More on the West’s first woman suicide bomber, the Belgian female convert to Islam Muriel Degauque. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Kisan:
SHE came from an ordinary family in an industrial Belgian town. She used to sell baguettes in a bakery, and worked as a waitress in a café. She showed the rebelliousness of a typical teenager, but even in their worst dreams her parents never imagined that Muriel Degauque would end her life by blowing herself up in a suicide bomb attack against American troops in Iraq....Jean and Liliane Degauque, a former crane operator and a medical secretary, said that they had watched their daughter’s gradual transition from Christian to Islamic zealot, and feared the worst when they saw the TV news on Tuesday.
“For about a month we had been trying to call her and just kept getting her voice mail. When we heard on Tuesday evening on the television that a Belgian woman had blown herself up in Iraq, we thought it was Muriel,” her mother said....
Muriel moved from Charleroi to Brussels, which has a large Islamic community. She married and divorced a Turkish man, and had a long relationship with an Algerian, who converted her to Islam in 2001. Three years ago she married Issam Goris, who was born in Belgium to Moroccan parents, and followed him to Morocco.
“They told us that they had a house in Morocco and some horses, and a Mercedes and three motorbikes. We never found out whether it was true,” said her mother, who blames Goris for brainwashing her daughter. When Muriel returned to Belgium, her mother no longer recognised her. She had become “more Muslim than Muslim”, she said. “The religion was totally ingrained in her. She only lived for that.”
Initially, she wore a hijab, or Islamic veil, but soon started wearing the head-to-toe chador that leaves the face visible. Finally she wore a burka. She became ever more estranged from her parents. “When we saw them, they imposed their rules. We were at home, but my husband had to eat in the kitchen with Issam while the women ate together in the sitting room. There was no question of putting on the TV or opening a beer,” M Degauque said.
“My husband got so fed up that he said the next time they came round we should leave them by themselves.”...
In mid-September they left, telling their landlord they were going to Kenya to try to find Goris’s father. “They had stayed in the flat for two years. I never had any problem with them. They did not leave any forwarding address, saying they might come back in six months to a year,” her landlord told The Times. “She wore a burka all the time. I never saw her face, only her eyes,” he added.
But Kenya was not their real destination. The two radical Muslims instead drove by car across Turkey and Syria into Iraq, determined to kill themselves and as many Americans as possible.
According to conflicting reports, Muriel killed either only herself, or six people. On the same day, in a separate incident, Goris was shot dead by American troops before he could detonate his belt-bomb.
She used to sell baguettes in a bakery...
Baguettes have always struck me as a slightly aggressive form of bread, particularly when compared with the gentler, more rounded barm cake or bloomer. No good could possibly come of it.
On another thread here, also about Belgian terrorists, there was a 'pastry chef' turned militant Muslim - a choux bomber perhaps? (That's second time round for that little joke, but it deserves repeating, even if I say so myself.)
My local baker's shop sells a variety of loaves, cakes, pies, pasties and biscuits. Who knows what this might lead to should a disgruntled employee convert and decide that Islam deserves a bigger slice of the pie? Crumbs.
My take is that she was NOT raised to value and validate herself objectively, but only in relationship to how she was perceived (accepted, lauded, rewarded) by others.. She probably got a lot of positive feedback from the Muslims who courted her, which fulfilled her needs, and made her feel valued as a person and as an important part of the team. Jim Jones and all cult leaders prey on the borderline personality types, the weak, needy, disaffected, marginal.
And once she was taken into the fold, the rest was easy.. The mind follows the mouth, always. It is called cognitive dissonance.
She drank the kool aid, because of emotional, psychological deficiences, weaknesses, her embrace of Islam fulfilled her needs, peer pressure, propaganda, cognitive dissonance did the rest.
With many of European's stance against the U.S. and Isreal, it might not be that far a step over for a zealous convert to Islam... the hatred is there while being a so-called Christian European..the next step would not be that far to become a hate filled muslim convert.. yeah Europe is paying the price for their hatred of Jews and Americans..
I agree with nariz. Cults of personality feed the person's self-esteem. There's no need for her to make Any attempt to improve on her own- which also allows them to Twist that person to their needs.
Fortunately that is not how true Christianity, Bhuddism, BaHai and other major faiths work.
They may be evil, but at least they're stupid.
Never trust a bakers that doesn't sell lardie cake or bacon baps.
"They may be evil, but at least they're stupid." -Cato the Elder
Wish it were so. Seems it's always the most intelligent ones that get drawn all the way down the hall in to this totally logical, mind-dominated religion.
bacon baps?
interested & granny
your comments are sickeningly smart-alecky
interested, I'm not surprised: being clever seems what matters most to you (on this site, at least)
granny, are you suffering from some kind of Islamicist-terror-news overload?? Generally you've had a wise, calm yet insightful and exiciting way of looking at how and why "this" is
happening
the whole thing about "bakery" is cheap and sophomoric
Ovidius,
You need to chill a little. Todd is right. This stuff is hard to take so a little levity to wash it down with sometimes makes it easier.
