LONDON — She was a sales clerk in a WH Smith bookshop at Heathrow Airport, and when she wasn't ringing up newspapers, paperbacks and chewing gum, she was penning militant poetry on the backs of used sales slips.
"The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom," Samina Malik, a slight, soft-spoken 23-year-old, wrote on one receipt.
A judge Thursday sentenced Malik, known as "the Lyrical Terrorist" for her Internet name and her poems celebrating beheadings, to a nine-month suspended sentence and 100 hours of volunteer work. She was convicted for possessing material that included an Al Qaeda manual, a reference work on "mujahedin poisons" and bomb-making instructions, which prosecutors said suggested that the British-born woman was linked to violent extremists.
"You're 23, of good character till now, and from a supportive and law-abiding family who are appalled by the trouble that you're in," said Judge Peter Beaumont, who at an earlier hearing had acknowledged that Malik remains "a complete enigma to me."
The case comes amid a mounting debate in Britain over where to draw the line between terrorism and those who merely applaud it. Radical Muslim clerics have been sentenced to years of imprisonment for calling for the deaths of infidels. In July, three men were jailed for six years each for statements they shouted -- including "Bomb, bomb the UK" -- during an emotional demonstration over a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad.
Malik, who wears a black head scarf, was convicted for possessing terrorism manuals, not her poetry. But it is her verses that have both captivated and horrified the public and sparked the controversy over when radical statements cross the line into inciting terrorism.
In a poem titled "How to Behead," she wrote:
It's not as messy or as hard as some may think. It's all about the flow of the wrist. Sharpen the knife to its maximum. And before you begin to cut the flesh, tilt the fool's head to its left. Saw the knife back and forth. No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream. But ignore the donkey's ass. And continue to slice back and forth. You'll feel the knife hit the wind and food pipe. But Don't Stop. Continue with all your might.
Malik sat silent in court as the judge read out her sentence, twisting a tissue in her fist. At one point, she buried her teary face in her hands.
