British IS girl "wants to return to Britain"

[themoomoo]

Said she has no regrets;
Says she's seen severed heads in bins but it didn't faze her.
Says living with IS lived up to her expectations.
Now she wants to come home to Britain as she's 9 months pregnant.

Sounds an ideal member of any sane society

But this unborn baby isn't complicit in what their parents have done or have thought. If Shamima was not pregnant, it would be more black and white but she is.

Frankly, I think she should be allowed into the country because where else can her baby go? It's not an ISIS baby, just an innocent one. Should this baby also starve/suffer? This child is also British, you know.

People talk about being "radicalised" as if it were the same as catching a cold or some other misfortune befalling the person.

Believing in and subscribing to the ideals espoused by IS seems to be only something that men have the agency to do without coercion.

Would you spout the same bullshit is she was white? God.

Well, yes, I think most would say exactly the same, if it was, for example Samantha Lewthwaite or Sally-Anne Jones, both white.

I was very uncomfortable with the idea of hanging this young woman out to dry based on an interview given in unsafe circumstances.

I draw the opposite conclusion. She's in a refugee camp, where the inhabitants would have good cause to despise IS, and she is still advocating for IS; that shows how committed she is.

Most people would fit their speech to the surroundings to improve their own safety. It's one thing to advocate for glory of Stalin if it's 1947 and he's the man deploying a reign of terror against anyone who disagrees with him: everyone with a sense of self-preservation would. It's quite another thing it's the 25th of February 1956, the man of steel is dead and Khrushchev is giving a speech about cults of personality. Only the real true believers would have stood up at that point and said "no, Nikita Sergeyevich, you're wrong, I still hope for Joseph Vissarionovich's programme to be completed".

And here she is, in a refugee camp where there is a lot of justifiable anger against IS, spouting support for IS. Where she is makes what she says more likely to be true, not less, because most people in that situation would dissemble.

My head says she made her bed she should lie it in big time!

It also say.. have her back when she has baby take baby away and home with deserving parents (as there a good chance baby will end up brain washed too) then take her to solitary and let her rot (or use her as a spy... I have watched to much homeland)

My heart says she was brain washed and should be bought back and monitored for however long it takes to determine she isn't going to brainwash other kids like she was..
(If she was my daughter I think I would want this)
The trouble is if they get it wrong and she is tried isis the distraction she could cause to others around her physically and mentally could be lethal.

Serbs her back to Pakistan?!! Wow. And to think posters try and argue this thread isn't bordering on right wing hysteria... The irony.

To the dumb posters ego suggested she should be sent back (back to 70s language I see) to Pakistan or Somalia... by all accounts this girl had bengali heritage. And i won't even bother commenting on the Isis baby comment because it is just gross and inherently vile. Should we have bayed like a demented mob in relation to maxine Carr's baby? Robert Thompson's baby? Which babies of criminal parents do we now accept?!!

Trojan horse

What - as in get herself back to the UK and then bring others to join her? Considering the hundreds of ISIS supporters who've already returned I'm not actually sure a "trojan horse" is needed, but I'm open to being convinced

Still isis the destruction

Serbs her back to Pakistan?!! Wow. And to think posters try and argue this thread isn't bordering on right wing hysteria... The irony
i think that was one poster in almost 500 posts so not really indicative of general opinion

Believing in and subscribing to the ideals espoused by IS seems to be only something that men have the agency to do without coercion.

Quite. We were told at the time of their disappearance that they were bright, academic children from supportive families. The survivors in Rochdale and Rotherham were usually (not always, but in most cases) children who were already involved with social services, by whom they were failed by commission, or should have been involved with social services, by whom they were failed by omission. The were targets for grooming because they were already disadvantaged.

These were fifteen year olds, doing well at school, who had not only the money but also the skills to buy and use international plane tickets. They had agency, and knew what they were getting into. I'm receptive to the argument that fifteen year olds make bad decisions, and that we might consider rehabilitation from those bad decisions; I am completely unreceptive to the argument that they did not make those bad decisions. "Grooming" does not seem like le mot juste.

