Tangentially from Tangiers...

Just a quick biographical sketch from an online Encyclopedia of the biography of Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tumart, the founder of the Almohad dynasty, and an interesting case study in the historical potential of a single well-educated zealot:

Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small, ugly, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar.

As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (or "Makkah"), whence he was expelled on account of his severe strictures on the laxity of others, and thence wandered to Bagdad, where he attached himself to the school of the orthodox doctor al Ashari. But he made a system of his own by combining the teaching of his master with parts of the doctrines of others, and with mysticism imbibed from the great teacher Ghazali. His main principle was a rigid unitarianism which denied the independent existence of the attributes of God, as being incompatible with his unity, and therefore a polytheistic idea. Muhammad in fact represented a revolt against the anthropomorphism of commonplace Muslim orthodoxy, but he was a rigid predestinarian and a strict observer of the law. After his return to Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, he began preaching and agitating, heading riotous attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the Murabit (Almoravide) amir `Ali III, in the streets of Fez, because she was going about unveiled after the manner of Berber women. `Ali, who was very deferential to any exhibition of piety, allowed him to escape unpunished.

Ibn Tumart, who had been driven from several other towns for exhibitions of reforming zeal, now took refuge among his own people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas. It is highly probable that his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found a lieutenant in 'Abd-el-Mumin el Kumi, another Berber, from Algeria, who was undoubtedly a soldier and statesman of a high order. When Ibn Tumart died in 1128 at the monastery or ribat which he had founded in the Atlas at Tinmal, after suffering a severe defeat by the Murabtis, 'Abd-el-Mumin kept his death secret for two years, till his own influence was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, 'Abd-el-Mumin not only rooted out the Murabits, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming amir of Morocco in 1149. Muslim Spain followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Muwahhids transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the cathedral, the tower of which they erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Ya`kub el Mansur.

So, let's see here. A movement of puritanical religious zealots start attacking Muslim liquor stores and unveiled women, attracting both notice and retribution from the powers that be. Within a generation, a man whose claim to fame was as a disciple of an ugly, violent zealot afforded enough legitimacy to sweep away the established dynasties of multiple neighboring kingdoms. That's an awful lot of authority resting on the hunched back of a single pious gnome...

I'm both afraid and fascinated to learn what the historical significance of Osama Bin Laden's movement will be. My guess is that the "final" outcome would shock even the most careful-minded of us forward-looking contemporaries...