Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia

This book is an intelligent, page-turning treatise of the enslaving of women and other horrific dangers of Sharia law and extreme Islamic fundamentalism. I am saddened by the forced lifestyles of women and girls in so much of Saudi Arabia. I am frightened by the implications. If you want to understand the threat of the spread of this intolerant way of life to basic freedom, please read this book and give it to your friends.

The first Iranian and Eastern actress to be nominated for an Oscar, Shohreh Aghdashloo received the nod for Best Supporting Actress in the memorable The House of Sand and Fog. Who more suited to read this amazing true story? She performs with delicacy, understanding, and a natural ease. All of this plus Carmen bin Laden's intimate memoir, her firsthand knowledge of a woman's lot in Saudi Arabia make this a can't stop listening-to audio book.

In 1974 when half-Swiss, half-Persian Carmen married Yeslam bin Laden, Osama's brother, she was a cultured woman with an international background, and she was in love. She didn't realize that with those wedding vows she was becoming part and parcel of a culture she did not know nor would she ever understand. "Parcel" may be an appropriate choice of words as under Saudi law a husband may divorce his wife and take her children. Carmen would find that to be true.

But, suddenly, she was thrust into a place where she was confined to her home, forbidden to read anything but the Koran or to go outside without wearing a long black garment that covered her face and body. How could she raise her three daughters as she knew they should be brought up in a society such as this? What of the other women who had married into this family; what was in their hearts and minds?

The marriage lasted 14 years, many of them painful. Then, in 1988, Yeslam divorced Carmen and her struggle to gain custody of her daughters began.

Listen as she relates her thoughts upon hearing of the Twin Towers tragedy, and hear her warnings for the future.

- Gail Cooke

I bought this book this morning, started it this afternoon and it is now early evening and I just finished it. I will be passing this book on to my three daughters. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, tells a love story of herself as an independent European woman falling in love with Yeslam bin Ladin, a half-brother to the infamous Osama.

Carmen is accustomed to living in Europe, mainly Switzerland, and she and her husband also spend time in California. Family matters take them back to Saudi Arabia where she is always an outsider and a foreigner. Life really begins to change in 1979 when Saudi Arabia begins to turn back to the strict rules of Wahabi Islam after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Life for women and all females becomes even more oppressive, to put it mildly.

I once worked in a bank where one of the many Saudi Princes had his accounts while attending college in Calif. His free spending habits and the arrogance of his groupies was mind-boggling. Carmen bin Ladin tells of the exhorbitant wealth of the royals and some of the decadence.

The author's struggle to raise her three daughters as independent, educated thinkers and her crumbling marriage against the backdrop of the bin Ladin family is a wonderful read.

This book should be required reading for women who take their freedom for granted. We truly never know just how hard life can be for women in other countries around the world. This book, written by a former wife to a Bin Laden, begins with a beautiful love story and ends in heartbreak and abandonment. The author details day-to-day life for women in Saudi Arabia with it's brutality, oppression, manipulation and boredom. The author married a Saudi because she truly believed he was different but when push came to shove he shows her that he is no better than his brothers. This is one book that you can't put down and you will never forget.

I could not put this book down. It is an eye opening account of the opressions faced by women in Saudi Arabia. She also emphasizes the hypocrisy of wealthy Saudi men who study in the west, clearly revel in western freedoms and then return to SA to decry the western infidel. In the final chapters, Carmen includes dire warnings about the future of western freedoms we tend to take for granted as fundamental Islam spreads.