Aibu to think the parents of the Syria girls need to take a bit more responsibility?

[exmrs]

On the news today the parents are demanding an apology from the police as the police knew apparently a friend of theirs had already gone to Syria and the police didn't contact them.
I find it strange that they don't take a bit more responsibility to the situation.

Why didn't they know what was going on in in their daughters lives?
They are the parents and they seem to blame everyone but themselves or the girls.
To blame the police is ridiculous , the girls made the choice to go

Who here believes every single word in the Daily Mail?

Who here is proud to say they don't trust a word that's printed in it? Oooh, that was quite a lot of people, I think. Bit unfair, acksherly; the Daily Mail reliably gets the date right!

I can hear a lot of other people protesting to say they treat particular papers, such as the darling DM with pinches of salt, according to detected biases, and depending on the story, rather than blanket believing/disbelieving the paper. Yes, that's a very adult, nuanced point of view.

Wondering where I'm going with this? Well, I agree that ISIS's evil has been covered in mainstream media. The girls must have been aware. However, I don't agree that these teenage girls necessarily trusted the reports in mainstream media. It is possible they really did believe, lock, stock and barrel in the version of events and justifications they were getting from ISIS agents over the internet. The idea that you and you (and a couple of friends) alone are the only one(s) who knows 'the truth' about 'what's really happening' is an attractive one; it's particularly attractive at 15. Heaven knows, there has been an anti-Muslim slant in the press for years, and I can see how a skilled groomer could harp on that to discredit the accuracy of reports on ISIS.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of terms. What's the actual difference between a freedom-fighter, a guerilla or a terrorist? I'd call ISIS barbaric pillagers, but "freedom fighter" sounds much more positive, and it's such an easy substitute for terrorist.

Blame cultures going crazy... What sort of parent doesn't know what their kids are looking at on the Internet.

I don't believe the girls were radicalised just through the Internet there was probably undertones even if light of is empathy within the family... 15 year old girls don't just up and leave

The only people to blame are the Isis members that groomed these children to join them.

perverting and misusing their religion

IS's doctrinal justifications and the theology under pinning all their actions come from Islam.

There are disagreements about some of their interpretations - e.g. the validity of the resurrection of slavery and burning people alive, but when they say they are behaving as the prophet Muhammed and the first Caliphs did, they're not actually wrong. So to say it is 'perverting', when in fact they are emulating, is disingenuous... unless of course Muhammed wasn't a muslim and had also perverted the true faith ?

A lot of the other things they do e.g. killing gays, stoning adulteresses, chopping off hands etc, though is pretty mainstream Sharia stuff and commonplace in Saudi, the birthplace of Islam and custodian of its most sacred sites.

Misusing their religion ? ...... no just enacting the more literal parts of it. If they really were perverting and misusing Islam, could there really be such a big following of supposedly intelligent and educated muslims from across the world. Surely they wouldn't have been able to convince and garner the support they have if the religion unequivocally contradicted what they claim.

MistressMia, I always find your posts on Islam interesting

Anyone saying that blame would not have been levelled at non-Muslim parents in the same way has clearly never seen any of the many McCann threads on here.

I feel desperately sorry for these parents but, equally, I feel they have a responsibility to bear as they should have done everything possible to keep those girls safe

I live in an area with active paedophile gangs at work and more than one young girl has just vanished and never seen again. If my children had not been brought up with attitudes and information that enabled them to remain safe I would have failed as a parent.

It does sometimes seem as though the police and other authorities are accused of racism when they try to inform and intervene yet blamed for not doing enough when they don't

MistressMia, I strongly disagree. What ISIS are doing have no basis at all in Islam - they are directly contradicting the teachings of Islam. This has been clearly told over and over again by Muslim scholars all over the world.

The problem is that members of ISIS started fighting quite legitimately as freedom fighters against the barbaric tyranny of President Asad (who is still silently supported by the US, UK and other states). Unfortunately they then turned into the ISIS that we see today, which is so radical and anti-human and anti-Islam. Truth be told though, the Syrian regime (Asad and co), are just the same, if not worse. Their human rights record is just as disturbing and shocking, and as a regime, you'd think they'd have more humanity and common sense.

