JIHAD JANE: FROM VICTIM TO ATTEMPTED VICTIMIZER

Colleen LaRose, the Muslim convert who became known as Jihad Jane, was profiled by Reuters (via Lawfare):

A compact woman with a seventh-grade education, LaRose was a recent convert to Islam. She found a place for herself quickly, raising money and awareness online for the plight of her Muslim brothers and sisters. They were underdogs, just like her.

During her darkest days, LaRose had endured incest, rape and prostitution. She surrendered her life to drinking and drugs, from crack to crystal meth. Now, if she accepted the order to kill, she would surrender her life to a higher power: Allah.

The man who issued the directive called himself Eagle Eye. LaRose knew him only by his online messages and his voice, and he claimed to be hiding in Pakistan. Eagle Eye wanted her to fly to Europe to train as an assassin with other al-Qaeda operatives, then to Sweden to do what few other Muslim jihadists could: blend in.

The terrorists believed that her blonde hair, white skin and U.S. passport, even her Texas twang, would help her to get close enough to the target: Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who had blasphemed the Prophet Mohammad by sketching his face on the head of a dog.

"Go to Sweden," Eagle Eye instructed LaRose. "And kill him."

A year later, when U.S. authorities revealed the plot, they repeatedly described the Jihad Jane case as one that should forever alter the public's view of terrorism. At the time, one official said the conspiracy "underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face." A second said the case "demonstrates yet another very real danger lurking on the Internet" and "shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."

The case was so serious, authorities said, that they charged LaRose with crimes that could keep her in prison for the rest of her life.

Read the entire article for how her own father raped both her and her older sister, and even gloatingly admitted it to a shelter counselor (he was never charged or convicted for his crime, nor did he apologize). Yet it's just bewildering how someone who's a victim goes and takes up the same path as the monster who assaulted her, plotting to do harm to others in the framework of a religion built upon rape. Oh, I realize that she went berserk on drugs and such, but still, it's peculiar.