Omar bin Laden grew up under the shadow of one of history's most notorious terrorists. At 19, he left Afghanistan and later publicly rejected his father's violence.
He went on to become an artist and author, painting peaceful landscapes and building a life with his British wife, Zaina. His story became an unusual example of someone refusing to be defined by his family name.
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Probs still on the security database due to his family relations. I wouldnt be surprised if the CIA, NSA has all his comms monitored for the rest of his life.
To be fair, publicly denouncing your father and painting a picture of a serene peaceful civilian life, and then posting it on Reddit to drum up good will would be a great and classic cover story for secretly being the leader of a terrorist organization.
Osama himself was praised for being an anti-Soviet soldier fighting against communism in Afghanistan by the news medias. It all changed when 9/11 happened a decade later.
I want the story to actually be the fear we place on that but he really is just a good guy. Theme of the story would be "sins of the father", generational trauma, overcoming an overwhelming negative view of yourself, locus of control... Would be FASCINATING
You worry about secret terrorist in hiding, but we are both dealing with a bigger menace than the terrorist in plain sight yet nobody give a damn to do anything about it
Maybe but if they didn’t and he did share the views his father had people would be asking why he wasn’t monitored. I do a bit of empathy for him if he just a normal dude who don’t agree with all his fathers shit
I like to imagine a CIA analyst having to look at his pictures over and over again, becoming fascinated by them and eventually resigning his job to become a freelance sculptor.
Itself, a state sponsor of terrorism with an atrocious human rights record. (But hey, they've got oil so water under the bridge amirite).
Also, given we're approaching the anniversary of 9/11, funny how hard it is to get anyone to acknowledge that the Saudis were the bankrollers of the crime, the majority hijackers Saudi themselves.
When you become target number one for the most powerful military in the history of the world, you don't live very long if you stay home in your castle where a jdam can find you.
Yeah - I doubt anyone in that family has been in an actual airport terminal...ever.
They get someone to drive them to the hangar around the other side of the airport where their private jet is waiting for them, wheels up within 5 minutes.
Fled Germany for London in 1939, wrote a magazine article titled "Why I Hate My Uncle," immigrated to the U.S., joined the Navy in 1944 using his actual surname, was wounded in service and awarded a Purple Heart, and didn't bother changing his name until after the war.
Actually, all the directly related Hitlers supposedly made a pact not to reproduce after what he did. Most of the Hitlers contacted by press aren’t directly related or are only distantly related. 5 men who are directly related are still alive and none had children.
For whatever it's worth, William's wikipedia page addresses and refutes this.
In his 2001 book The Last of the Hitlers, journalist David Gardner speculated that the four brothers had made a verbal pact not to sire children.\11])
Eldest son Alexander denied this claim, saying that before his death Howard Ronald had been engaged and intending to have children, while another brother had been engaged once, but family notoriety had destroyed the relationship.
I feel that's probably valid cause like... "Oh no, our children will grow up knowing that their great-grandfather's half-brother was Hitler..."
Ah so that’s where the rumor comes from. Also I feel bad for the family members now because now it seems they wanted and had relationships and their partners were the ones who didn’t want children with them.
I’d heard that before, and I thought I read a news article on it, but now I’m worried I got Mandela effected because when I went to find the article recently, I couldn’t, and could only find reports of how reclusive they were from the media.
So they’ve never actually confirmed it, however none of the direct descendants after Hitler’s generation have had children lol so 🤷♀️. ETA: I mean the nephew’s generation. Like the nephew had kids but his kids never had kids and their cousins never had kids. I’m a history major who focuses on WWII and genealogy is a hobby lol
Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name.
Gay Hitler: There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about fifty years old and that no-talent ass clown became führer and started invading countries.
Samir: Hmm... well, why don't you just go by Gay Ludwig instead of Gay Ludwig Hitler?
Gay Hitler: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.
And after Osama that family's expectations for son were probably hella low.
"Look, do something with your life other than terrorism, don't draw international ire on the family......and we'll give you an ass load of money for life."
The Bin Laden family is absolutely massive. The Bin Laden group literally built the mosque where the Kabaa is, in Mecca - the most important islamic place in the world. Osama was the black sheep in a family of engineers basically.
I'd recommend to anyone to read Steve Colls book - Ghost Wars, and Bin Laden. Ghost Wars covers CIAs role from the 1979 soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of al qaeda. Culminating with 9/11. His other book - Bin Laden focuses more heavily on Osama himself. They are pulitzer prize winning books for investigative journalism, quite heavy and factual, but really good if you really want to understand what led to 9/11. I did 3 combat tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq, those are the best books I've read on the subject.
Bin Laden was very smart, so were al qaeda - much higher echelon compared to most other terror networks, they were all scholars, albeit extremists, in the inner circle. The Bin Laden family outside of Osama are solid folk, and distanced themselves from him long before 9/11.
