From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Mentat:
The author also has a chilling message for the rest of us. Despite official protestations, she says, the vast majority of Saudis support Osama's extremist world-view. "Osama bin Laden is considered a true Muslim. They don't have any doubt about that," she says in a husky, French-accented voice. The Saudis, she maintains, are essentially Taliban with money.Ms. bin Ladin, who is half Swiss and half Iranian, was married for 14 years to Yeslam bin Ladin, the 10th son of the family patriarch, Sheik Mohamed. Osama is Yeslam's younger brother. Ms. bin Ladin lived in the Kingdom with the extended bin Laden clan from 1976 to 1985. Today, she lives in Switzerland, where she's still in a bitter, protracted divorce battle with Yeslam. The family have cut off all contact. "I know they're not very happy about the book," she says. "But they know it's true."
The book's a scorcher, not for its fleeting glimpses of Osama (who recoiled in horror when she once answered the door unveiled), but for its depiction of the utter oppression and submissiveness of Saudi women and the dysfunction of the elites. While Saudi princes rake off billions in business kickbacks, their neglected and depressed wives abuse drugs, drown their sorrows in extravagant shopping sprees, and turn to lesbian affairs for comfort. Many of them have bone density problems because they never go outside or exercise. When their husbands divorce them, they may never see their children again.
The bin Laden women "did nothing, read nothing, and were like pets kept by their husbands," she writes....
She is deeply pessimistic that Saudi society is capable of reform. "I have never seen Saudis questioning their culture and principles." And that's bad news for the rest of us.
"When Osama dies, I fear there will be a thousand men to take his place," she writes. "The ground of Saudi Arabia is fertile soil for intolerance and arrogance, and for contempt toward outsiders. It is a country where there is no room for mildness, mercy, compassion or doubt. . . . Their way has been chosen by God.
"They are eager to understand our technology, and they understand our political systems. But inside them, there is nothing but scorn for what they perceive as the godless, individualistic values and shameless freedoms of the Western way of life."
UBL is Yellow
God Bless the Country who has heros pitty the country who Needs them!!!
Why does UBL if alive show his face could it be yellow or has he had a sex change???
So UBL is Yellow !!!
Has to have women speek for him what a yellow coward why has he not shown his face if he is alive? no current pictures since tora-bora the arabs must be stupid we could make apes with his voice ? drawing the followers to kill them?
Yes UBL is Yellow
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Wisdom,Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen
Sorry to hear of the loses in Russia Yesterday may they find these murders!! And bring them to Justice
This is the kind of insider's tale, with its attendant promises of What Goes On Behind the Veil, in the Mysterious Kingdom, that is likely to bought by, and even read by, many people attracted by its sensational revelations, and its human interest side, and thus valuable in reaching those who would never ever think of studying Qur'an and hadith, or reading Ibn Warraq or Bat Ye'or or Robert Spencer or even, once or twice, visiting this website.
In the same way, the remarkable and sustained success of "Reading Lolita in Teheran" (Azaf Nafisi really should share her royalties with Dmitri Nabokov, given the indispensability of the word "Lolita" to the sales of her book; how many copies would have been sold of "Reading Pride and Prejudice in Teheran -- 300?) reflects not so much the book's modest virtues (in its message that novels can help to liberate us, that her handful of students saw them as exercices in freedom, a stay against not confusion but totalitarian Islam, the book would hardly be endorsed by her title's uncompromising co-author) as it does the popularity of the human interest side of things, particularly, one suspects, if the humans involved are women, constrained and persecuted in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is nothing wrong with this, but one hopes those made aware through this book of the craziness of Khomeini's beliefs will also learn, perhaps elsewhere, that these beliefs are perfectly orthodox reflections of the mainstream of teachings in Shi'a Islam; Khomeini was by no means offering a bizarre interpretation of those teachings. Of course, it is one thing to dryly refer to some of his writings (his call for hating and murdering all Infidels, his insistence that there is no room for humor in Islam), including of course, those strictures, glancingly noted in Nafisi's book, about to whom it is licit (halal) for an observant Muslim to serve the cooked remains of a four-footed animal (a goat, a lamb, a camel)upon whom he has previously, and permissibly, lavished his amorous impulses.
