Carmen Bin Ladin

Carmen Bin Ladin wrote the book “Inside the Kingdom” to inform the public of how she became involved with the Bin Ladin family. She fell in love with a very western Saudi Arabian who took her to California so they could continue their education. When the returned to Saudi Arabia she was unprepared for the changes in her husband and what was expected from her as a Saudi woman. Her life as a Saudi woman consisted of visiting other family members for tea and to discuss their children, most other subjects were foreign to Saudi women. A Saudi woman’s sole responsibility is to have babies, they do not clean or cook they have servants for that. Carmen would wait for vacations out of Saudi Arabia so that she did not have to wear her berka and could dress and act western. Sitting in the passenger seat next to her husband was a treat. Carmen was not raised Saudi she was raised in Geneva, Switzerland by a Persian aristocrat mother and a Swiss father

Though Carmen has the Bin Ladin name she is not very closely related to Osama bin laden she was married to Yeslmen Bin Ladin who was one of 23 brothers and one of them was Osama. When asked to describe Osama she said he was commanding stern and intimidating.

I have been reading a book that I was required to read for my Middle East class. I did not know that I was so ill informed about the Middle East. News and media has cast such a negative shadow but it does not show that not all of it is negative. They live very similar to us in some ways they are not all poor and uneducated as many of us believe. The way that women are treated over there is horrible but a lot of the men over there are not so very different than us. They have jobs and are not all people in the middle east are poor. I found that reading the book “Inside the Kingdom” by Carmen Bin Ladin. I cannot believe that a required reading book could be so educational and yet a page turner. I think this would be interesting to other students because it shows that not...