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Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110005413
Book Review: Her Virtual Prison
(Wall Street Journal) Danielle Crittenden - Carmen bin Ladin is the ex-wife of Osama's older brother Yeslam, and she tells her own story in Inside the Kingdom, a vivid account of the oppressive lives of Saudi women. The daughter of a Swiss father and Iranian mother, Carmen was raised as a Muslim of liberal outlook. After meeting Yeslam in Geneva, in the mid-1970s she followed her husband to live in his mother's compound outside Jeddah, entering what sounds like a luridly decorated marble tomb. From then on, she was no longer free. When she did venture out, she had to wear a choking abaya and thick socks to hide her ankles. "It was like carrying a jail on your back," she writes. Inside the house she could not listen to music, pick up an uncensored book or newspaper, or watch anything on television but a dour man reading the Quran. "The Saudis are structured by a hateful, backward-looking view of religion and an education that is a school for intolerance," she writes.