Article on Shamima Begum

[ArabellaScott]

Interesting read in the Times.

Discussing culpability, rehabilitation and empathy, via a creative writing workshop run in the camp Shamima Begum is held in.The workshop was run by a Kurdish woman:

' The 29-year-old activist is a member of the Kurdish Women’s Movement, whose revolutionary ideology espouses the necessity of emancipating women as a way of recalibrating society. From this perspective, Evdike regarded the internees as being in need of her help, as victims of an extremist patriarchal society that had allowed women little personal choice, confining them to the roles of housewives and child breeders.

Yet Evdike was also revolted by her own experiences of the war with Isis.'

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d7c55aca-c2e7-11eb-a26e-4c086490cfe1?shareToken=ae4b283c36582267ebd13481836e279e

I thought it was a really good and interesting article about the nuance between painting people as solely victims or perpetrators. I don't agree with stripping her of her citizenship and think she should have been brought back to the UK to be tried and rehabilitated. Not sure what it achieves leaving her in refugee camps.

I will definitely watch the documentary.

Yes, I'd like to see the documentary, though I suspect it won't be an easy watch.

I do have a little bit of sympathy for her as she made a very serious mistake while still a child.

If you're over 18, and you join an organisation at war with the UK, that's basically full on treason and you're an enemy in war.

Of course you should strip such people of citizenship; they have already renounced their loyalty to the country. To remove their citizenship is just giving them their own choice and what they wanted.

You can't betray your country, take the side of the enemy, lose a war, and then say you have changed your mind and want to come back to the country you betrayed.

She was a child.

I think this passage really expresses the nuance in the article well:

'Told through the prism of Sevinaz Evdike, the Kurdish woman running a creative writing workshop in Roj camp for the detainees, The Return examines the experiences of Shamima Begum and five other Isis-affiliated women through Evdike’s own journey, as she grapples with the memory of dead family and friends killed fighting against Islamic State.

In this way, the film allows its audience to judge Shamima Begum and her companions participating in the workshop only after it has first judged itself against Evdike’s inspiring efforts to engage with those who came to her country uninvited, to join a caliphate whose borders were drawn in Kurdish blood.

Even the most choleric armchair critic of Begum might first have to wonder why Syrian Kurds, who suffered so egregiously at the hands of Islamic State and provided the core of the ground force that eventually destroyed the caliphate, are willing to open dialogue with Isis-affiliated women in Roj camp, while those so far from the Syrian killing fields are not.'

Yesterday was the anniversary of 19 yazidi girls being burnt alive in cages for refusing sex with their ISIS captors. This is what she travelled across Europe to join. This is what she found so attractive she threw away everything in this country to go and support.

If her disgusting medieval death cult had won, do you think she’d be feeling any remorse? Would she bollocks. She’s very sorry it didn’t work out as she’d hoped. I don’t care. She’s despicable.

She was getting decent grades at school so wasn’t thick.

These kids had access to the internet and could see first hand what these people they were so keen to join were doing - this was about the time a U.K. grandparent spotted her young ‘missing’ grandson in a propaganda video pressing the detonator to blow up a car of ‘enemies’. What they were doing to the Yazidis was proudly boasted about. They were running off to marry their ‘warriors’ and have a home (stolen). It was a huge adventure - but they knew.

@HermioneWeasley

Yesterday was the anniversary of 19 yazidi girls being burnt alive in cages for refusing sex with their ISIS captors. This is what she travelled across Europe to join. This is what she found so attractive she threw away everything in this country to go and support.

If her disgusting medieval death cult had won, do you think she’d be feeling any remorse? Would she bollocks. She’s very sorry it didn’t work out as she’d hoped. I don’t care. She’s despicable.

“Despicable” or not, she is still our problem. We need to look far more at how this happened and why, rather than targeting the vitriol at this silly, impressionable girl.

@HermioneWeasley

Yesterday was the anniversary of 19 yazidi girls being burnt alive in cages for refusing sex with their ISIS captors. This is what she travelled across Europe to join. This is what she found so attractive she threw away everything in this country to go and support.

If her disgusting medieval death cult had won, do you think she’d be feeling any remorse? Would she bollocks. She’s very sorry it didn’t work out as she’d hoped. I don’t care. She’s despicable.

she was a child

She was a child who was able to get herself overseas alone. She knew what she was doing.

She is still responsible for her actions and her choice. 15 doesn't make her powerless in this instance.

Nobody is saying she was powerless, more than she isn’t quite as culpable as suggested.

I think she’s changed her story - according to the Telegraph:

“She claimed she and her friends were recruited online by Isil supporters who preyed on the guilt they were feeling at seeing Muslims suffering in the Syrian conflict”

Presumably she’s been told to say this by a lawyer.

Or.....it’s the truth. This is a common recruitment tactic.

@Andante57

I think she’s changed her story - according to the Telegraph:

“She claimed she and her friends were recruited online by Isil supporters who preyed on the guilt they were feeling at seeing Muslims suffering in the Syrian conflict”

Presumably she’s been told to say this by a lawyer.

or she didn't realise this till after and therefore its the truth?

