In 1981, Al-Timimi returned to the United States and enrolled in a premed program at The George Washington University, while spending much of his time networking with different groups in the local Muslim community. Al-Timimi was quoted as saying that he "flirted with each group, only quickly to become disinterested in their rhetoric and what I perceived as their being out of touch with the questions being raised in America—about Islam and the Muslims." Stating that he was "hungry for answers to the larger philosophical questions," Al-Timimi returned to Saudi Arabia in 1987, where he studied Salafiya for a year at the Islamic University of Madinah and became a student of Abdul-Aziz bin Baz. He also became influenced by Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, Safar Al-Hawali and Muhammad Surur.