Bin Laden niece appears in racy photos

Associated Press
Dec. 23, 2005 12:10 PM

NEW YORK - Osama bin Laden's niece, in an interview with GQ magazine in which she appears scantily clad, says she has nothing in common with the al-Qaida leader and simply wants acceptance by Americans.

"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," Wafah Dufour, the daughter of bin Laden's half brother, Yeslam Binladin, says in the January edition of the magazine, referring to the al-Qaida leader.

"I want to be accepted here, but I feel that everybody's judging me and rejecting me," said the California-born Dufour, a law graduate who lives in New York. "Come on, where's the American spirit? Accept me. I want to be embraced, because my values are like yours. And I'm here. I'm not hiding."

Dufour, who adopted her mother's maiden name after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that have been blamed on bin Laden, appears in several provocative photos in the magazine.

more...
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1223binladen-niece23-ON.html

I don't know. I think this is kind of sad. To be accepted in the US a woman has to take her clothes off? I can only guess at how hard it must be for her to be OBL's niece, but still... Oh well. It's a supposedly free country and she can do as she pleases. I hate to see her get exploited to death, though. She's brave, or maybe, she's just bait.

On edit: Just an aside... I was born here and I've never felt "embraced" by the "American spirit." I think she's got this country confused with another.

Not while she can coast on a relative's celebrity/infamy while insisting that she wants nothing to do with it. You think GQ would have given her a second look if she WASN'T Osama's niece?

:headbang:
rocknation

Her family are billionaires and she has a law degree.

I applaud her efforts to show that not all Muslims are alike and her remorse over the 9/11 attacks. Isn't that what people are always complaining about? That the "mainstream" Muslims never condemn the attacks but are silently complicit? Good for her for speaking out on both counts.

Maybe she's celebrity-fucking, but she's doing it for a good cause. I think you've judged her a bit harshly.

while clothed?

The article makes an out-of-right-field reference to music she's created. Found this at ABC News:

Now I get it--she wants to be the Arabian Paris Hilton! No wonder she thinks it's simply a matter of wearing as little as possible!

:shrug:
rocknation

Show me a successful woman in the entertainment industry that hasn't posed for shots a hell of a lot racier than these. It's not like it's the full-monty. She's in a bathtub. Hell, it's tasteful compared to the stuff Madonna and J-Lo have gotten up to.

I haven't heard her music so I can't judge her talent and maybe she is just cashing in on a famous name (she changed it so who would know that she was Binladen's niece if she didn't bring it up?) but at the same time I think what she's doing is damn courageous coming from a culture where women are stoned to death for showing an ankle.

Whether she knows it, or not.

This is why we can't find Osama. He has shaved his beard and legs and is hiding in plain site. Alert agent Mike.

not so much to try and gain acceptance from Americans but for other reasons.

Money is one.
Proving she's not a radical fundamentalist like bin Laden though, well that may be another. That is not necessarily the same as gaining acceptance from Americans, it could be an act of defiance, rejecting any common background. If she was raised with this strict religious upbringing which she now rejects, this is a heck of a way to say "screw you" to all the clerics who told her she had to hide her body and be a slave to her husband.

It would be sad if she thought people would only listen to her if she did something like this. But I don't think that is all that is at work here.

she must be in danger

...enough money so that she can find a good place in Europe or the U.S. to hide for the next 20 years or so, because if anyone of the Bin Laden family find her (which is about 1/2 of Saudi Arabia), She's Dead.

Moslem men must be so screwed in the head.

I once read in A.S. Neill's "Summerhill" that religion was anti-life and anti-sex. That made and still makes so much sense to me. (Straight) men should be worshipping at the altar of female sexuality, not to some ignorant and ultimately impotent anthropomorphic male god.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10587817

It's not just Muslim men who are screwed in the head when it comes to woman and sex. Think about how the fundy x-tians react to a womans sexuality, and independence. The current middle eastern culture gives the men title to be more violent about it, is all, but we're really not that far removed from burning these hussy's at the stake.

Men are terrified of female sexuality. Have been throughout history, and continue to be so. It is only in a few liberal democracies world wide that woman have been accepted as (sorta) equals and (sorta) given control of their own sexuality. And just look at the reaction that limited liberation has spawned. The fundy churches are the fastest growing churches in this country, and the effort to turn back the clock and undo the sexual revolution is one of their prime objectives, and fuels the fact that 65% of men in this country support the republican party.

Men are terrified of female sexuality, and we have corrupted, and perverted every religion created in our historical effort to control the female, and subjugate her sexuality