Considering the hundreds of ISIS supporters who've already returned I'm not actually sure a "trojan horse" is needed You're probably right. Where are all these people now?

Read the read, more than one poster has suggested offloading her elsewhere. I'm glad it makes you feel uncomfortable moo.

I think that people would be less uncomfortable with the idea of her returning to Britain though if they had faith that the British justice system would deal with her appropriately. but experience shows us that this is unlikely and that as such it’s likely that she would come back, have her baby, have some intervention perhaps and then be supported for the rest of her life by the taxpayer through new identities etc.

Around 100 isis radicals have returned to Britain but only 40 have been prosecuted. That shows that she is less likely to be prosecuted than not.

If someone else commits a crime abroad we don’t talk about how they have the right to come home because they’re British, but invariably they’re deported from the other country. This is no diffferent except she won’t be deported and she would still want to be there if she could. So i absolutely don’t support the statement that she has the right to come back to Britain, however, given we can’t just revoke her British citizenship she should be appropriately dealt with under the law if she returns here and her baby should be permanently removed with no future right to contact ever. And I would go so far as to say the baby’s records should be sealed so they can never trace their biological parents when they grow up.

genuine question where does it say she was raised in extreme fundamentalist family, ? im confused as to how a traditionally raised muslim had so much unsupervised access to the internet and talking to men from Isis not suggesting its not true just odd..

If she was my daughter I think I would want this

It's an article of faith in this story that the girls' parents were not supportive of, or involved in, their decision to join IS.

It's not supported by facts, and at least one of the sets of parents are liars who lied about their active and enthusiastic membership of a proscribed extremist organisation whose leader, whom they supported, was jailed. The other parents sounded equally extreme, although once the scrutiny of the first set started they all disappeared from view. It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that the "grooming" was done with the active connivance of their dishonest and extremist families; there is little evidence to say it isn't true, and their protests (with teddies and tears) were obviously dishonest.

If almost no one agreeing with me means I am not part of a baying mob if self appointed guardians of the UK, I'm ok with that.

And if you read my posts properly, my first post said that I was very uncomfortable with the idea of hanging this young woman out to dry based on an interview given in unsafe circumstances. That if she stood by those words when able to speak freely then she should be dealt with appropriately (by that I meant the law of the land, not the law as MN determines it ought to be). I said that there is overwhelming evidence that she has been brainwashed and groomed and therefore to simply label her an evil terrorist is not accurate or fair. That there are other options than simply "leave her to rot".

I would say the same about a young man.

^ THIS ^ with knobs on.

Read the read, more than one poster has suggested offloading her elsewhere. I'm glad it makes you feel uncomfortable moo
sorry, i've read this a few times and don't understand.
Read the read?
I feel uncomfortable? What do i feel uncomfortable about? sorry, confused and not uncomfortable about anything

What - as in get herself back to the UK and then bring others to join her?

No, just raise them here. Taqiya, in a culture that she despises and will have every bit of evidence to argue is weak and corrupt. After all, only a weak and corrupt nation would let it's openly declared deadly enemies into it's territory, right?. Strong cultures behead their enemies with knives. Or at least that's what her children will probably believe.

I would have thought letting her back (including facing criminal charges), and removing her baby on the grounds she's an unfit mother would be far better 'revenge' - for those that want such a thing - than leaving her to potentially bring up another radicalised child taught to hate the West? One less future supporter of IS.

I'm really torn by this; on the one hand I do subscribe to the view that 15 is a child, but at the same time when I was 15 the IRA was active on the mainland and I knew enough to understand that blowing up innocent people for a cause, no matter how strongly you believed in it, was morally wrong and a crime. So I don't believe that you should be able to turn your back on your country in the most extreme way possible and not expect there to be adverse consequences down the line when you feel you need that country's help. I just don't believe that those consequences should necessarily be "fuck off and die in a refugee camp, and your baby along with you", especially not for the baby's sake.

