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December 03, 2005
The New Western Jihadist
Author, Walid Fares book about the future of terrorism, "Terrorism Unveiled" forecast that westerners, including women, will be used for suicide attacks. Last month his prediction came true when a young Belgium female died in an attempted suicide attack, killing only herself.
According to those who knew her best, Murielle Degauque was a normal child growing up, "very average" said her neighbors. There was nothing in her background to indicate she would become the [first] western woman to die as a suicide bomber. Her parents said she had a tendency to hang around with the rougher kids when growing up, she dabbled a little in drugs and she went through a period of teenage rebellion. They recalled she had many boyfriends and once they had to drive about 120 miles to bring her home after she ran off. But, on the whole, she not unlike most teens.
Murielle worked as a baker's assistant and had two serious relationships with Islamic men. She married and divorced a Turkish man and met and then left an Algerian prior to meeting Issam Grois. And this is when her life began to change. Grois, a Belgian of Moroccan extraction, dated her and eventually persuaded Murielle to go to Morocco where he had certain assests and where he helped her convert to Islam. What happened after that is sketchy, but her parents said she visited them several times over a period of about a year, during that time they observed a transformation take place. Murielle became subdued, she changed her name to Myriam and began wearing a veil. At Issam's request her father and Issam would eat alone in one room, while the women ate in another room. Murielle became quiet and withdrawn, her neighbors said she rarely spoke beyond a simple bonjour. At the time Murielle didn't know it, but she was being drawn in to a radical Muslim lifestyle, driven by her emotional attachment to Issam and her religious indoctrination to a form of Islam that supported jihad.
It is believed that Murielle and Issam traveled to Turkey and then by car to Iraq in September. Issam was killed in fighting with Coalition forces and shortly after that Murielle became a willing suicide bomber targeting American soldiers, but fortunately her mission failed. She was 36.
The story of Murielle Degauque has troubled people throughout Europe who fear a new wave of homegrown suicide bombers. They worry that young people, caught up in the events following 9/11 may be candidates for Islamofacism like university student Zacarias Moussaoui, a Muslim of French citizenship with Moroccan heritage. He was the 20th hijacker on 9/11. Moussaoui was radicalized by leftist hate speech common among his fellow students and was urged on by the radical Islamic jihadist message of hate and domination.
Recently, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister for France said, at least seven people from France have been killed in Iraq and elsewhere fighting for al-Qa'ida. Another 10 are known to be working for al-Qa'ida in Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan.
Walid Fares also warned of future targeted assassinations, such as the murder of Theo van Gogh, a renowned Dutch filmmaker killed in 2004. Van Gogh became an outspoken critic of Islamic terrorism following 9/11. He was shot dead by a Muslim Jihadist from Morocco living in Holland. A year earlier Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, who favored restricted immigration and was murdered by extremists. However, Fares points out that even Muslim moderates are targets for assassination, virtually anyone who is an obstruction to extremism is a target.
Fares says the idea of using women in war is not very appealing to most Muslim clerics, however there have been a few that have sanctioned it. According to Fares there is a growing divide in the Arab world between the moderates who strongly oppose the killing and radicals who support it.
For additional information on this subject may I suggest the following sources:
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article330688.ece
Book, Terrorism Unveiled, by Walid Fares
http://goodnewsfromthefront.com/
Posted by Post Scripts at December 3, 2005 09:19 AM