What's the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda?

For a simple definition, the Taliban was the ruling party in Afghanistan until the US invaded in 2002/2003. The Taliban idealized a fundamentalist (sharia) view of Islam and enforced those values on everyone else in the country. Woman couldn’t go to school or vote, and could be legally raped by their husbands. Art, music and dancing were outlawed. The Taliban destroyed countless irreplaceable works of art such as some carvings of giant Buddhas at the Buddhist temple of Bamyan that were around 1500 years old because they considered them “Idols”.

The Taliban were very very strict about enforcing their laws and public executions for those that disobeyed were common.

Al Queda is a terrorist organization headed up by Osama Bin Laden. He originally founded the group because he was upset that Saudi Arabia allowed the US to have military bases in “The Holy Land”. (Osama is a Saudi) Since then, his group has bombed numerous targets such as military barracks, embassies, and most notably, the Twin Towers on 9/11/01.

The groups are similar in the fact that they both hate the West and “infidels” but different in the fact that one group ruled a country and the other is a terrorist orginization.