Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia

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.

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.