Friday, October 14, 2005

India's First Female Suicide Bomber

While the region tries to recover from the devastation of the earthquake, a "militant" group has decided to press on with their war- and India has been given its first female suicide bomber. She was known merely as Hafsa, and was a member of the women's wing of the Jaish-e-Mohammad "militant" group. The attack was carried out on a military convoy and while the terrorists claimed that five had been killed, the army is denying any casualties.

According to this report women are generally only used to carry weapons and explosives for the group. They are used because they are not searched quite so thoroughly- and no doubt there would be an uproar if police did begin to carry out effective searches of Muslim women.

Unnamed Islamic scholars said that it was unusual for women to be suicide bombers in the male dominated society (they make it sound like she's been given some sort of promotion). They did not apparently comment on the Islamic validity of suicide bomb attacks.

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