Osama Bin Laden Was Obsessed With Whitney Houston

The late singer’s appeal was even more widespread than we thought.

Image by HO / Reuters

After news broke of Whitney Houston’s death on Saturday night, Twitter and Facebook were flooded with mourning fans. But it turns out that one of Whitney’s biggest devotees wasn’t around to offer his e-condolences. According to writer Kola Boof’s 2006 memoir, “Diary of a Lost Girl: The Autobiography of Kola Boof” Osama bin Laden was a great admirer of the “Bodyguard” star when the two lived at the same estate in 1996.

Osama said only monkeys braid their hair. He told me that the singer Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and that she never wore her hair braided. “I want you to fix your hair like hers from now on,” he said. “I can’t put my fingers through it when it’s braided.”

But he wasn’t just a fan of her hair. He wanted her in his life in a big way. Like a “I’ll have Bobby Brown murdered sort of way.”

He said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston, and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar. It didn’t seem impossible to me. He said he wanted to give Whitney Houston a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives. I tried to hide my outrage at his racist remarks, but it would come to pass that for the entire time that I would be trapped in his palm, Whitney Houston’s was the one name that would be mentioned constantly. How beautiful she is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and her husband—Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women’s husbands killed.

So now you know. Osama bin Laden just wanted to dance with somebody. So long as that somebody was a straight-haired Whitney Houston.