Posted on 12/02/2005 5:31:58 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
LONDON: The story of Muriel Degauque, a white Belgian convert to Islam and the West's first woman suicide bomber, has shocked and alarmed European capitals and sent much of the Western world into a tailspin. Degauque, whose smiling, quintessentially-European, brown-haired visage, adorns newspaper front pages across the continent (TODAY, FRIDAY), blew herself up in the Iraqi town of Baquba, north of Baghdad early last month.
Though tangled and incomplete reports from Iraq variously suggest Degauque managed to kill six others, or perhaps no one apart from herself, the white Belgian Muslim convert has posthumously detonated a devastating bomb that strikes at the very heart of increasingly multicultural Europe.
On Friday, appalled commentators said Degauque, the 38-year-old former baker's assistant who metamorphosed into the Baghdad bomber, had become Europe's John Walker Lindh, the so-called 'American Taliban'.
Twenty-year-old Lindh, captured by US forces in Afghanistan five years ago with a group of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who survived the bloody Mazar-e-Sharif revolt, was America's first brush with the phenomenon of the white Western jihadi, something Degauque now crucially represents for Europe.
Degauque's grieving and shocked parents, a former crane operator and a medical secretary in the industrial Belgian town of Charleroi, say that she was, a normal child, the typical girl next door, the ordinary European teenager who preferred boys to books.
They say there was nothing to indicate their daughter would go down in history as the first Western woman to launch a suicide bomb attack in the name of jihad.
With their daughter's face and story emblazoned across the Belgian national newspaper La Dernière Heure, as "Belgium's first kamikaze", the 38-year-old's parents said Degauque's journey from moderate European Christian sensibilities to militant Islam began when she converted to Islam during a long relationship with an Algerian man.
The man was succeeded in Degauque's affections by a Belgian of Moroccan extraction, Issam Goris.
The ordinary Belgian girl married Goris and fatefully set in train the events that would lead her to travel to Baghdad, strap explosives around her belt and detonate them in an attempt to kill American troops in Iraq.
Degauque, say her parents, became "more Muslim than Muslim", disdaining the hijab for the full covering of the chador and eventually the burqa. On Friday, Degauque's anguished and wondering nation said it feared for the future, with Belgium increasingly seen as one of the European hubs of radicalized Muslims.
Said Glenn Audenaert, director of Belgium's federal police, "It is the first time that we see a Western woman, a Belgian, marrying a radical Muslim, and is converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter."
Added Belgian federal prosecutor Daniel Bernard, a police investigation "has shown the presence in Belgium of a structure of transportation, logistical backing and infiltration of volunteers willing to fight in Iraq."
Degauque, who was previously married and divorced from a Turkish man, is said to have dabbled in drugs and some commentators believe her metamorphosis into suicide bomber is no more significant than other forms of rebellion by European youth.
But her parents, Liliane and Jean, say in concert with Lindh's family, that their daughter had been "brainwashed" by her conservative Muslim husband. She changed her name to Myriam and wore a veil. When visiting the family home, Degauque's husband would eat with her father and the women would be force to stay in another room.
The slow radicalization of Europeans such as Degauque comes as European governments struggle to understand the post-9/11 phenomenon of the home-grown terrorist - the enemy within. After the twin towers were attacked, a shocked world learnt that Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was the "20th hijacker". Just a few months later, Briton Richard Reid tried to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic.
In 2003, two non-white British Muslims became the UK's first suicide bombers when they walked into a Tel Aviv bar wired with explosives, killing three and wounding 65. The life and death of Degauque, say alarmed European security experts, appears destined to be repeated many times over.
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©Bennett, Coleman and Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Estd. 1838, in India.
Why is this a surprise!!?? She became a Muslim . . . . . it's part of the culture.
Its a sickness that seems to be spreading.
The "Force" only works on the weak minded.
Persia was once a powerful empire. That was before it converted to Islam.
G.K. Chesterson said that when people stop believing in the God of the Bible, they don't believe in nothing, they believe anything.
Oh yes! What a beautiful female suicide bomber. Of course all female suicide bombers are beautiful because this reporter wants to love them and have more of them. Let's all support suicide bombing and homicide bombing. We can have it in our country too! Whoopee!
/Extreme Sarcasm off
Christianity stopped Islam every other time in history when it went to on it's bloody conquest of the world. The only country that fits that role in the world today is these God given United States of America.....and we will stop Islam from it's quest.
They were not converted they were subjected to it by conquest.
Thats Rubbish, you will always get those in society who are easier to manipulate than others.
"....some commentators believe her metamorphosis into suicide bomber is no more significant than other forms of rebellion by European youth."
File under: stupidest remark I've heard all year.
But I must take issue with their insistence that she is the "first" white female jihadi, what about those Chechen (sp?) women, who blew up planes, who murdered schoolchildren?
Good riddance.
She was ugly, anyway.
She killed no one but herself and will be missed by no one but her mother.
Simply another tool of the Muslim Jihadist Corruptions, much like that Rachel Corrie idiot that lost the bulldozer fight.
The indoctrination specialists for the Muslim nation uses these naive girls and boys and tosses them away.
Being or wanting to be a martyr has got to the ultimate in stupidity and ignorance.
But then, we are talking Muslim here, aren't we?
I was thinking more of the Heavens Gate cult... But Islam isn't far from it. Obviously, an very embittered young woman and an great admirer of Cindy Sheehan.
You're right about the Chechan jehadis, and anyway, the Arabs are supposed to be the Mediterranean branch of the European geographical race.
Not sure what you are talking about.
She blew up real good.
Chechans are white Muslims. Isn't that what you implied?
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