The linked article says SB had she continued to have British citizenship (which she does not) and were she able to get out of the prison camp would need 10 years of help, presumably therapy. I wonder who will pay for that? Her father is in Bangladesh where he is from. May be he can raise funds and try to negotiate with the kurds to get her out.

These women are certainly bottom of most of our lists in terms of who needs help - I put the yazidis will above her and certainly the local kurds who are having to pay to house all these people in the camps.

If I were in difficulties in Brazil, say, the British Government would not spend a penny finding me lawyers, getting me released from a local jail, paying my air fair so I am not sure why those in these prison camps think they should be treated better than law abiding UK citizens in difficulties abroad.

However like most people I do feel sorry for her losing three children. Choosing to have children in a war zone rather than saying in London and having them though was her choice - in a sense she put her future children at risk by going there to help found an islamic state where hands were cut off for theft, gays thrown from the top of buildings, women beaten if they showed their hands and much worse - much of the rules over women being enforced by isis women, not the men.

Surely she is in a lose lose situation. If she says she regrets what she has done and hates ISIS then she puts herself at risk. If she doesn't show enough remorse then she won't get help from the UK government. I've been a silly teenager. She was clearly seduced into this lifestyle and didn't really know what it would entail. Poor girl

Anyone interested in this topic should read “Guest House for Young Widows” by Azadeh Moaveni. It really is very good.

Thanks for the link to this article.

She was underage when she left the country and whether or not you accept she was groomed, many young people get caught up in fanatasism. But going and living it, because of a rash ill thought out romantic idea of being part of some sort of revolution, is just as likely to mean she is suffering PTSD having gone through an arranged marriage and had 3 babies that had all died. Her lived experience was that of coercive control.

The comments about it somehow being a competition with what happen to Yazidi women is just illogical. And ignores the main subject of the article. That is that a Kurdish woman who had personally suffered tragedy because of ISIS has the humanity and believe in women to work with women who had become part of, or were appendages of, ISIS.

And really that reactionary nonsense about her father and Bangladesh is straight out of the ring wing racist play book.

SB is a British subject, and the British Government is in breach of international law in making her stateless.

She is our responsibility. She should be returned to the UK and stand trial.

Maybe it is worth thinking what she experienced in this country that so alienated her that she thought supporting Muslims was a priority.

Lets hope that in the same way as the US got rid of Trump we can get rid of this vacuous buffoon Boris who is in hock to the most appalling reactionary right wing little englanders who he is endlessly currying favour with.

@Andante57

I think she’s changed her story - according to the Telegraph:

“She claimed she and her friends were recruited online by Isil supporters who preyed on the guilt they were feeling at seeing Muslims suffering in the Syrian conflict”

Presumably she’s been told to say this by a lawyer.

That was always her story. Just expressed in different words.

Online recruitment of these girls and young women into Muslim extremist movements happens through targeted grooming, often by another young woman. This is well documented and doesn't just happen in the UK either.

@stumbledin perfect post. There is an undeniable racist undertone to this whole sorry tale.

SB is a British subject, and the British Government is in breach of international law in making her stateless.

True, but that piece of international law wouldn't have the slightest bit of democratic legitimacy. You're talking about elites signing a treaty when 99% of the public at the time could have thought that principle to be nonsense. I suspect a majority of the public today would support being able to remove citizenship of people where they join an organisation at war with us.

To strip them of citizenship, is just to formalize their own choice. They have already chosen to renounce their allegiance and loyalty to the UK. If you have no loyalty to a nation, and indeed are committed to its destruction, you can't really be a "citizen".

That said, as I say, I have a little bit of sympathy for her as she made the mistake when still a child. Well all do stupid stuff as kids; although mostly, it doesn't go as far as joining with terrorism, mass murder, taking sex slaves, and trying to build a fundamentalist religious fascist state.

Maybe it is worth thinking what she experienced in this country that so alienated her that she thought supporting Muslims was a priority.

Well she experienced freedoms and e.g. legal rules that you can't discriminate. Very different things to the "Islamic State" she went out to support. Maybe some people were nasty to her; that happens to plenty of people for various reasons. That doesn't normally result in joining a murder cult. And for all I know, her life in the UK was normal and fine.

Re: the recruitment of teen girls, there’s a really good drama on Netflix called Caliphate, where young Muslim girls are targeted, groomed, radicalised and taken to ISIS in Raqqa, from Sweden. Really recommend it, worth a watch.

If you have no loyalty to a nation, and indeed are committed to its destruction, you can't really be a "citizen".

That would make those who want an independent Scotland and Wales not citizens (I'm leaving out NI because that is more complex).

It could be argued Boris has no loyalty tot he UK.

‘silly, impressionable girl’ whatever one feels about the citizenship argument this level of minimisation of her actions is unwarranted.

If a British male of joined Isis at her age after being groomed online through the same/similar process would you exonerate him of crimes so willingly?

The government has not given exact figures on the number of those who both left UK to join proscribed terrorist organisations and also had their citizenship removed, but estimates are about 120.

Shoud we be bringing them all back? Remembering that any/all of them could have been brainwashed and therefore pose and enduring threat