"This is our Belgian kamikaze killed in Iraq," screamed a headline on the front-page of La Derniere Heure newspaper, above a picture of an attractive, long-haired woman in her late 30s.

"This is very shocking for Belgians," says Claude Moniquet, a Brussels-based terrorism expert. "It took several days for the news to sink in. They simply don't understand how this could happen."

Belgians are used to reading stories about jihadist groups -- 13 Islamist terrorists are currently on trial in Brussels for being members of an organization linked to the recent Madrid and London bombings -- but what particularly horrifies locals about their homegrown jihadist fighter is that she came from such a "normal" background.

Muriel Degauque was born 38 years ago in Monceau-sur-Sambre, a small town near Charleroi in a coal-mining area known as the black country. Her mother, a hospital secretary, and her father, a retired factory worker, still live in the small red-brick house where Degauque was brought up a good Catholic girl. According to reports in the Belgian media, she had an "absolutely normal childhood -- she was well-dressed, well-behaved and went to Mass."

Then, in her late teens, things started to go pear-shaped. She fell in with a gang of bikers, dabbled in drugs and saw her brother killed in a motorbike accident when she was 20. "She has the classic profile of a convert to Islamic jihadism," Moniquet told United Press International.

"She had a drink or drug problem when she was young, had several run-ins with the law, was not close to her family and was often unemployed. People like Degauque use Islam to sort out their own problems. They always say that with Islam they find a real family for the first time in their lives."

According to Edwin Bakker, a Dutch terrorism expert at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, it is hardly surprising that Degauque turned to radical Islam after meeting an Algerian man. "All the studies show that suicide bombers are people who are seeking a new purpose in life."

When the former bakery salesgirl met and married Issam Goris, a Belgian man with a Moroccan mother, she began to immerse herself in Islam, learning Arabic, reading the Koran and moving to Morocco for a brief spell.

Friends and family became worried when she appeared at her parents' house wearing a head-to-toe robe and refusing to sit in the same room as her father at mealtimes. "The religion was totally ingrained in her. She only lived for that," her mother Liliane told France's Le Parisien newspaper, describing her daughter as "more Muslim than Muslim."

Bakker says that many Islam converts' sense of estrangement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because of their decision to reject their past lives and beliefs. "Converting to a religion which is perceived by many as 'evil' or an 'enemy religion' can lead to social isolation and the loss of friends and family."

Cut off from her family, living in a run-down part of Brussels near the city's main train station and exposed to radical jihadist thinking through her husband, Degauque set off for Iraq by car with Issam in August. On Nov. 9, she detonated a bomb belt in an attempt to blow up a convoy of American troops on a road 30 miles north of Baghdad. One American soldier was wounded and the Belgian was fatally injured in the attack. On the same day, her husband Issam was shot in the head by American troops in another botched attack.

There have been European suicide bombers before -- most notably in the July 7 terrorist attacks on London -- but never a female kamikaze. Security officers and experts fear there will be more deadly strikes as the number of converts to Islam increases. A recent report drawn up for the Dutch parliament revealed that 10,000 Dutch citizens have converted to Islam and that 10 percent of radical Muslims switched to the religion. Another study drawn up by French intelligence services shows that one third of converts to Islam have criminal records.

"Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts," wrote Middle East expert Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun Tuesday. "They know the local culture and blend in. They cannot be deported. They can hide their religious affiliation by avoiding mosques, lying low, even drinking alcohol and taking drugs to maintain their cover. One guide counsels would-be suicide bombers going to Iraq to 'wear jeans, eat doughnuts, and always carry your Walkman.'"

Moniquet says there is another reason converts are so valuable to jihadist groupings: "The fact that people from Christian backgrounds join the jihadist cause proves to them that the Jihad is the right way."

Muriel Degauque may have the dubious distinction of being Europe's first female suicide bomber, but she will probably not be the last.

Source: United Press International

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