To: steve dietrich who wrote (241483 ) 9/9/2007 11:46:17 PM From: bentway Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500 bin Laden doesn't SOUND very "impotent"!en.wikipedia.org "Married life in Jeddah In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife, his first cousin from Syria, Najwa Ghanem, his mother's brother's daughter. The marriage ceremony took place in Najwa's native land, at Latakia, in northwestern Syria.[17][18] After the birth of his first son, Abdallah, they moved from his mother's house to a building in the Al-Aziziyah district of Jeddah. Bin Laden is reported to have married four other women[19] and divorced one, Umm Ali bin Laden (the mother of Ali). Umm Ali bin Laden was a University lecturer who studied in Saudi Arabia,[20][21] and spent holidays in Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama later settled during his exile in the years 1991 to 1996. According to Wisal al Turabi, the wife of Sudan's ruler Hassan Turabi, Umm Ali taught Islam to some families in Riyadh, an upscale neighborhood in Khartoum. The three latter wives of Osama bin Laden were all university lecturers, highly educated, and from distinguished families. According to Wisal al Turabi, he married the other three because they were "spinsters," who "were going to go without marrying in this world. So he married them for the Word of God."[22][18] According to Abu Jandal, bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, Osama's wife Umm Ali asked Osama for a divorce when they still lived in Sudan, because she said that she "could not continue to live in an austere way and in hardship."[23][18] Children Bin Laden has fathered anywhere from 12 to 24 children.[24] His wife, Najwa, reportedly had 11 children by bin Laden, including Abdallah (born c. 1976), Omar, Saad and Muhammad. Muhammad bin Laden (born c. 1983) married the daughter of the late alleged al-Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef in January 2001, at Kandahar, Afghanistan."