With regard to spawning a criminal. Yes, families do sometimes have criminals in them. Thankfully, very few have given birth to or nurtured, terrorists.

I live in London and see these kinds of girls all over the place, have had some contact through work too. Believe me when I say many of them are streetwise and as hard as nails. London teens generally are ime, Muslim or not. I do think there's this idea that generally young Muslim girls are more sheltered and lacking in life experience that would lead them to be more susceptible to grooming. This is not my experience, not where I live. For those girls to have made it into Syria as they did; they had resources that they managed to keep hidden for a long time while all this was in the planning. I do not believe those were starry eyed silly girls. I think they knew what they'd see and do and they didn't care. It was glamorous to them.

I believe she's scared and fed up now and just wants home and familiar stuff but she's seen and done too much. I think she'd manage the quiet life for a year or so and then once stronger and secure and bored she'd return right back to her contacts and carry on, she doesn't know any different now and she's still young and will hanker for the excitement. It's just not practical to have a back and as a pp poster said, other crimes are dealt with by the country they're committed in, why should she be any different? I bet she's got some useful intelligence though. I think they'll let her back just for that, in fact I feel sure she's already being softly debriefed and there will be careful management of a mutually beneficial return to the U.K. or somewhere that will take her and she finds palatable.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been accused of being a bleeding heart liberal but no way on this. She chose the way of life she wanted, is showing no remorse and is clearly wanting to return only for the benefits life in a first world country brings. She's made her bed, she can stay where she is as far as I'm concerned.

How would her return work, practically.

She's going to be a target for violence. A significant number of British racists would wish her harm. A rather larger number of British people (as on this thread) would not actually wish her active harm, but would be entirely indifferent to it happening. Her every move would be Twitter meltdown, and it's almost unimaginable that legal anonymity on the scale of Thompson and Venables would be granted to her.

Unless they have a political death wish, the British Muslim community would treat her like kryptonite alloyed with plutonium. The vast majority of mainstream Muslims have spent the last ten years distancing themselves from IS, so to welcome her back as "one of us" would leave it for racists to say "see, they're all as bad as each other".

So the likely outcome would be violence against random Muslim women of roughly the same age, accusations of fifth column status against any Muslim organisation which put its head above the parapet, a return to the "Muslims are all IS supporters" narrative, in exchange for...what?

If I were a Machiavellian securocrat, I'd be offer a reward to anyone in Syria who shot her, and if I sent any British support, it would be a deniable ex-SAS mercenary carrying a Kalashnikov. Assuming we aren't living in a Tom Clancey novel, this isn't going to happen, but the British government would be very happy for her to die in a way which their hands are nowhere near. Because there is no way that her return to the UK ends remotely well.

It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that the "grooming" was done with the active connivance of their dishonest and extremist families; there is little evidence to say it isn't true, and their protests (with teddies and tears) were obviously dishonest

This seems true in the case of Amira Abase - in fact I said so upthread - but I didn't know "the other parents sounded equally extreme", though I'd wondered about it

Bearing in mind the implications of this if Shamima returned to the UK, do you have links please?

TBH, I think the baby is a bit of a red herring. Shamina is British; if she can get herself to a place where there is a British consul then she will be assisted and will and should face the full force of the law. If she gives birth before then, then (I think?) the baby will be stateless, but would probably be allowed in as a dependent of a British citizen.

What I completely agree with is the line that no one's life should be put at risk to go and 'rescue' this stupid (in the best case) or evil (in the worst) case young woman. I guess if a charity/aid organisation wants to take the risk to get her to eg Ankara I suppose that's up to them. Would I welcome Shamina back? No. Do I wish ill on her baby? No. But, there are so many other babies and children whose parents have not done what she did who are living and dying in hideous circumstances.