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Osama bin Laden was a Van Halen fan
"Music is the flute of the devil." So remarked al-Qaeda head-honcho Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. In fact, such was his animus towards all things melodic that according to Lawrence Wright's terrorist-trashing tome, The Looming Tower, Osama stopped attending his beloved horse races because the Khartoum track had the nerve to install a house band.
All of which sits uneasily with what Sudanese poet Kola Boof has to say about the world's most-wanted man. Namely, his penchant for Spandex-clad cock-rockers and camp new wavers with scary beehives. In her autobiography, Boof claims that in 1996 she was kept as a "sex slave" by bin Laden in Morocco, where he would "become this devout party boy who wanted to hear Van Halen or some B-52s. To this day, I would hear the song Rock Lobster in my sleep. I would be jerking around like a white girl … 'Dance like a Caucasoid girl!' he would say."
Osama's highest praise, however, was reserved for Whitney Houston, who was "the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen". Such was his love of the infidel chanteuse, Boof remembers that he wanted to arrange a meeting with Houston, buy her a mansion in a Khartoum suburb and have Bobby Brown killed. Note to FBI: want to spring Osama from his Flintstones-like existence? Spreading word on the Tora Bora grapevine that Brown and Houston have now divorced might do the trick …
All of which sits uneasily with what Sudanese poet Kola Boof has to say about the world's most-wanted man. Namely, his penchant for Spandex-clad cock-rockers and camp new wavers with scary beehives. In her autobiography, Boof claims that in 1996 she was kept as a "sex slave" by bin Laden in Morocco, where he would "become this devout party boy who wanted to hear Van Halen or some B-52s. To this day, I would hear the song Rock Lobster in my sleep. I would be jerking around like a white girl … 'Dance like a Caucasoid girl!' he would say."
Osama's highest praise, however, was reserved for Whitney Houston, who was "the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen". Such was his love of the infidel chanteuse, Boof remembers that he wanted to arrange a meeting with Houston, buy her a mansion in a Khartoum suburb and have Bobby Brown killed. Note to FBI: want to spring Osama from his Flintstones-like existence? Spreading word on the Tora Bora grapevine that Brown and Houston have now divorced might do the trick …
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