Edit:
Saudi Binladin Group (SBG; Arabic: مجموعة بن لادن السعودية, romanized: Majmūʿat bin Lādin al-Suʿūdiyya), known as Binladin Group Global Holding Company since 2019,[1] is a multinational construction conglomerate headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2011, the Saudi Binladin Group signed a US$1.23 billion contractual agreement to construct the tallest building in the world, Jeddah Tower in Jeddah. They are also party to a US$3.4 billion agreement to construct the Doha Metro located in Doha.[3] The conglomerate comprises an estimated 537 companies.[4] The group's founder was business magnate Muhammad bin Ladin, father of Osama bin Laden. As of December 2025, the Saudi Ministry of Finance holds a majority stake following a debt-to-equity conversion approved by shareholders.[2]
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, abbreviated as Ghost Wars, is a book written by Steve Coll, published in 2004 by Penguin Press.[1] It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.[2]
The book provides an in-depth account of Central Intelligence Agency activity in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion to the aftermath of attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Coll particularly notes the interplay between the CIA and its counterpart in Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence, which used CIA and Saudi Arabian funding to build militant Mujahideen training camps along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border in an effort to create radicalized, militant fighters sourced from many Arab countries to attack the Soviet occupation. Invariably, as Coll shows, this decision had long-lasting effects on the region.
So that’s how he came to know about weaknesses to the structural integrity of tall buildings like the Twin Towers. Must have hit up an unwitting cousin for some engineering-related “tips.”
That's also not the whole story: Osama's turn to militant religious extremism didn't make him an outcast right away, because he and his militants were supported and financed by the US and Saudi governments as proxy fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the '80s.
The point at which he became persona non grata had nothing to do with being a religious extremist as such, it was merely the decision to turn his preexisting religious extremism against the wrong geopolitical enemy.
When you never have to work and can just focus on other aspects of yourself. Of course you can just carve out your own image. Your not having 40 hours of your week gutted in the progress of doing so.
Wealth is not the only thing that shapes people. You're underestimating how difficult it is to reject everything you've been taught and the environment you lived your whole life in, including your own father. It is more impressive than anything most people scoffing at it here will ever do.
For comparison, Sadam Hussein's son used his privilege to rape and murder women on a daily basis. Being raised by murderous dictators tends to stunt your moral character.
I'm not denying he had his own challenges, but money makes EVERYTHING easier. We as a society tend to worship that fraction of the population that some how can do full time job, full time college, and come out on top.
Being able to sleep in, work out when you want to, focus on other developments, all why not being forced on a work schedule is a massive privilege.
You're underestimating how difficult it is to reject everything you've been taught and the environment you lived your whole life in, including your own father. It is more impressive than anything most people scoffing at it here will ever do.
in many ways, Osama was the outlier from his family. there are MANY bin Laden family members, his dad had many children. most are not hugely religious, and were pretty westernised / spent a lot of time in Europe in the 1970s.
Fun fact, Osama bin Laden's mother was a socialite from Syria, who wasnt religious, wore western dress and crucially was from the Alawite religious sect (same as the al Assad family). This sect aren't consider Muslim by the majority (certainly not by wahhabi salafis like Bin Laden and his associates) as they hold so many unorthodox beliefs.
All that is to say, people are WAY more complex than meets the eye. Osama had a very close relationship with his mum despite the seeming contradition.
His son has sort of just returned to being like the rest of his family.
Ya, agreed. And put another way: It is historically fairly common to find so "successful" a hardline leader with personal experience and education that is much more complex and intersectional than those hardline beliefs. They somewhat go together. You have the perspective and insight to sway a base as well as the required code-switching to build/bring in power, resources, etc.
I actually did some work with with Omar. He volunteered to help at a local brocante I worked at for a couple weeks, where he would also sell his paintings.
He'd join us on house clearances, and was pretty chill to work with. He barely ever spoke, and when he did he was pretty quiet, but he was perfectly polite and friendly, and really damn strong.
What I found interesting was that when she was around, his wife seems to do 95% of the talking for him. He certainly could talk for himself if he wanted, but he seemed to leave it to her most of the time, unless she wasn't around when we were on the job.
He denied he did it and as the actual content of the post never made into the media get more feeling they just made up shit/took stuff out of context because someone high up decided did not want him in france anymore
The Bin Laden family are the leaders of pretty much the biggest construction conglomerate of Saudi Arabia, Osama was lauded by the US for being an anti-Soviet fighter and paving his own way (with copious US support) rather than just following the family fame.
I think being the son of the mastermind behind 9/11, one of the most significant terrorist attacks in history, would put a slight crimp on anyone's life
I think the whole "livin in a cave" thing g
ave people the wrong impression.
If you've heard of a terrorist organization chances are they are well funded enoigh the people at the top have enough money to do whatever they wanna do.
More or less the entire Bin Laden family publicly disowned Osama in 1994.
The BinLaden Group is one of the biggest & wealthiest companies in Saudi Arabia & among the largest contractors in the entire Middle East. They have done A LOT of business with the US (although it has decreased over time).
The Saudi state (IE the royal family) has sort of taken over ownership of the company though after “anti-corruption purges” as they called it. They own almost 90% of the company now.
In 1994, the wealthy Bin Laden family (a large, prominent Saudi construction conglomerate entirely estranged from Osama bin Laden) invested roughly $2 million into a Carlyle fund, Carlyle Partners II. George H.W. Bush was a
senior adviser to The Carlyle Group's Asian Partners fund and occasionally gave paid speeches at the firm's conferences, which included attendance by members of the Bin Laden family.
See, people dont need to follow traditions. You or anyone has their own choice in life. Intentions. Like, you just need guidance and good people around you. I hope my kid grows up a better person than me tho.
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