Kola Boof

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Kola Boof at Heathrow Airport 1998
Kola Boof at Heathrow Airport 1998

Kola Boof (possibly 3 March 1972 [1]) is the pseudonym of an American author who claims Sudanese and Egyptian origin. She is best known for having claimed an involuntary relationship with Osama bin Laden that she says took place during 1996. [2]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Personal life

Kola Boof claims to have been born as Naima Bint Harith on the Nile River in Omdurman, Sudan to Egyptian archeologist Harith Bin Farouk and his wife, a Gisi-Waaq Oromo mother named Jiddi. Kola says she was raised as a Muslim in Sudan and later as a Christian in the U.S. She later denounced both religions and took an African "womanist" religion. She has variously stated that she believes her birthdate to be "unknown," [3] that it was in "March of 1969," [4] and that Sudanese birth records show that she was born March 3, 1972. [1]

According to Boof, in about 1978, her parents were murdered in front of her for making denouncements against Arabic-speaking black Sudanese for oppressing and enslaving other black Sudanese.[citation needed] Boof has also said that they were killed by Murahaleen tribesmen, but this is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. [5] She claims that her Egyptian grandmother, Najet Kolbookek, put her up for adoption for having "dark" skin. [6] Through UNICEF she was brought for a short time to London, England, to live with an Ethiopian family. Brought then to the United States, she was adopted in 1979 by Marvin and Claudine Johnson, an African American couple in the Anacostia Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C. [4]

Kola Boof is currently married and lives with her husband and two sons in California.[citation needed]

[edit] Relationship with Osama bin Laden

In 1996, Boof claims to have been pursuing an acting career in North Africa, where she met Osama bin Laden at a restaurant in Marrakesh, Morocco. Bin Laden then allegedly forced Boof to live with him for six months at what she describes as an estate owned by Italian Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli. [7] (La Maison Arabe is actually a hotel owned by the Italian aristocrat, who grew up in Tangiers, [8] and his partner [9]). Boof claims that he raped her that first night, [4] and that she was made to wear a paper bag over her head during the incident. She claims that she was lavished with gifts by bin Laden, and would lounge "about in silk and diamonds". [5]

In February of 1998, she says she moved to London after bin Laden, angered over the way Islam was portrayed in her book Every Little Bit Hurts, phoned the author at her home and told her that "if I had the time, I would come and slit your throat myself." [2] She has claimed to have received further death threats from other Islamists since then.

The alleged bin Laden relationship first became public in October 2002, when, according to Boof, it was revealed in the Spanish press by "a female columnist." That claim was then picked up by "Matthew Norman's Diary," a frequently satirical media-analysis and popular-culture column in the London newspaper The Guardian on October 24, 2002. The brief item quoted Kola Boof as saying, "A female columnist in Spain is telling people that I dated/had an affair with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. That's bullshit. I hate to admit I met him, because it's akin to saying you know Hitler, but I barely knew Bin Laden from 1996-98. When we met in Marrakesh in 1996, I was a starlet and he was trying to screw every female in town." [10] Later that month, the New York Times wrote an article about Boof. On November 9, 2002, the Spanish "female columnist" was identified by World Net Daily as a former roommate of Boof's, named Lourdes Harris. [11]

In early 2003, Boof said she had pulled her five-year-old son out of his elementary school after rumors circulated that the boy was bin Laden's son.[12] In a statement on January 6, 2003, Boof said that the "fact that people think my son is Osama's is very scary to me, so I thought I better clear it up. He's a monster...I did not want to be with him. I was basically his prisoner." [2] She told The Irish Examiner that "Osama bin Laden is not my son’s father, and I shall rip out the throat, in one bite, of anyone who tries to photograph my babies." [12]

Although she has claimed that her family and home were under FBI protection for several years, The New York Post reported that "the FBI had no knowledge of her." [5]

In September, 2006, the American magazine Harper's published an excerpt from Boof's autobiography, Diary of a Lost Girl in "Readings," a section of the magazine that collects works first published elsewhere; the excerpt is titled "His Prerogative," and described by the magazine's table of contents as "One woman’s love Jones for Osama bin Laden." Boof describes bin Laden as obsessed with Whitney Houston, smoking marijuana, and forcing her to dance naked to Van Halen. [13]

Peter Bergen, a biographer of bin Laden, says that Osama Bin Laden was never in Morocco in 1996 - in fact, he says that Bin Laden has never been to Morocco at all. He has called Boof "delusional"[6] and described her autobiography as "rife with howlers large and small" - such as her claim of having a group sexual encounter in 1996 whose participants included bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam, and Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb. Bergen finds the encounter implausible, since at the time, bin Laden was in the Sudan, Zawahiri was in prison, Azzam had been assassinated in 1989, and Qutb had been dead for thirty years. [2]

[edit] Alleged membership in the SPLA

Boof claims to be an active member of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). She says that she was originally called "Agent Nya Miuokda" by her SPLA commanders[citation needed], later dubbed "Agent Queen Kola," and that she worked spy missions and channeled weapons to Commanders Athor and Yaka's camps in Buoth, Waniek and Pariang.[citation needed] Though Boof says that "sexism" and political disagreements have at times strained her relationship with the SPLA, she claims to remain a member of the SPLA and discussed her work for the organization in her autobiography. However, The New York Times cited the SPLA as having "embraced her and then backed away, as Ms. Boof's personal, if not literary credentials have been called into question." [5]