If Bush wins, Europe will have to reconcile itself to the "mad dogs" of Washington, and intelligent recognition of Bush's bad press overseas should lead to having others take the lead in pressing the case for a change in European policy based on a long-delayed comprehension of Islam. If Kerry wins, much will depend on his advisers, and whether the belief that we should "become more like Europe" in our foreign policy, in order to paper over differences, the very policy being enthusiastically pushed by Muslims and their non-Muslim apologists (especially ex-diplomats and others who receive, directly or indirectly, Arab largesse), prevails -- or whether we should work, as we did after World War II, to ensure that "Europe becomes more like us" in its attitude toward Islam and the Jihad. One suspects that if the girl from Lourenco Marques, Mrs. Kerry, were to begin to meet with other worldy-wise women, including Carmine Bin Laden, and Oriana Fallaci (if she is able), and not the phony Muslim reformers (such as Shirin Ebadi), but the real thing, such as Azam Kamguian, that will help to create some glimmer of understanding of what is wrong with Islam -- and other meetings, with refugees from the southern Sudan and Darfur, Christian refugees from Indonesia and Pakistan, Hindus from Bangladesh, American citizens who fled the Armenian genocide, Copts from Egypt, Maronites brutalized during the Muslim attacks of the past 30 years, all of these people should begin to organize, not separately but together, in order to help offset the vast and powerful pro-Muslim lobby, itself able to count not only on Arab money, but on such permanent pathologies as antisemitism, to provide willing workers for their cause (just listen to some of the talkshows, when the blame-and-hate Israel brigade really gets going).
The banishment into the outer darkness of policy impotence, of the likes of Sandy Berger, Joseph Wilson, Madeline Albright, and all those pathetic "elder statesmen" who havebeen so disastrous, with Jimmy Carter's name leading all the rest, would also be helpful. One needs to hire, and promote, those who have come to the problem of Islam afresh, without the decaders of treacly and pious nonsense about a community of interest with Saudi Arabia, our "staunch ally," or "moderate" and "peace-loving" Egypt.
Those who have failed in the past, and continue to fail, to recognize the need to understand the ideology of Islam, what passages are contained in Qur'an and hadith and are not tangential but central, what passages are quoted on those audiocassettes, what passages are used as the basis of those khutbas (the Friday Prayer sermons), what passages are devoutly believed by devout Believers -- this is what has to become the common knowledge of all those who presume to speak about Islam, or Western Europe, or the Middle East, indeed about foreign policy in general. And there is no shortcut; one cannot just assign the task to an underling who will come with a 1-2 page summary of the whole business. Sorry -- a little work is going to be required. And that includes a little histoorical work, into the nature of Islamic conquest (the violent Jihad) and in the precise elements of that constitute the dhimmitude that has everywhere, and always, been imposed on those non-Muslims who have been subjugated by Jihad (whether through combat, qital, or through the call to Islam, or da'wa)-- a status of humiliation, degradation, and permanent insecurity.
Any attempt to bring American foreign policy into alignment with a supposedly-estranged Europe should be based on American realism and willingness to fight, not on the European record of appeasement through the Euro-Arab Dialogue. That appeasement has not worked -- it is Western Europe, not the United States, that now contains within its borders a large Muslim population, that has already been the cause of great and increased expense, unpleasantness, damage to art treasures, and threats to the physical wellbeing of all Infidels. Their policy of appeasement may, in fact, lead to the islamization of Europe in two or three generations. This is not crazy, nor sensation-mongering, but a simple extrapolation from the data at hand. Indeed, it is those who briskly dismiss these warnings who are unable to produce the slightest evidence for their Pollyannish views, except that "it just can't be." Oh, but it can.
Good for Carmine Bin Laden. Good for those who published her. Let us hope those Tell-All books from Saudi Arabia keep coming. And would that those survivors of domestic servitude and slavery in Saudi Arabia could find a ghostwriter to tell their various tales -- someone who could put into English and other major European languages the horror stories that can be told in Thai, and Urdu, and Hindi, and Gujarati, and Tagalog, indeed in all the languages of the wage-slaves who endured lives of humiliation, degradation, and permanent insecurity (sound familiar) in Saudi Arabia.
the world of islam needs what happend in the USA years ago when women did not have the right to vote!
Women have to power with out women you have no men! Even the chinese see this?
If the women of Islam say no more they will reform untill that happens there will only be war!!
I'm sure the women of pursua do not want to live like the women of the palistians who seen their children to blow themselfs up?
Or why would all the Arab nations kick him out?
