[link|http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/13580.html|EB] article on Wahhabism, and [link|http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/neareast/ne14a.html#Wahhabi|this] article from a long history of the near east:

Al-Wahhab directed his greatest anger, though, at the Ottoman sultan who claimed to be Islam's caliph, denouncing the Porte for its "ungodly inclination toward the filthy devices of the Frankish infidels." By the time of his death his followers dominated the central Arabian desert. Now they began to raid the nearest Ottoman provinces and in 1801 they sacked Kerbela, the holy Shiite city in Iraq. In 1804, after some initial reverses, they took Medina from the sharif of Mecca; to the horror of most Moslems, they destroyed the tomb of Mohammed, since they regarded even that as a potential site for saint worship. In 1806 they took Mecca and read public prayers in the name of the Saudi chief instead of the sultan. This alarmed the Ottomans so much that they called upon Mohammed Ali, the new governor of Egypt, to drive the Wahhabis out of the holy cities. Egyptian troops invaded Arabia, and after a long and bitter struggle, they finally triumphed in 1818. The Wahhabi leader at this time, Abdullah ibn Saud, was beheaded in Constantinople; Mohammed's tomb was rebuilt, and foreigners dominated most of Arabia for some 20 years. Nevertheless, defeat in battle did not destroy the Wahhabi movement. It outlived the Ottoman empire, and in modern Saudi Arabia Wahhabi Islam is still applied to every condition of human life. It also gained some appeal among pious Moslems in India and the rest of the Middle East, though it never turned into a full-blown fundamentalist movement there.

The Wahhabi (of which bin Laden is one, IIRC) see the importance of Islam in the Koran and their teachings about Allah. AFAIK, they couldn't care less about the important Islamic cities like Mecca and Medina.

"But they want the US out of the holy Islamic lands" you might say. The history of Wahhabism doesn't seem to indicate that the cities are important - it's the actions of the people that matter. In short, bin Laden's demand can probably be viewed as having nothing to do with Islam but more to do with his political views.

My $0.02. Remember, I'm not a historian either... :-)

Cheers,
Scott.