Granny,
What's a bacon bap?
A bacon bap is like a bacon barm or a bacon butty. A chip butty is a tasty alternative, served with a pinch of salt and washed down with a pint or two of Old Peculier.
Does that help?
Ovidius Naso - quite an aspirational moniker, that - you would be disappointed. My baps and buns are no longer those of a 'sophomore', but I can do a mean Viennese whirl and my Bakewell tart is the talk of the town.
Interested,
Thanks, now I'm really confused.
Bap, barm butty...in English, please?!
I get the part about the beer though. ;)
They are just names for a kind of soft bread roll. It's possible that you call it a 'bun'. Over here, outside MacDonalds and Burger King, a bun means something else. If it's in the oven it means you're pregnant.
'Butty' is a colloquial word for a sandwich. Usually you would not put refined fillings, such as cucumber, in a butty; that would be incongruous.
Baps is slang for Bristols, which is Cockney rhyming slang for something else.
Thanks, Interested. I appreciate your help with this. When I visit England in the future I will be well prepared!
And just for the record, and while I've had it before, I don't think cucumbers should ever be made into a sandwich. They taste really gross and then you have to drive through some burger joint on your way home because you're starving to death.
No to Islam.
No to cucumber sandwiches.
I happen to like cucumber sandwiches.
Let's give this little cupcake some credit. She studied her Islam, and rose to the challenge. She obviously didn't go off half baked -- she knew from reading her Koran that Allah didn't want her to just loaf around all day, that her commitment to the coissant isn't just an idol symbol, er idle symbol of her devotion... Let's slice through the crust of our infidel limitations -- let's recognize that her recipe for getting into heaven is an ancient one -- a fundamentally Muslim one -- as old as Islam itself: Murder for Allah is the icing on the cake, the pièce de resistance of Islam...
And for all her toil and dedication, she got her just desserts!
Todd will you marry me ?
I am pretty, bright, young and rich, and French, and in love with America and the Jews !
Honestly, I am, as you are, fed up with all this bullshit. It is so pathetic that a Belgian girl could suicide herself in the name of Islam, just because for once, she had gotten some compliments from her lovers... poor complexed ugly nasty thing.
What a regression, when you are born in Belgium, to end up under a veil !
There will be other suicide bombers from the West, I am afraid. But they are probably a bit thick, so let us hope they will only manage to kill themselves. A few days ago, on the radio, I was listening to a French lady who was boasting because she had converted to Islam... she sounded proud, thick and a bit threatening. I have observed those people for years: they are ill at ease, uncomfortable with themselves and with their life, they hate themselves hence they hate the West... loving Islam or Africa might give them something like, mmmmm.... let us say a slight feeling of superiority ?
RE: It is called cognitive dissonance.
While such a disorder exists, self-esteem problems in of itself does not lead to hatred and killing of others.
She was weak indeed, unable to resist evil whom many reject.
Life is a spiritual struggle whether people realize it or not.
It is easy to do the right thing when things are easy, but the real test is to do the right thing when things are tough or hard.
Friday's Arab News had a little more. The article ends with a little from an interview with her mother.
Her mother describes her daughter's change from conversion to extremism and ends with "I did not see it coming. She was very secretive, with a very independent character. I am angry at those who manipulated her."
Blind. Blind. Seems to me that a truly independent character would have been more resistant to that kind of manipulation and the conversation would have gone more like this: "WHAT? Are you crazy? If you feel that strongly about it, YOU do it."
Thirty or forty years ago, the young lady in question would have joined the Red Brigades, Fighting Communist Cells, or whatever leftwing kookery was afoot in Belgium.
Jay, you're probably right about character issues.
Everyone: Don't pick on the baguette. While part of my family background makes me more of a rice-eater, another part makes me fond of sandwiches, and a section of baguette is sometimes a good base to work on. While I can, despite my piety, titter at some of the humorous uses to which baguettes have been put, I'm not sure I understand how any kind of bread can be "aggressive" (har har).
Savage Joy: Merci pour votre amour pour mon pays, les Etats-Unis d'Amerique. Notre troisieme President, Thomas Jefferson, a dit que tout les gens civilizee a deux patries: ses patries propres, et la France. Best wishes in your search for a match. I myself, though, have been out of the running for more than twenty years.
Sorry. My computer doesn't do accents.
Dear Kepha,
"I'm not sure I understand how any kind of bread can be "aggressive" (har har)."
Ever felt how hard a baguette becomes once it dies out and becomes stale. Those things are lethal. Honestly, those things could be used as WMD.
All this talk about food is reall getting me hungry.
I've only just come back to this.
Gorkhali, are you familiar with the Discworld novels and the concept of "Dwarf bread"?
http://wiki.affordable-prawns.co.uk/index.php/Dwarf_Bread
Thank you Kepha !
About baguettes: it is one of the few things the French do correctly, so dont criticise them, please ! Awwwww if the Muslims ban baguettes, then it will REALLY be the end of Civilisation !