In the news today is an interview with the woman apparently known as 'the Mother of Believers' who has been recruiting young, impressionable women to become suicide bombers.

I don't agree with suicide bombing, of course - it's an appallingly violent form of protest which invariably kills the protester and always takes innocents with him or her (rather than influential opposition figures, few young kids having access to anyone politically or religiously important). This is the grass roots of warfare - ordinary people killing ordinary people. It's almost impossible to guard against, which is why it's so effective.

But the thing I object to most is her methods of recruiting. For someone to be so fanatical about her religion that she's willing to kill children, and make them murderers in the process, is appalling enough. But the worse inquity lies in compounding the brain-washing process by taking a wavering child and having her raped, which in a muslim community is even more deeply shameful for the victim than in the Western world, and then telling her that the only way to expiate her shame is to kill herself for the glory of Allah, and take her enemies with her.

In my world, religion's about spirituality and belief; in the Mother of Believer's world, it's about the callous abuse of children who she sacrifices happily for the cause. But whose cause? I doubt if Allah's happy...