Osama bin Laden was raised as a devout Wahhabi Muslim. Bin Laden's father ensured that he was regularly attending school. Bin Laden attended schools with some Western curricula and culture. No evidence has been found that he ever received full-time education in a religious madrassa. He was likely educated for some of his primary school years in Syria and that may have been in connection to his mother's frequent visits to Latakia, Syria. By the time bin Laden was an 8th grader, "he was a solid if unspectacular student." His mother remembered that he was "not an A student. He would pass exams with average grades
In the mid-1960s, around age 10, bin Laden briefly attended Brummana High School, a Quaker institution in Brummana, Lebanon along with several of his half brothers. Five former administrators and students said he attended for less than a year before returning home they did not say or recall why he left, but his leaving was not due to poor behavior or grades.Renee Bazz, a former administrative staff member, said that bin Laden went to another school in Lebanon before he attended Brummana.
He seemed to have stayed in Latakia for a period. He moved back to Jeddah in the following September. From 1968 to 1976 he attended the élite Al-Thager Model School. Bin Laden was probably in the fifth or sixth grade when he began attending Al-Thager. In the 1960s, King Faisal had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria, Egypt and Jordan so that by the early seventies it was common to find members of the Muslim Brotherhoodteaching at Saudi schools and universities. During that time, bin Laden became a member of the Brotherhood and attended its political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups.
Bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979 from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Despite his major subject, at university his main interest was religion; he was involved in both in interpreting the Quran and charitable work.A close friend reports, "we read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation. Sayyid Qutb himself, author of Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq, or Milestones, one of the most influential tracts on the importance of jihad against all that is un-Islamic in the world was deceased, but his brother and publicizer of his work, Muhammad Qutb, lectured regularly at the university. So did another charismatic Muslim Brotherhood member, Abdallah Azzam, an Islamic scholar from Palestine who was instrumental in building pan-Islamic enthusiasm for jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and in drawing Muslims (like Osama) from all over the Middle East to fight there.
Bin Laden was described by University friend Jamal Khalifa as extremely religious. Neither man watched films nor listened to popular music, because they believed such activities went against the teachings of the Qur'an. During his University career he witnessed many world-changing events, especially in 1979. First he watched the Iranian Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomieini overthrew Iran’s Western supported government to install an Islamist state. Then he saw the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by radicals in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government’s dependent response and reliance on Western power. It was not until the French special forces came in that the government was able to regain control of Mecca’s holiest site. Bin Laden was disgusted with his government’s lack of ability to protect the sacred city, and he began to see the royal family more and more as corrupt. Finally, he ended 1979 ready to fight off the invading Soviets in Afghanistan.
In regard to his Islamic learning, bin Laden was sometimes referred to as a "sheikh," considered by some to be "well versed in the classical scriptures and traditions of Islam and was said to have been mentored by scholars such as Musa al-Qarni. He had no formal training in Islamic jurisprudence, however, and was criticized by Islamic scholars as having no standing to issue religious opinion.
