Life
El-Hage was born to a Maronite Christian family in Sidon, Lebanon on 25 July 1960 but grew up in Muslim Kuwait, where he converted to Islam. From 1978 he studied urban planning at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then named the University of Southwestern Louisiana. El-Hage interrupted his schooling to travel to Afghanistan via Pakistan to participate in the fighting against the USSR. He was reportedly under Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, an important figure in the early history of al-Qaeda. El-Hage returned to his university in January 1985, graduating in 1986. Married by now, he relocated to Arizona, where he held several low-wage jobs. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1989.
Over the next few years, the el-Hage family travelled repeatedly to Pakistan, initially taking along his mother-in-law and her husband. In an interview with PBS Frontline, el-Hage's mother-in-law said, "I was the matron surgical nurse at an Afghan surgical hospital. Wadih did not actually fight, but acted as an educator. My husband went with Wadih to deliver textbooks and Qur'ans to the young people. It was a Jihad, a fight for Islam."
Read more about this topic: Wadih El-Hage
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