Excerpt from an article by film maker who made a Channel 4 documentary on the phenomenon of female suicide bombers from the West Bank:
"Manal recruited Ayat at a family wedding when the two women were briefly alone. Manal told Ayat she would have to wait for the right time - but Manal knew she now had another would-be martyr in waiting.
Manal's plan was to use Sabrine to blow up a Jerusalem restaurant.
Instead, they were all arrested and sentenced to between four and five years in Hasharon. The three women insist they are still best friends.
'I often think of Manal as my sister. At first, my parents were angry at her for recruiting me, but I do not blame Manal. We have each chosen our path to God,' says Ayat.
In her cell I asked Sabrine what was going to happen to her in paradise after she had blown herself up.
'In paradise the male martyr gets 72 virgins but the female martyr becomes queen of those virgins. The rest of the virgins are her maids and they wait on her. She is the best and most beloved.'
Queen of the Virgins? It seems almost childish, and beyond the prison walls Ayat's confidence in her parent's forgiveness was ill-founded.
'If I had known what Ayat was planning I would have told the Jews. I would have stopped her,' said Ahmed Kmeil, her father.
'In our religion it is forbidden for a girl's body to be uncovered even at home. How could a girl allow her body to be smashed to pieces and then collected up by Jews? This is absolutely forbidden.'
Even Manal's family insisted that female suicide bombing is wrong.
'With a man it's different. For us, a girl can't show her leg or wear a short T-shirt. How can you then be a good Muslim woman and expose your body to the world? What Manal was doing recruiting those girls was wrong,' said her mother Nadia Saba'na.
Like most of us, Manal's and Ayat's families are unfamiliar with the aftermath of explosives and the human body. It's not pleasant. Most of the torso of the bomber just disintegrates leaving the head and lower limbs.
But what was shocking was none of the families of the would-be female suicide bombers expressed outrage about the innocent civilians their daughters would have killed.
They did not seem to be particularly concerned about their daughter's death. What they were worried about was pieces of their daughter's body being exposed to strangers, or worse still, to Jews. They saw everything through this false prism of 'honour'.
The same lessons, of course, apply in Iraq. If you are a woman blowing yourself up, exposing your body is forbidden and a sin.
The truth is that Iraq's insurgents have turned to female suicide bombing as a tactic of desperation.
Even in Baghdad, with all its security checkpoints, a woman dressed in the all concealing abaya is still more likely to succeed with a suicide bombing.
But the even greater truth is that raped, shamed, and psychologically manipulated, Iraq's female suicide bombers are, all too often, not seeking paradise but fleeing the hell of their lives on Earth."
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
Excerpt from an article by film maker who made a Channel 4 documentary on the phenomenon of female suicide bombers from the West Bank:
"Manal recruited Ayat at a family wedding when the two women were briefly alone. Manal told Ayat she would have to wait for the right time - but Manal knew she now had another would-be martyr in waiting.
Manal's plan was to use Sabrine to blow up a Jerusalem restaurant.
Instead, they were all arrested and sentenced to between four and five years in Hasharon. The three women insist they are still best friends.
'I often think of Manal as my sister. At first, my parents were angry at her for recruiting me, but I do not blame Manal. We have each chosen our path to God,' says Ayat.
In her cell I asked Sabrine what was going to happen to her in paradise after she had blown herself up.
'In paradise the male martyr gets 72 virgins but the female martyr becomes queen of those virgins. The rest of the virgins are her maids and they wait on her. She is the best and most beloved.'
Queen of the Virgins? It seems almost childish, and beyond the prison walls Ayat's confidence in her parent's forgiveness was ill-founded.
'If I had known what Ayat was planning I would have told the Jews. I would have stopped her,' said Ahmed Kmeil, her father.
'In our religion it is forbidden for a girl's body to be uncovered even at home. How could a girl allow her body to be smashed to pieces and then collected up by Jews? This is absolutely forbidden.'
Even Manal's family insisted that female suicide bombing is wrong.
'With a man it's different. For us, a girl can't show her leg or wear a short T-shirt. How can you then be a good Muslim woman and expose your body to the world? What Manal was doing recruiting those girls was wrong,' said her mother Nadia Saba'na.
Like most of us, Manal's and Ayat's families are unfamiliar with the aftermath of explosives and the human body. It's not pleasant. Most of the torso of the bomber just disintegrates leaving the head and lower limbs.
But what was shocking was none of the families of the would-be female suicide bombers expressed outrage about the innocent civilians their daughters would have killed.
They did not seem to be particularly concerned about their daughter's death. What they were worried about was pieces of their daughter's body being exposed to strangers, or worse still, to Jews. They saw everything through this false prism of 'honour'.
The same lessons, of course, apply in Iraq. If you are a woman blowing yourself up, exposing your body is forbidden and a sin.
The truth is that Iraq's insurgents have turned to female suicide bombing as a tactic of desperation.
Even in Baghdad, with all its security checkpoints, a woman dressed in the all concealing abaya is still more likely to succeed with a suicide bombing.
But the even greater truth is that raped, shamed, and psychologically manipulated, Iraq's female suicide bombers are, all too often, not seeking paradise but fleeing the hell of their lives on Earth."
Full article here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1138298/Face-face-women-suicid...
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."