Wafah Dufour, one of Osama bin Laden's large family, and California-born, seeks American acceptance.
She lives here, an aspiring singer, but was raised in a conservative backdrop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Until at the age of ten she moved to Switzerland. She knows both worlds but claims to be the only genetically-close Bin Laden relative to have opted to remain in this one after 9/11.
Heck, I don't want to be judged by any random uncle either. But there is something amiss here...
It Isn't Easy Being the Sexy Bin Laden
On a hot August afternoon, aspiring pop star Wafah Dufour walks into the media lunch hub Michael's, in Midtown Manhattan. Accompanied by her publicist, Richard Valvo, the slender, exotic young woman with long dark hair in a high ponytail à la I Dream of Jeannie is dressed in a white tank top, green love beads, lacy miniskirt, and backless pumps. Conversations continue as heads look up to check her out.
...
The face is alluring (big dark eyes, long lashes, plump lips, caramel skin), but she looks wounded. And there's something else. At first I can't quite figure it out, but then it hits me: She looks a little like her uncle, albeit a waify ninety-eight-pound tiny-footed version. Sexy Osama! I hold that thought while I listen to her explain that she's his half niece and one of hundreds of bin Ladens, most of whom are in Saudi Arabia, where she hasn't been since she was 10. She has no contact with most of her relatives, including her father, doesn't speak Arabic, has an American passport... The list goes on. "At the end of the day, I believe that the American people understand things and they have compassion and they see what's fair," she says. "They're very fair, and that's why I love America, and that's why my mom loves America."
Osama's Niece Poses in Racy Photo Shoot
NEW YORK (AP) -- 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.
...
"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."
Well she is hiding... Behind bubble bath suds.
What I mean is that she is hiding behind objectified femininity. Not that I have any problem with feminine objectivity when the feminine opt for that as a way to express themselves. I understand what she is trying to say here, and that it is about her personally. But
is she a GQ girl, per se, or is this an attempt to gain a platform for something more?
Wafah has made other press ripples:
On September 11th, Wafah Binladin, a twenty-six-year-old graduate of Columbia Law School, was finishing the summer holidays with her family in Geneva. Wafah's father, Yeslam, is the Geneva-based head of the Binladin family's European holding company, the Saudi Investment Company. When she learned of the terror attacks on America, Wafah, who lived in a rented loft in SoHo, became frantic. She knew several people who lived and worked in the area of the World Trade Center, and she repeatedly tried to reach friends in New York. "I was in shock," she recalled, when I reached her in Switzerland recently. "All I thought about was the people in those buildings. I couldn't get hold of my friends. . . . I live only ten blocks away. Every night, I'd walk home, down West Broadway, looking up at the Twin Towers. I have pictures of myself there with my friends. We went to Windows on the World. I kept thinking, How can anyone do such a thing?" Later, she says, she heard the news that the prime suspect was her uncle Osama bin Laden. (Some members of the family prefer "Binladin.") "I thought then, Oh, no! I'll never be able to go back to the States again."
Okay okay. For once the sparing of the Bin Ladens from possible lynch mobs and McCarthyism right after Sept. 11th evokes an iota of sympathy, if not actual concurrence.
And...
Wafah Dufour Speaks With Barbara Walters About Her Notorious Relative and Life in the West
June 3, 2005 -- Until recently, Wafah Dufour was known as Wafah bin Ladin, a monumental handicap for this aspiring singer.
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She went to an all-girls school and learned to memorize the Koran. While she was too young to wear a veil, she recalls seeing her mother draped in one. "When you're 10 years old or 8 years old you don't really think about 'am I going to have to wear the veil?'" said Dufour. "But I think that my mom was thinking 'oh my God, I don't want them to have to wear this. I don't want my daughters, my three daughters to have to wear a veil.'"
All of that is well and good. Nothing would be a greater testament to America than embracing this budding pop star for her talent or her opinions.
But wait. Her publicist is a good one, checks out as a big shot. But she has nothing on iTunes. Nothing musically on the web at all that I can find. So what is the plan here? Cheesecake alone? Is a single somewhere on the shelf or in the bin? And has she no actually opinions worth even so much as Britney Spears' gravid...
Spears: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
CNN's Carlson: Do you trust this president?
Spears: Yes, I do.
CNN's Carlson: Excellent.
It's not enough to say the USA is great and acceptance would be nice. None of us, actually, are accepted here without something to offer.
Beauty and novelty are worth a look. But...
No public opinions, and no proof of musical talent on offer... What's to get excited about with Wafah Dufour? She has lovely legs to be sure. But the idea that the niece of an enemy of America can be just another slick cellulose starlet should move exactly no one beyond the mild shock value of her family relationship... A relationship she would seemingly prefer to downplay, having dropped "Bin Laden" for her mother's maiden name.