I don't agree with the parents blaming the police but I have the utmost sympathy for the parents. The daughters they knew are dead- if they come back alive then they will either be utterly traumatised or dehumanised.

I think the media need to stop reporting on these girls now. The girls, the "terror twins", Asqa Mahmood and "jihadi John" almost have celebrity status from the amount of reporting on them.

I think newspapers really need to look at the way they are reporting on IS. The DM has almost become an IS propaganda machine sensationalising them and publishing IS videos.

According to the Independent:

Now the families fear the intervention may have hastened the girls’ decision to leave. Fahmida Aziz, a cousin of Ms Sultana, said: “Were they feeling victimised by police? Were they feeling criminalised? Did they feel they had done something wrong? My query would be, by giving this letter, how did that make the girls feel?”

As a PP suggested: damned if they do, damned if they don't

If my children had not been brought up with attitudes and information that enabled them to remain safe I would have failed as a parent.

Really, how very smug! People who groom are expert manipulators, be they IS recruiters or pedophiles and have an uncanny knack at targeting the vulnerable.

Parenting is a tough job and even our best efforts are sometimes not enough. These parents are lashing out, grief can do that. I can not imagine the fear and pain that they must be going through, all played out under the glare of media attention.

If you think the parents of these girls' are too quick judge, what's your bloody excuse for the sanctimonious finger wagging.

Misusing their religion ? ...... no just enacting the more literal parts of it.

Yes Mistress I hear and understand what you're saying, but the Muslims I know don't accept those literal parts - even though they are sincerely practising believers.

The Bible has some pretty nasty things to say, but I don't know of any Christians who practise them literally.

I feel desperately sorry for the girls and their families. At 15 you think you know it all (what would your parents know?) but of course, you've a lot of growing up to do. A lot of teenagers get passionate about causes. In my case it was vegetarianism and saving the whales . These poor girls are going to pay a very high price because they picked the wrong cause. Their families may never see their precious daughters again. I hope that all Muslim families have learnt from this terrible example and are watching their sons and daughters very closely and (most important) locking away all family passports. However, you can't lock up your kids 24/7 and I guess there's always the possibility of travelling on a forged passport. They should also talk to their teenagers about the evils of ISIS and the horrible reality of being a freedom fighter or married to one.

As for those who say that every parent should know what their children are doing on the internet, that's bullshit. There have been some very sad stories here in Ireland where teenagers committed suicide because of internet bullying. Their parents hadn't a clue what was going on.

I think the police made a mistake in not sending the letter to the parents. Would it have made any difference? Probably not. But now it's become one of the "If onlys".

I would be very interested in reading the e-mails or messages that were sent to the girls. I would like to know exactly what the girls were promised or offered to tempt them to take off to Syria.

Mistressmia burning people alive or throwing people off buildings has nothing to do with Islam.

Lem73 - great posts and I wish more people bringing up Muslim children took the same attitude that you do.

I do think the parents are ridiculous to blame the police - it's nonsense to suggest they knew nothing about the other girl going off to join ISIS as apparently they had attended the wedding of the father of the first girl only a short time previously (the first girl's mother had died of cancer 18 months previously). So clearly the parents of at least 1 of the 3 girls was good friends with the family of the girl who'd already gone to Syria and would have known she'd gone - there's no way that within a small community that that news wouldn't have got round or that all the parents at the school wouldn't have been talking about it. If you know a schoolfriend of your daughter's has just gone off to join ISIS, then what parent wouldn't take extra precautions in that situation??

I also don't see the girls as victims - at 15, they chose to join a terrorist organisation. The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 ie over the age of 10 you have to take responsibility for your actions and are expected to know and practice the difference between right and wrong. You'd have to be blind not to know what ISIS have been up to. Apparently, one of the girl's internet history included visits to 70 different 'Jihadi bride' sites - this doesn't sound like a girl who was groomed at all, this sounds like a girl who actively chose her path. A despicable and illegal one. I do have some sympathy for the parents but not really the girls - choosing to join a murderous cult deliberately is not equivalent to choosing to have an illicit fag or even choosing to do something minor but illegal like shoplift. And these girls came from comfortable middle-class backgrounds - I have a bit more sympathy for gang members who maybe really do not see any alternatives to a life of crime, but these girls had loving families and good opportunities for university, careers etc. They chose to throw that up to join a bunch of psychotic murderers. Their choice.

