what would make someone think god actually WANTS them to kill

( Virginie Lefour/Agence France-Presse--Getty Images
Muriel Degauque, suicide bomber from the coal fields of Belgium. )


and they would go to paradise if they did so? what makes a woman cover her body from head to toe thinking it evil NOT to do so? what makes a man think a woman MUST be covered from head to toe, a woman must eat separately from a man, pray separately from a man and on and on and on???????????? from today's nyt

December 6, 2005
Raised as Catholic in Belgium, She Died as a Muslim Bomber
By CRAIG S. SMITH
MONCEAU-SUR-SAMBRE, Belgium, Dec. 5 - Muriel Degauque, believed to be the first European Muslim woman to stage a suicide attack, started out life as a good Roman Catholic girl in this coal mining corner of Belgium known as the black country. She ended it in a grisly blast deep inside Iraq last month.
Ms. Degauque, 38, detonated her explosive vest amid an American military patrol in the town of Baquba on Nov. 9, wounding one American soldier, according to an account received from the State Department and given to the Federal Police in Belgium.
Her unlikely journey into militant Islam stunned Europe and for many people was an incomprehensible aberration, a lost soul led astray. 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. While a vast majority of those conversions are pro forma gestures for moderately religious in-laws, a small but growing number are women who willingly adopt the conservative comportment of their fundamentalist husbands.
Most of those in the conservative ranks are motivated by spiritual quests or are attracted to what they regard as an exotic culture.
But for some, conversion is a political act, not unlike the women who joined the ranks of South American Marxist rebels in the 1960's and 1970's.
"They are people rebelling against a society in which they feel they don't belong," said Alain Grignard, a senior official in the antiterrorism division of the Belgian Police. "They are people searching through a religion like Islam for a sense of solidarity."
He said there were many such women married to the first wave of Europe's militant Islamists a decade ago, and some of them followed their husbands to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But while they supported their husbands' militancy, he said, they never acted themselves. "This was the first," said Mr. Grignard, "and it's clear there could be others."
French antiterrorism officials have been warning for several years that female converts represent a small but increasingly important part of the terrorist threat in Europe.
As early as May 2003, France's famed antiterrorist investigating judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, warned that European terrorist networks were trying to recruit Caucasian women to handle terrorist logistics because they would be less likely to raise suspicion.
He said then that it was only a matter of time before the women moved on to more violent acts.
Ms. Degauque was born in the small suburb of Charleroi, a gritty coal and steel town where her father operated a crane at the sprawling smelter, according to neighbors and friends.
She grew up doted on by her mother, Liliane, who worked as a cleaner and monitor at the local elementary school.
"Her mother spoiled her," said Jeannine Beghin, who has known Ms. Degauque's mother since childhood. The women had sons born a year apart, and they were in the same hospital when their daughters were born within 10 days of each other.....................