Thursday, December 01, 2005

Belgian suicide bombers in Iraq

The Dutch language newspaper "De Standaard" has an article on Belgian suicide bombers in Iraq (hat tip, Esther). A married couple, the man from Morrocco, with Belgian citizenship and the wife Belgian travelled to Iraq to carry out a suicide mission against the US Army. The woman had an explosive belt on. She detonated the bomb. The husband attacked American forces with an assault rifle. Both husband and wife got killed. The husband was shot in the head by American soldiers. No Americans lost their lives.

The thing to note is that not only do people who have been made naturalised citizens by a "plastic" artificial process feel they belong to another community than the western community that adopted them. And where they choose to go because the opportunities it offered were better than the opportunities of their original community. But also that born White Westerners can feel the attraction of Islam, become dues paying members of the Umma and die defending it.

This is "Fatih" of Islam. The victory of Submission.

4 comments:

Snouck said...

Ah, never thought of the "kamikaze" thing. I guess it is because of the Second World War and the war between the Dutch and the loyalists against the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies. Some of the words of that era appearently remained in the language. One says kamikaze in American English as well, right?

Esther said...

I haven't seen kamikaze used in general when talking about suicide bombers, only in this case. Usually I've seen pleger (perpetrator), dader (culprit) or simmply terrorist. It might be hard for the local news to call things by their name.

Kamikaze has a very heroic air to it. The Japanses pilots who crashed their plans (in battle!) against the enemy, causing damage to the big and mighty.

Snouck said...

Well, they do attack strong American Army convoys, so there is something heroic about the attacks. I also found that e.g. Thomas Friedman of The NYT used the word "kamikaze" to describe the shi'ite truck bomber that destroyed the American USMC head quarters in Beirut in 1983. I guess the word would be inappropriate if used for the Israeli Egged bus or Pizza Parlour bombers or the London and Madrid public transport bombers.

So I agree that "kamikaze" has a ring of accomplishment and heroism to it, but not that it has to be specifically "Japonaise". I have to think a little bit more about this, though. Thanks for bringing this up, ladies.

Esther said...

I'm having trouble posting.. so I don't know if this came in already..

Snouck, have you seen 'kamikaze' used for any other European terrorist in Iraq? I think they're just afraid to use the T word.

..and maybe there's also a tacit understanding of the Muslims who go to Iraq to fight against the invaders.