Frankly, if what she wants is not an exploitative meal ticket wherein she is stuck rehashing a renunciation of her main claim to fame, then she has got to give.
If as she says she is tired of "climbing a mountain" in conversation to get past the family connection, then perhaps offering something more interesting than being "just like us" would help.
Wafah is known as a party girl, who once danced with President George W Bush's daughter Jenna at a nightclub in the south of France.
Frankly, I'd be fascinated to hear what her deal is, assuming there is substance. Either way. Is she laissez faire toward wingnuttery like the privileged with liberal lifestyles often are? Or has she got any kind of bee in her bonnet about the importation by the right of Taliban attitudes to the USA?
The thing is, rightwing propaganda aside, their is no blank "American" attitude, belief, values, or other blandness to fold innocuously into. Okay, maybe there is, but I for one have no interest in it. And those people really aren't that interested in girls whose good looks are exotic, methinks, beyond a single magazine spread.
So, dear, dish.
If you have no interesting opinions and ideas, think of some. Oh wait, with like thirty minutes' searching, I found a hint of a stand.
Got more? I mean attending a gay men's benefit in this town is about as much of a statement as attending a Yankees game.
And if you want to be a noted singer, well then some sort of recordings where anyone can find them would be a great start too. A better first salvo than the (appealing on another level) pics.
Bin Laden niece back in America to seek pop fame
According to Wafah, her mother fears "some fundamentalist will do away with me" because of her new career. She is currently working on an album and demo tape under the name Wafah Dufour (her mother's maiden name) and describes her voice as "sort of Chrissie Hynde" -- a reference to the vocalist with The Pretenders.
She added: "I am not a bimbo. I don't want sympathy. I only ask that people try to understand."
Understood? Yes. Maybe. Hopefully not.
Some form of success, by resorting to the same old tired cheesecake spread for attention, would not be a testament to US culture. It would be, if it worked, and were backed by no further substance, be a very damning indictment of our society. "Isn't it ironic?"
The fact is, barring evidence to the contrary, Wafah very well might not be a musical sensation. And she has looks that have only so much utility (whatever their appeal). It does really boil down to the Uncle Connection in all likelihood then.
Neglecting that, would be read as using it as a gimmick, whether truly intentional or not. That would be different than any other in a string of young women who have played it coy, playing down ostensibly, the notoriety that gained their initial attention.
Since the interest she could cultivate (assuming she's not the new Maria Callas or even Chrissie Hynde) is political, she should speak to politics. And not to the anti-politics of simply sinking into the fluffy nothingness of American pop culture.
And there are plenty of things she could say that aren't precisely partisan, whether on one side of the Dem/Repub rift, or the West/Islam rift.
If I were to interview her, I would ask:
- Do you think that Christianity is inherently more compatible with free societies, or have we just done a better job keeping it separate from our government thus far?
- Or do you think that the US, etc., are not really religious societies per se?
- Do you practice some form of Islam, or other? Do you think caring for the poor is an actual governmental obligation, or just something Judeo-Christianity including of course Islam, commands?
- Are some of your best friends Jewish? Or... What do you think the US should do regarding Israel and an independent Palestine?
- In Soho did you ever hang out with Rupert Murdoch's son? Do you ever watch Fox News in earnest, or read the New York Post?
- Was posing for GQ a post-feminist statement for you? Was it aimed more at the conservative side of the Arab world, or at a potential audience for your music?
- What sort of statement or inspiration can be found in your music?
- Do you consider yourself a dissident, or are you really just a western kid with a different past? Or are you a dissident of some sort even in the West?
- What do you think is the future of, or a solution to, the current "War on Terror?" And how about the rift between Islam and the West generally?
- Do you think that Arab countries can or should be at all like the West? Do you think that can happen democratically? I mean, even if the West invaded an Arab, could the first generation ever be expected to elect a government that wouldn't take it back to an Islamic authoritarian regime?
- The Russian who created the pop group t.A.T.u. tried to replicate that "success" with a terrorist-themed girl act called n.A.T.o. That was in pretty poor taste, wasn't it? Obviously you don't want the press to portray your act as if it were comparable. The GQ spread accomplishes that, as your statements about terror have. But do you plan to use your music to make any kind of statement about terrorism? Or are you avoiding that for this reason?
- Is Jenna cool? Do you think she might ever pull a Ron Reagan Jr. at a future Democratic Convention?
- What else could we do to catch your uncle? Could you maybe throw a party for him at our hotel at YearlyKos so we can get credit for snaring him? Are you tired of lame Osama jokes as we near 2006?