My Son, the Jihadi

[ImperialBlether]

Anyone watching it?

What I mean is that i'm not altogether convinced he was brainwashed.

His mum and brother were so brave, and his friend from when he was younger.

I found it really shocking. If you looked at how lovely his mum and his brother are and all the normal family photos of Tom looking like a lovely little boy it is hard to believe.

I think he was totally brainwashed. You don't risk your life, kill people, leave your family behind unless you totally believe in your cause. That is what makes this really frightening. He was vulnerable and looking for something and that is what these terrorist organisations prey on.

I felt so sorry for the mum and brother. They felt guilt for what he had done even though they were helpless to stop him. The thing about feeling relieved he was dead so he couldn't do anymore harm was so sad. I think they had lost the person he was before he even left the country by the sound of it.

It's not that easy to brainwash someone to be a hardened killer like he was. If that was the case you could absolve all the nazis of their crimes against the Jews. He wanted to kill and relished in it. I think he was plain evil. His poor family, and of course his poor victims who he took delight in slaughtering.

I think i agree mellow. I think he will have found a "cause" that allowed him to kill people one way or another. There are people who are very messed up or angry or even ill (but undiagnosed) who want to hurt or kill and they will find a way to "justify" it. Either to themselves or to the world. I think he saw a cause that fitted his criteria and were willing to have him as long as he said he believed.

Maybe I am being a bit innocent but I just find it hard to believe that he would do that if he wasn't brainwashed. His family seemed to think he was a normal loving person before (OK I know they wouldn't say anything different probably).

So do you think that all the people that get 'successfully' recruited to these groups are looking for an excuse to be killers rather than are brainwashed.

Not denying he was evil, just thinking that the group made him evil not that he was necessarily evil before. Oh, I am confusing myself now.

Anyway, whatever way around it is horrifying and I have a lot of sympathy for his family and his victims.

Actually I do think in most cases it's the killing and the power that attracts young people to join these groups. Everyone knows what they do, basically going round killing innocents. It's not an army, there's no fair fight, they slaughter innocent people. That must be what attracts young people to join, what else could there be.

It said at the end of the programme that a thousand Brits have left the UK to join them. These are not brainwashed young men. They're attracted to all the killing and the power, maybe something is lacking in their lives but there really isn't any excuses to want to kill.

Did anyone see the TV programme a while ago about a Scottish Muslim girl who was about to go to university, but went off to Syria? She had a very typical middle-class upbringing and had planned to study to be a doctor. Her family were not extreme. It seemed so odd that a girl who had absolutely everything going for her would do something like that. She is now one of the women who recruits young girls - she was very good on social media and that was how she was recruiting them. I think that's easily as bad as killing people directly, targeting troubled young girls and encouraging them to leave their lives here to go to a life of abuse and murder there.

I don't think a group can make you evil, you can become hardened to killing as those jihadi's are but basically you had to have been attracted to their ideals, (which is basically killing innocents) to want to join them. You could see in that clip last night how much they relished the thought of going off on one of their slaughters. Terrible for that mother to see her son in that way.

I dont believe in the concept of evil. Or at least what i have grown up (catholic) being told evil is (the devil, external forces making you do bad things) so i cant agree that he was made evil by them jihadis or that he was evil. I definitely think many of the are brainwashed. No doubt about it. I'm just doubting that this guy was.

i thought the mother was very brave and realistic especially when she refused to send money,saying he was going to hell etc

some parents would try to make exscuses about why their child would do such things

she was realistic to what he had done which must have been very hard for her to say

They might get brainwashed to an extent, but only because they want to be. The thousand men that have left the UK went because they were attracted to the idea of killing and power. They hadn't been brainwashed.They went because they wanted to savagely kill people. They glory in slitting throats. I don't suppose it matters what word we use to describe them but savage, barbaric, inhumane are a few I can think of. Evil is a good a word as any I suppose. But saying people are brainwashed when they do barbaric acts is excusing them.

The footage of the idiotic young men on their trip to Gaza was very telling: 'Let's go fucking mental, let's go fucking mental' etc. Sort of said it all really.

It was excruciating to watch the mother's dignified suffering, and to see the younger son who not only had to share this and earlier traumas, but had obviously had plenty of experience of watching his mother suffer. Terrible to see.