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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Shamima Begum....where do you stand?

999 replies

LeahSMS · 26/09/2019 10:50

What are your thoughts?

AIBU to think she was only a child but unfortunately she’s now considered as a threat so therefore she will never return it’s not only about her safety but the people around her?

Tell me your thoughts

OP posts:
doublebarrellednurse · 27/09/2019 10:38

I mean you've just proved the point there seeing as a tough and even abusive childhood is not the same thing as being groomed for a specific task.*

Oh yeah, they're like totally and utterly different.*

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand the difference?

Both make you vulnerable yes but one is leading an individual very deliberately to do a specific thing. Ie child sex offenders deliberately train victims to be compliant to them. SB family brought her up believing certain truths about the world and then a radical organisation reinforced them and offered her a home and identity.

The other is a general abuse of someone which may or may not lead them to behave in a certain way. Ie an abuser who beats their child (like Ian Brady) does not do so in order to create a serial killer, they do so because they are abusive.

HTH

doublebarrellednurse · 27/09/2019 10:41

Good god don’t let her back in. She’s a scum bag. At that age she knew what she was doing.

At age 15 I was having sex with a 25 year old. It was highly abusive and I had no idea at all that it was.

Girls were having sex with groups of men at 15 and those men were jailed.

Why is she a scum bag but me and girls like me are not?

Or are we maybe and we should just have known better?

Johnsonsfiat · 27/09/2019 10:47

She was 15 and a British citizen. Whatever the outcome, these facts should have informed the process.

Wiltshirelass2019 · 27/09/2019 10:52

doublebarrellednurse she’s a scrub bag because she is a bad person doing very bad things with an evil ideology. You were innocent and did nothing wrong. You can not compare the two.

Why should we pay for her evil ideology. Why should people risk their lives to get her back. Why should we pay to keep her in jail. And when she gets out of jail no one will employ her so she’ll just be a huge drain forever with a massive risk to our society to boot. No she’s a scum bag, leave her there to rot.

doubtingmorag · 27/09/2019 10:54

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand the difference?

It is of no concern to me really, or most sensible people, the point is that for some strange reason you are desperately trying to deny she has any culpability. The manner in which someone becomes capable of such acts (leaving aside the "just born evil" debate) doesn't really matter. Anyone can claim (and they do) oh yeah, i wasn't thinking straight and I wouldn't do it again etc.

It chills me all this talk of "deprogramming" - it's nonsense, human beings are not computers, that you can just manipulate into thinking good or bad thoughts by sending them on a course.

This belief that someone can be utterly brainwashed into the most vile of belief systems, just by reading shit on the internet, is ludicrous and I'm afraid not acceptable. Where do we stop with this ? "oh it's not their fault the poor lamb" It is no defence, so no your explanation does not help thank you very much.

doubtingmorag · 27/09/2019 10:56

Or are we maybe and we should just have known better

Yes, you should have known better however to compare a teenage girl wanting to have sex with a 20 something man to joining ISIS is a bit of a stretch.

doublebarrellednurse · 27/09/2019 11:00

It chills me all this talk of "deprogramming" - it's nonsense, human beings are not computers, that you can just manipulate into thinking good or bad thoughts by sending them on a course.

As I think you're probably aware this is a massive simplification but there are decades of evidence for the process of deprogramming that people go through when they leave cults for instance. People have entire careers that are highly respected dedicated to it.

And she didn't just read stuff on the internet and I suspect you know that to.

The thing is this is an incredibly nuanced case and simplifying it to this degree doesn't help anyone. It just makes the world black and white and it's not.

HoppingPavlova · 27/09/2019 11:00

Allegedly lost 3 children. More likely invented 3 children to gain sympathy.

Not sure about the others but I thought there was no proof with the last one and she wasn’t exactly forthcoming in this regard, it was an odd situation.

SVRT19674 · 27/09/2019 11:08

I would have let the baby back for treatment of its respiratory problems. He was the only real innocent here. And then would have given him in custody to her parents. She is useless and a person with no empathy.

OnlyFoolsnMothers · 27/09/2019 11:10

I would have let the baby back for treatment of its respiratory problems. He was the only real innocent here. And then would have given him in custody to her parents. She is useless and a person with no empathy
I would have liked an independent DNA test of said baby beforehand, Shamima Begum is hardly the most honest of people...her child, born hours before her Sky news interview...dont make me laugh

Puzzledandpissedoff · 27/09/2019 11:12

Not sure about the others but I thought there was no proof with the last (lost child)

Though prepared to be proved wrong, I'm not aware there's ever been proof for any of them

Newsflash: When wishing to get themselves out of a hole, evil doers sometimes lie

SVRT19674 · 27/09/2019 11:13

@doublebarrellednurse because what you did hurt only you. You didn't oversee the beheadings of other women's husbands and join with glee those who behaved like this and promoted the cause. Nor participated and clapped in the beatings and enslavement of Yazidi women. She is on another level, double. Tha's why she is a scumbag to many.

Newoneonherr · 27/09/2019 11:16

I think there's a certain sexism at play here. I doubt people would have the same sympathy if it were a teenage boy.

I sometimes wonder how weak and vulnerablewe have become. She is a terrorist, she supports a terrorist ideology, and yet most on here think she should be allowed back.

For what purpose?

Would you want to live next door to her?

What possible use could she be to UK society?

Some people grow up to do great things, they become Doctors, Nurses, Police Officers, Teachers, Surgeons, Paramedics. They inspire others, they make the world a better place. And there are others, like this girl, who's only contribution to society is to serve as a warning to others.

No. She should be left where she is.