The Arab Women have to learn to be brave and Stand up for themselfs or there will be no Freedom this is why the other arab countrys are killing the Iraq People because they Know the Freedom will spill over to their houses?
UBL is YELLOW and so are his followers!!!!
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Wisdom,Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] Amen
The constant lies and distortions of Islam are indeed pounding on oour senses and one must remember every day to expose them and confront them.
But of all the liars, the wealthy taliban saudis are supreme.
They have reawakened the kraken monster, which so many were ignorant of or had conveniently forgotten, and are directly responsible for 911 and the massive Islamic disinformation and penetration that permeates the globe.
Through massive bribery they have escaped the tag of "Axis of evil" , and yet they should be at the top of the list.
It is a scandal of gargantuan proportions of which Bush is only a small part . A scandal which goes back to the Carter administration and beyond.
Already Islamists can in our own lands,openly pour their hatred at Jews and Christians with no risk of prosecution, having harnessed hosts of "human rights lawyers" ready to pounce on the any challenge to their self created immunity.
Imagine what would happen to right wing zealots who pronounced the same racist views !
Every year things will get worse as they push and push to dominate us in our own countries.
Will the politicians wake up? Will they read the history books ? ( those which publishers still dare to print)
Read an extract from Ms Bin Laden's book in a woman's mag. Was struck by extreme emptiness and boredom of Saudi Women's lives.They have no rights, nothing, women only exist as playthings of men and breeders.When their 'husband' gets tired of them they are discarded like the toys they are in reality. Even very rich Bin Ladens didn't spend their money on comfortable mansions
for entourage of wives, kids and retainers - Ms Bin Laden complained of 'primitive conditions.'
Let this book be a grim reminder to ALL women of what Sharia entails....NO FREEDOM FOR WOMEN AND DMIMMITUDE/SLAVE STATUS FOR INFIDEL MALES.
Catherine, Of course OBL is yellow! That's why he need dialysis! LMAO!
CBL's book together with the various newspaper and magazine excerpts and commentary, may be one of those unusual 'items' or events, that create and mark a mass change in perception /understanding.
The truth about Saudi and its leaders will out, and CBL has helped more than i think we can imagine.
What squalid lives these Saudi males live, squalid.
Forget the money, these are emotional, intellectual shrimp, impoverished, squalid, miserable human beings.
The Human Rights Forum is up and running
The URL is http://forums.delphiforums.com/western1
I read an excerpt of her book in a women's mag too (must be the same one, Morgane), and it was utterly depressing. I got the same sense of bleakness when she described life for women in SA. Devoid of life, purpose, ambition, excitement, an existence of emotional emptiness (which is how people like Bin Liner become so twisted and psychopathic). Apparently some women fake illnesses in hopes they'll get sent abroad for treatment. How desperate! And she describes the ruling elite of SA as the Taliban living in luxury. How appropriate actually. We all were aghast at what went on in Taliban Afghanistan, but it really doesn't seem that much different in SA. Maybe not nearly as much obvious, public brutality, but much the same restrictions and oppression.
It's also scary how she describes the reverence Arabs have for her brother-in-law. This official disowning & stripping of his citizenship is perhaps just a form of taqiya - a lie presented to the West, to make us think they disagree with him, all the while cheering him off, in ecstasy when he murders infidels. The Saudis are the true enemy. Despicable, slimy, duplicitious, untrustworthy scum.
She's not the only one I've read about who has said Bin Liner is viewed as a hero and if elections were held in SA tomorrow, he'd win hands-down.
She goes on to state the obvious, that he wants everything dragged back to the 7th Century and that observant Muslims are only worthy of saving. That's a difficult one for many of us in the West to absorb and accept. Most of us think that's preposterous, and perhaps paranoia. But it's true. Bizarre, sick, twisted, but true.
Trying to explain Islam to people, I usually confront a white-out expression. This information is priceless.
Please tell me the name of Carmine Bin Laden's book or the name of magazine that excerpted it. I want to read her story.
Thaks,
Rob
Rob, the book is titled "The Veiled Kingdom". Newly published, so I don't know the availability. The magazine excerpt I read is in the Australian Women's Weekly, July 2004. Not sure if it's online or not. You could do a search for the magazine. Whether they have the article online or not, would be doubtful. Not sure where you are, but maybe you just need to peruse some of the women's mags in your area. I know, that might look odd and would probably be boring - all those articles on dieting, princesses, recipes and other women's business ;-) Maybe get a female relative or friend to keep an eye for you.