And there is no comparison with the girls in Rotherham - it is not a crime anywhere that I'm aware of to be gang-raped. Those girls were victims.

It is a crime to join a terrorist organisation that proudly publishes the fact it murders innocent people. These 3 girls are would-be perpetrators, not victims. It's a disgusting slur on innocent victims of rape to suggest the two are equivalent. The Yazidi girls and woman who are being raped and enslaved by ISIS - they are victims. The 3 British girls going out to support the rapists and murderers quite categorically are not.

Well, parents most certainly have the biggest responsibility in monitoring their own children. I don't ring the police to check my son's circumventing of parental controls which we have put on the computer. Admittedly, he is not 15 or 16 yet.

I know people have equated the decision by the girls to arrange their travelling hundreds of miles to support a movement of which they have actively sought out many of the horrific, torturous, brutal images and acts of murder on the internet. They seemed to have had a predilection for these types of brutal images as they were seeking and following so many websites and viewing them. I have a difficulty with this as I clicked on a website somebody mentioned to see what was in it and knew I didn't want to click on the video because it was just voyeuristic butchery of some sort. Isis activities are not a surprise. They possibly are happy enough as they think they are going to be top of the heap over there and the ones dishing it out rather than at the receiving end of it.

It's doesn't seem quite the same thing as someone who is groomed and duped. I read somewhere that some people who want to kill and torture are drawn to this environment as well. In a normal society you can't go around torturing, maiming, enslaving and murdering people without being brought to book for your crimes. You can do anything you want in this territory at the moment under Isis. Any violent tendencies exercised at will. So maybe a certain type of person attracted as well under the guise (or not) or other reasons. With all this BDSM at the moment as an example, they know they'll be at the perpetrator level and not the victim one.

One of the girls was not living at home with her father, it seems. Her father had remarried after the mother had passed away and she was staying at the grandmothers house. Her sister spoke at the Commons home affairs select committee. I wonder who was actually looking after her or looking at what she was doing or if the school had even been informed if the letter was addressed to her father who resided elsewhere.

When I read the police were saying the girls may have funded their trip by stealing jewellery from their family members, I couldn't help but thing about the video's atm depicting chopping of hands for theft by Isis. Some are more equal by others, I guess and these girls won't suffer the rules of the org they have done so much to join. Just watch others become victim to them.

They shouldn't have been able to get on the plane so easily.

Didn't finish first sentence, ', with being groomed'.

So maybe a certain type of person attracted as well under the guise (or not) of ISIS or other reasons.

Shoulda proof read.

I have as much sympathy for these girls as I would for people such as this. I suppose she was groomed too.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irma_Grese

Just read about the first girl who disappeared. The poor thing had just lost her mum to cancer and started to become more religious, rejecting her old life. I feel desperately sorry for her. She was clearly struggling to cope with losing her mum at such a vulnerable age.

I understand the point your trying to get across NPC but I think Samantha Lethwaite is a more realistic comparison

I don't. There are reports that British recruits have supervisory roles of prisoners within the al-Khanssaa Brigade. I think the Irma Grese comparison is quite valid.

Ah, apologies. lew73, I think that's the girl I read about, not the one whose sister spoke at the Commons committee. She was Sharmeena Begum who travelled in December, as opposed to Shamima Begum who was one of the Syria 3 girls.

Apologies again.

If someone is involved in murder, torture, keeping slaves and being brutal to them, it cannot be passed off as religious conviction. People don't get license to do this because of personal tragedies either. I have absolutely sympathy for someone losing a mother so young, however nobody was responsible for that. Disease and dying are part of life.

Actively inflicting the torture and murder of others is a choice, whatever guise somebody wishes to hide it under. Not much pity for others in the support of it either.