts, on subjects ranging from family law to the waging of jihad, or holy war. That course included about 600 students.
As Western security agencies intensify their search for possible cells of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist group, reliable Arab diplomatic sources in Athens said yesterday that the network could have a very different and far more dangerous dimension. They claim that bin Laden's network is not made up only of illegal, dissident groups but has managed to infiltrate the military, the secret services and even government circles of Arab states, including the two leading countries of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. According to these sources, the heart of bin Laden's network is not in Afghanistan but in the country of his birth, Saudi Arabia. It is well known that bin Laden, a member of the Saudi economic elite, enjoyed close ties with the royal family during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He clashed with the family when King Fahd allied himself with the United States in the Gulf War and after the bomb attack against US forces in Riyadh in November 1995. What is not known is that bin Laden never severed his ties with the strongest member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Abdullah, who, in effect, is ruling the kingdom as Fahd has been confined to a wheelchair.