Muammar al-Qaddafi (also spelled Moammar Gadhafi, or Mu’ammar al-Qadhdafi) was born to a Bedouin family near the town of Surt in Libya. The strict Islamic Bedouin way of life profoundly influenced Qaddafi’s later asceticism, as well as his political philosophy. As he once noted in an interview, growing up Bedouin helped him discover “the natural laws, natural relationships, life in its true nature, before life knew oppression, coercion and exploitation.”
When Qaddafi was a young man, both Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalist struggle in neighboring Egypt and the Arab struggle for Palestine drew him to Arab populist politics. In 1961 he entered the Libyan military academy in Benghazi, where he helped found a student military group called the Free Officers Movement and met the men who would eventually plot to overthrow the Libyan monarchy.
In September 1969 at a time when anti Western Arab nationalist sentiments were running ...