Puzzledandpissedoff · 27/09/2019 11:17

Interesting, too, that despite there being many Brits who've been tried and imprisoned abroad - some of them in poorer countries with unpleasant regimes - nobody's explained why an exception should be made for Shamima by bringing her here for trial

DarlingNikita · 27/09/2019 11:17

doublebarrellednurse, it is you who are simplifying this and it's rather ironic that you try to tell others all about how it's an 'incredibly nuanced case'.

Pps are not trying to deny she has any culpability – many are in favour of her being tried through due process of law.

Deprogramming, as someone else points out, is not by any stretch 'nonsense'.
And it is also nonsense that SB simply 'read shit on the internet', as I suspect you know.

DarlingNikita · 27/09/2019 11:19

doublebarrellednurse, I do apologise, I misread posts and names and addressed you by mistake.

I meant doubtingmorag. Apologies both for being so befuddled!

Puzzledandpissedoff · 27/09/2019 11:25

She should have been protected before she left. Where were child protection services then?

Why not ask instead "where were her family"? Strange how everything's someone else's fault, especially when there's every chance that input by the authorities would have been instantly damned as racist targeting

doubtingmorag · 27/09/2019 11:55

DarlingNikita
I didn't tell anyone is was a nuanced case.

Deprogramming, as someone else points out, is not by any stretch 'nonsense'.

Really, so you would be happy to live next door to a (ex) fanatical ISIS nutjob so long as they have been "deprogrammed" ? Because if not it would suggest you do not really trust it works at all. "Oh yeah, i used to cut heads off infidels and stuff in my youth, but I'm all right now".

She should have been protected before she left. Where were child protection services then?

FFS, think of the cost of this level of monitoring, and to blame "child protection services", i mean honestly.

many are in favour of her being tried through due process of law.

Why does that have to be in this country ? Again if you commit a crime in a foreign jurisdiction you are liable for punishment there, you dont get to to say "can i come and server my sentence in the UK prison system please, it's a bit nicer"

doublebarrellednurse · 27/09/2019 12:07

Oh and I don't believe she has no responsibility here. She does and like I said earlier should be in long term locked supervised care/jail on return however I do think there are mitigating circumstances

Puzzledandpissedoff · 27/09/2019 12:19

Why does that have to be in this country ? Again if you commit a crime in a foreign jurisdiction you are liable for punishment there

That's what some of us keep asking, and rational answer comes there none. The best I've heard is that Syria have a lot of problems and don't need more, but countless places have problems and we can't pick up the flack for them all

And just imagine if we did: the cry would instantly go up of us behaving like interfering colonialists who don't trust "others" to run their own affairs, and it would become yet another stick to beat the west with

PackingSoapAndWater · 27/09/2019 12:20

Why are so many posters saying she's our problem and should face justice in Britain?

This girl has committed crimes against the Syrian people. She was part of an invasive foreign faction that terrorised, murdered and tortured Syrians. THEY have the first right to accuse her and punish, not us.

To assume otherwise is deeply arrogant and stinks of an old imperialist mindset that somehow, because Begum is "one of ours", she must only face a British court and British charges.

Imagine a situation where civil war breaks out in Britain, and an internationalist hard right movement decide to use the opportunity to carve out a supremacist "state" in Cumbria.

The fighters in this movement torture and execute Cumbrians for resisting, cut the heads off British Asian and Black people, take teenage girls in Carlisle as sex slaves, all broadcast on the internet, and a group of three teenage girls in the US, obsessed with white power, come to Britain to live in this fledgling supremacist state because they think it is all so marvelous. They marry the supremacist fighters, they engage in the repression and abuse of local Cumbrian women, they glance at severed heads without concern.

Then the whole thing collapses, and one of them is left alive in a camp with a sob story. Would YOU as a Brit accept the US saying she should return to America and face terrorism charges there? When hundreds of BME Brits have been slaughtered? When hundreds of British girls have been raped and abused? When an entire region of the UK has been terrorised; homes, shops, facilities, hospitals stolen and destroyed?

Like fuck you would.

Give the Syrian people the same agency as you would demand for yourself in such circumstances. Otherwise, go back to the 19th century. You fit better there.

PackingSoapAndWater · 27/09/2019 12:21

And just imagine if we did: the cry would instantly go up of us behaving like interfering colonialists who don't trust "others" to run their own affairs, and it would become yet another stick to beat the west with

Yes, because it would be true.

doubtingmorag · 27/09/2019 12:23

PackingSoapAndWater

Ah - but that would involve holding brown skinned people to the same standards as you hold white people, and that's racist.

ToffeePennie · 27/09/2019 12:26

This silly, stupid teenage girl was groomed to such an extent she no longer holds anything like British values.
Yet she is still a British citizen.
The answer of what to do with her is difficult and I’m glad I’m not the one making the choice, because it is clear she has no regrets, she still supports ISIS and she still believes their brainwashing. I honestly don’t think any manner of support, mental health or physiological assistance is going to change the young ladies’ mind.
It is clear that now, as a 19 year old ADULT, she still believes the doctrine she has been fed for the last four years.
Yes she is scared, yes she will be concerned for her babies and her future, because she is not in a nice place right now.
I recall reading somewhere that members of her family were previously drawn into radicalism so this didn’t just spring out of nowhere for her.

Honestly, I wish they would bring her back, but put incredibly tight restrictions on her, to the point where there is someone with her and her babies at all times, no exceptions - yes even if she is imprisoned for what she may or may not have done. We cannot let her loose with the indoctrination swirling round in her head, she must show remorse or regret before she is given her freedom again.

ToffeePennie · 27/09/2019 12:29

And if it is true she is found to have committed an offence against Syria, then she should Stand trail there, however, I understand that currently their justice system is not in a place where it can uphold the law, therefore, allow a British citizen to be detained safely here. She can stand trial in Syria at a later date, surely?

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