Osama bin Laden Liked Mr. Bean, Crocheting, and Porn
Osama bin Laden (1957 – 2011), Al Qaeda’s founder and the 21st century’s most notorious villain (to date), hardly needs an introduction, as he is probably history’s best known terrorist. The terror attacks masterminded and carried out by his organization, particularly those of September 11th, 2001, have seared his name in global, and especially American, memories.
Less known, however, is how bin Laden liked to pass his free time when he was not running a virtual terror state. Apparently, he did not spend all his time issuing fatwas against Jews, infidels, and backsliding Muslims, or declaring and waging Jihad against opponents of his ‘Make Islam Great Again!‘ vision. In November of 2017, the CIA released over 470,000 files seized from his compound following the 2011 raid that killed him. The contents included about 174 gigabytes of video, 7.4 gigabytes of image files, and 18 gigabytes of assorted documents. As it turned out, bin Laden had some hobbies and interests that stood in jarring contrast to what had hitherto been known about his persona.
Among other things, for all his decrying of the infidel West and its corrupting cultural influence upon Islam and Muslims, the world’s leading Islamic Jihadist liked partaking of Western culture himself. On bin Laden’s personal laptop was an eclectic collection of saved videos. Unsurprisingly, they included quite a bit of the gory stuff, such as beheadings – what self respecting Islamic jihadist wouldn’t have some of those? Surprisingly, they also included British slapstick comedy. As it turns out, bin Laden was a big fan of Rowan Atkinson, as evinced by the numerous episodes of Mr. Bean and Wallace and Gromit that were discovered in his hard drive.
Even more surprising, the terror mastermind had a thing for crotcheting – probably as good a way as any to pass the time while in hiding. Recovered from his laptop were 30 how-to-crotchet tutorial videos, including one for how to crotchet an iPod sock. And in a surprisingly not surprising twist, the man whose network would torture and kill people for smoking, drinking, dancing, or watching media depicting women not covered up in burkas, had porn saved on his laptop. Turns out that bin Laden was just as hypocritical as most of those who bray the loudest about the licentiousness of the modern age.