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.”