Those of you who do not believe in Hell, please take note...

Exhibit A: Samira Jassam

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks.

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

She is known as "Um al-Mumenin" which, if I am reading that right, translates "mother of all believers". If anyone deserves eternal torment, surely it's this bitch.

Islam, of course, has often been accused of encouraging the abuse of women. There are those who claim that this is a corruption of Islam rather than its truest expression. I confess that I don't know enough to decide on that issue. But clearly there is something profoundly rotten with a system in which women find themselves in a situation where committing acts of mass murder is more socially or religiously acceptable than living with shame for which they bear no responsibility.

Christians often (rightly) critique the secular West for encouraging irresponsible use of sexuality and individualism at the expense of social responsibility. But at least Western women understand that they bear responsibility for their own sins, not those visited upon them by the violence of others. These Iraqi women (and for all I know, Muslim women everywhere) need to hear the news that their sins are atoned only through Christ and that they never need to be ashamed of what they have not consented to.