Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 12/6/05: Suicide Girls

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

And the award for worst reporting goes to… Craig Smith, of the New York Times, for his piece on the ugly death of Muriel Degauque, the Belgian suicide bomber. (I know, I know -- I should wait to hand these out until the end of the month, at least, but I just get too excited.)

You’ve probably all heard the basics by now: Degauque, born in a crappy coal mining town in Belgium, spent most of her life un- or under-employed, bouncing back and forth between motorcycle gangs and a series of crappy men, until she finally met one who killed her. This may be the oldest sob story in the book (think Lilith).

But check out how the papers cover it. I was first introduced to the unfortunate Ms. Degauque from two articles, one in the Guardian, the other in the New York Times. Now, the Guardian piece (link below) is not going to win any Pulitzers either – it’s pretty uninspired, a basic who-what-where, with a touch of tear-jerking family commentary thrown in.

But I was completely blown away by how the Times spun this little yarn:

But her story supports fears among many law enforcement officials and academics that converts to Europe's fastest-growing religion could bring with them a disturbing new aspect in the war on terror: Caucasian women committed to one of the world's deadliest causes. European women who marry Muslim men are now the largest source of religious conversions in Europe, the experts say.

Or, in this rough translation:

Git out yer shotguns, boys, them darkies is comin’ fer our wimmin!

The article, of course, leads with a big photo of Miss Degauque – after all, she’s pretty and white, a perfect symbol for what our “enemies” are destroying. It then goes on to crown her “the first European Muslim woman to stage a suicide attack,” which, I suppose, is true, if you conveniently leave Russia, the Caucasus and the Balkans out of “Europe.”

(It may actually be true, since it’s possible that the female suicide bombers and kidnappers in Russia came from somewhere else; still, it seems a bit early to be crowning this girl Miss Jihad, n’est-ce pas?)

And the article goes on, punching up the “white girls marrying scary dark men” angle, drawing comparison to the “waves” of women who went south in the ‘60’s and ‘70s to have torrid affairs with South American guerrillas, or went to Afghanistan in the ‘80s. What is this paranoia white guys have with their women running off with colored guys? Insecure much?

And still, on we cruise with Mr. Smith, re-inventing the white racist rally cry of the civil rights era for a new generation:

But her devotion became disturbing several years later after she met and married Issam Goris, the son of a Belgian man and Moroccan woman. Mr. Goris with his long beard was already known to Belgian Police as a radical Islamist.

Because we all know, the beard makes the jihadi.

What’s really sad is that, based on the details he brings in, it looks like Mr. Smith has his finger hovering right over the real point of all this, but he invariably avoids it in favor of racist rhetoric.

Smith points out that Degauque “had some trouble at home, but no more than many teenage girls.” Huh? She dropped out of high school to join a motorcycle gang, and picked up a drug habit! That’s not exactly normal… well, perhaps it is, in the sense that it happens a lot, and it almost never ends well. Smith consistently underplays Degauque’s rebellion whenever it doesn’t relate to Islam, but the Guardian provides more details.

Because what Mr. Smith, and the rest of America, don’t want to look at is the fact that, based on the details available to me, Muriel Degauque’s story is very, very similar to that of lots, and lots of other terrorists, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Unemployment, hopelessness, a lack of opportunities, a lack of meaningful skills that make you feel like you have a place in the world.

I have friends from Zarqa who remember Abu Musab Al Zarqawi from way back - back before he was this big terrorist, and public enemy number one, when he was just a knife wielding thug who cut people’s faces up for fun, and got arrested every week. And he wasn’t religious at all. Hmmm. Sounds like he had some problems of his own, way before Islamism.

So why doesn’t Mr. Smith mention Zarqawi? Or Chechen or Palestinian female suicide bombers? Or Mohamed Bouyeri, who killed Theo Van Gogh?

And why doesn’t he mention the thousand other horrible things that can happen to little white girls who get lost in the woods? Why doesn’t he mention Jonestown, or Waco, which were full of girls like Degauque? (why has no one noticed how similar jihadism is to Christian cult ideology in general, for that matter?)

The only answer I can see is that he wants to make the villain of the piece Islam, and in particular, Muslim men, because these villains are much easier to hate and fear than things like poverty, despair and ignorance.

The reason why Muriel Degauque’s story ended the way it did is something we will never know. What made her turn to Islam (or, I should say, a perverted Islamic cult) rather than to evangelical Christianity, or heroin, or suicide, or self abuse with cutting tools? The answer to that probably lies in some combination of opportunity, and in the specific set of experiences and beliefs that made Muriel Degauque an individual.

And that’s it, in the end, isn’t it? The New York Times would like to tell you that Islam killed this girl, and the five policemen who died with her. Or, they’ll say, her husband killed her, or Zarqawi killed her, or bin Laden's ideology killed her. But that’s all grade A bullshit. Muriel Degauque killed herself, and five other people.

Guardian Article

Times Article

- Nicholas Seeley, 12/6/05

Posted by rjt at December 7, 2005 01:17 PM