Inside the mind of a female would-be suicide bomber in Pakistan

[rug]

By Andrew MacLeod
January 18, 2016

A picture given to me for my 40th birthday hangs in my home study. It is a lovely still-life of a fruit bowl masterfully drawn in coloured pencil. Amarah (not her real name), a 19-year-old intern, drew it for me during the time I worked for the United Nations in Islamabad.

Amarah had had a tough life until then. She was not well-off and struggled to stay at university. She was an only child brought up by a single parent. What was more difficult was that she was brought up by a single father. In her culture this made for a very bleak future for a young woman.

Amarah was volunteering with the massive two-and-a-half-year-long relief and reconstruction campaign following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. Over the time we worked together, our conversations covered many subjects, from religion (she, a devout Muslim, and I, an avowed atheist) to politics (Pakistan was still a dictatorship), to life in general.

By the time I turned 40 we had become close friends—perhaps too close for our age, religious and cultural differences—hence why the picture has such meaning. I liked her and hoped that she would have a good life.

http://qz.com/596668/inside-the-mind-of-a-female-would-be-suicide-bomber-in-pakistan/

http://www.rabbisacks.org/out-soon-not-in-gods-name-confronting-religious-violence/

[Jim__]

1. I agree that we need to understand terrorism in order to defeat it.

However, the article doesn't explain how Amarah arrived at her desire to be a suicide bomber, nor how she came to change her views.

“What will you do after you graduate?” I once asked her.

“I want to be a suicide bomber,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

...

Today, nearly a decade on, Amarah no longer wants to explode. Instead she works in the Pakistan arm of a major international bank. Creating a career and a sense of hope for Amarah removed the desire to take the shortcut to heaven.

Amarah’s story provides guidance on how to defeat terror in three ways.

What is Amarah's story? The article only gives us generalizations, but next to nothing of Amarah's actual story. I'd like to hear her version of how she came to change her mind.

[rug]

2. Agreed. Something mst precede that startling statement.