[edit] Literary career and professional life

Ms. Boof says her work was first published in Morocco by The North African Book Exchange, an imprint owned by Russom Damba.[citation needed] Kola Boof's first published work was Flesh and the Devil, published in Arabic in 1995, followed by Every Little Bit Hurts, a 1997 collection of her poetry, which she says gained popularity among feminists in Morocco and southern Europe.[citation needed]

In September 2002, Jamal Ibrahim, an official at the Sudanese embassy in Britain, wrote an article for the Islamic British publication Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that, based on Boof's autobiographical claims regarding her life in Sudan and her statements on Sudanese politics, criticized Boof's "falsehood and dishonesty." [5] Boof in turn took the article as a fatwa, which she incorrectly told the press was "a contract for assassination" (a fatwa in reality is an Islamic legal pronouncement). [5] The New York Times soon after interviewed Sheikh Omar Bakri, a senior judge of the Islamic Sharia court in London. Bakri was also one of the individuals Boof cited by name as someone who was directly involved with ordering her "fatwa". [5] The judge told the Times that "nobody issued a fatwa against Kola Boof. I know she was criticized by a Muslim official in London, but he isn't in a position to issue a fatwa." The paper also spoke to the article's author, who responded to the fatwa claims as "bizarre and baseless". [5]

In January 2003, Boof attempted to explain her previous comments about the death threats: "Gamal {sic} Ibrahim wrote an article in London's leading Arab-Muslim newspaper (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat) condemning me as a human being... it is unheard of for a woman, and especially a non-Muslim woman, to be featured in a political Arab-Muslim newspaper...unless she's a target of some kind." Boof further explained that it is "common knowledge" in an Islamic theocracy such as Sudan that any such article entirely about a woman "is a bonafide death threat." [4]

Boof claims that her Moroccan publisher was firebombed, [14]. Another article stated that she was dropped by her publisher due to the negative press that she had recently gotten from an article in The New York Times as well as the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper/fatwa incident. [5]

On August 23, 2003, Kola Boof appeared in an interview on the Fox News program The Big Story Weekend with Rita Cosby, discussing her claims. [15]

Boof often appears topless. Insisting that vanity and publicity have nothing to do with it, she has said that she is "topless to honor my mothers and grandmothers, my own African womenfolk who were always bare breasted in the sun and who gave birth to this whole world... They were not dirty and soiled by man's greed and violence. They were naked because it pleases God...and I do believe that it's an abomination against God for any woman's breasts to be covered." [16] In other instances, she has been less spiritual about the subject: "I have no concern...whatsoever...with what White Caucasoids think about my all-natural, God-given bare black titties." [14]

In August 2006, excerpts from a video documentary about Kola Boof appeared on the streaming video site YouTube. The clips showed Boof dancing, shaking beads, wearing headdresses and swimming naked. A montage of pictures is also included, showing the map of Sudan, Boof's book covers, as what seemed to be the author appearing topless at a speaking engagement. The video also features a short statement from Boof in which she says that "in the past five years, there have been a lot of lies told about me and gossip and speculation. People even claimed that I did not exist, you know, that I was like an urban legend." She went on to say that her 2006 autobiography was her chance to "set the record straight".

In June of 2006, a spokesperson for American television network NBC confirmed that Boof had "had writing assignments" for its daytime serial Days of Our Lives. In July, the network indicated the assignment was limited to two episodes and had ended. [7] [8].

[edit] Works in English

  • Diary of a Lost Girl: The Autobiography of Kola Boof (February 2006, ISBN 0-9712019-8-6)
  • Flesh and the Devil (U.S. release May 2004, ISBN 0-9712019-7-8)
  • Long Train to the Redeeming Sin: Stories about African Women (U.S. release April 2004, ISBN 0-9712019-0-0)
  • Nile River Woman: The Very First Poems by Kola Boof (U.S. release Feb. 2004, ISBN 0-9712019-6-X)
  • "The One You Meet Everywhere," in Politically Inspired, short stories edited by Stephen Elliott (2003, ISBN 1-931561-58-3)

[edit] References and sources

  1. ^ a b Kola Boof, This Woman is Dangerous, Biography of Kola Boof
  2. ^ a b c d [1]Indymedia Article on Kola Boof
  3. ^ Kola Boof profile, tripod.com
  4. ^ a b c d Who is Kola Boof?, ChickenBones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes, press release statement by Kola Boof, released by Russom Damba's publicist Nafisa Goma, Jan. 3, 2003, nathanielturner.com
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i [2] Freedom House on Sudan: Shrill, Contentious and Unreliable
  6. ^ [3]Kola Boof interviewed by Nathan Lewis, hosted by a Kola Boof fan site
  7. ^ BET.com article: "Osama's Ex-Mistress Says She's Tired of Being Demonized"
  8. ^ The Suite Life, La Maison Arabe, Marrakech, Morocco, By Kate Crawford, February 2003
  9. ^ LA MAISON ARABE
  10. ^ Matthew Norman's Diary, The Guardian Unlimited, October 24, 2002
  11. ^ 'Anti-Islam' books spark fatwa, WorldNetDaily, Posted: November 9, 2002
  12. ^ a b [4]
  13. ^ http://www.harpers.org/HisPrerogative.html Harper's Magazine: His Prerogative]
  14. ^ a b Kola Boof, Rootz-View Vol. #6.3, 2004, rootzreggae.com
  15. ^ [5] Transcript of Boof's Fox News interview, hosted on a Boof fan site
  16. ^ Kola Boof, Naked at the Feast, kolaboof.com

[edit] External links

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