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British IS schoolgirl 'wants to return home'

SpookyFrank said:
Well the policy on this has got to be coherent and universal. If you're letting people come home after creating ISIS as adults but not after joining it as children, that's incoherent.
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Ok so you kick out the squaddies. You haven't said where to, by the way. Where do you kick them out to? Many of them are on the streets already, so maybe just add the rest to the legion of homeless and abandoned ex-squaddies that are the shame of this country. Then what?
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Ok so you kick out the squaddies. You haven't said where to, by the way.
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I hear Iraq is lovely since they went over there and fixed it.

I don't really think we should kick all the squaddies out. I just think if we're going to support survivors of war then we're only going to prolong the kind of beef that starts wars in the first place if we pick and choose which survivors are worthy of help.

I don't think squaddies should be on the streets, but nor do I think people should be willing to kill on behalf of a state that leaves anyone at all out on the streets. This is all interrelated.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Ok so you kick out the squaddies. You haven't said where to, by the way. Where do you kick them out to? Many of them are on the streets already, so maybe just add the rest to the legion of homeless and abandoned ex-squaddies that are the shame of this country. Then what?
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Why are you humouring this tit?
 
Rob Ray said:
Tbh I think a lot of people on this thread have forgotten what it's like to be a teenager, while afaik none of us have any knowledge whatsoever about how being inducted into a death cult aged 15 and not emerging for four years can affect a person.

I'm not saying she should be absolved of guilt or trusted, but this was a child sucked in by a vast and insanely clever network of professionals exploiting her youth and faith, not a hardened veteran.
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It does seem like you're missing out a part of the picture, which is the girl herself, and filling in gaps because it's too awful to imagine that a young person might have had some agency in this. We don't know how disturbed or otherwise psychologically vulnerable this girl was, what we do know is something of her actions, what she was exposed to before going, what she sought out, and a short interview in admittedly difficult circumstances. I'm not sure it helps us to understand what may have happened to call it youth and faith.
 
Rob Ray said:
Tbh I think a lot of people on this thread have forgotten what it's like to be a teenager, while afaik none of us have any knowledge whatsoever about how being inducted into a death cult aged 15 and not emerging for four years can affect a person.

I'm not saying she should be absolved of guilt or trusted, but this was a child sucked in by a vast and insanely clever network of professionals exploiting her youth and faith, not a hardened veteran.
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I think Saul Goodman used the first line in his first defence speech in Better Call Saul.
 
we should immedialty send williamson javid and boris Johnson to go rescue her purely for the lols they'd be fine anyone who wants to do serious harm to the UK
unfortunately isn't going to harm a hair on any of them
 
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Red Cat said:
It does seem like you're missing out a part of the picture, which is the girl herself, and filling in gaps because it's too awful to imagine that a young person might have had some agency in this. We don't know how disturbed or otherwise psychologically vulnerable this girl was, what we do know is something of her actions, what she was exposed to before going, what she sought out, and a short interview in admittedly difficult circumstances. I'm not sure it helps us to understand what may have happened to call it youth and faith.
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I'm not "denying her agency", I specifically said in the second line that she's not absolved of guilt. And yes, the whole point is we know fuck all about her psychology either before, during or after, other than that she was 15 and religious at the start and is talking tough at the finish. Everything else is making assertions based on little more than what a 19-year-old refugee trapped in a camp (which may or may not also have a number of people in it who wouldn't take kindly to say, a full-on recanting of prior affiliations) has to say about her experiences.

That said, the inability to even imagine that a teenager might have their head turned by a well-executed campaign of propaganda aimed at exploiting alienation, sympathy with repressed Muslim peoples, existing faith etc I find totally weird. Even Scientologists have a decent hit rate with cult recruitment and they're literally selling a space emperor dropping souls into a volcano via a little buzzing gauge. Is this not about 1,000 times more likely than the idea that a 15-year-old independently came to the conclusion that Murder and Torture Is Fine Because The Infidel Must Die from an average teenage daily news diet of I dunno, Newsround and Instagram?
 
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Athos said:
She was a committed and enthusiastic supporter of a fascist regime which committed mass rape, torture and murder on misogynistic, racist, homophobic and religiously motivated grounds. She is entirely unrepentant about that; she only wants out now because the writing's on the wall, and to exploit the healthcare provided by a society that's her sworn enemy. She was well over the age of criminal responsibility when she left, and stayed there into adulthood. Frankly, I couldn't care less if she dies in a Syrian refugee camp.
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eoin_k said:
Shamima Begum was groomed. She deserves the chance of rehabilitation | Michael Segalov

It's one thing to say that the school failed in their duty of care, or that it took far too long for the likes of Twitter to work out what role social media was playing in Daesh's recruitment strategy, but it doesn't follow that framing all of this in terms of grooming and brainwashing necessarily makes sense either.

While there was a sexual aspect to the role Begum was recruited into when she was just below the age of consent, describing her as brainwashed or groomed seems dangerously close to ascribing no agency to teenagers. What other subcultures do young people join that could be viewed this way: queer scenes, social movements, environmental protests, political organisations... All of these are open to abuse, but they are also places where young people begin to make political, ideological and sexual choices for themselves. Making your own way from east London to war-torn Syria seems like a process that involves a degree of agency. It's hard to imagine radical social change that didn't involve young people subverting social expectations in a way that provoked accusations that they were being brainwashed.

However young she might seem to the Urban75 demographic myself included, she is an adult now and nothing she is saying narrates this as a case of abuse. Nothing suggests that she saw herself as a victim until elements in Daesh became corrupt (and tortured her husband in prison?). Making all of this about what 'she deserves' as the Guardian does just seems bizarre at this stage. There don't seem to be any plans afoot to withdraw her citizenship. Clearly, as people like her make their way here, the British state will have to decide how to deal with them, and the rest of us will have to take positions on what implications this has for our own concerns about legal/political rights and public safety.
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Not sure if it's been mentioned but I'm just wondering whether anyone is aware of the (government run) 'Prevent' programme - where the training is supposed to extend to every member of staff, in every school - and other orgs beyond, as it happens.

Timing-wise, it may have been totally due to this case, actually :hmm: - but it absolutely compares radicalisation to (for eg) sexual abuse, in terms of the potential for grooming.

Within that, the process of making travel arrangements is also never (quite fucking obviously, imo - fucking hell, have you ever listened to teenagers trying to make even basic arrangments) one that will have fallen to the child (and that's written into the training, afair, too).

Seems fairly clear that these girls were recognised as being at risk by their school, too - and that it was a significant failing of the school to send a letter back to the parents, warning of their concerns, with the girls (cos that'd be pretty fucking idiotic even if they'd just pissed off to the park for the afternoon) - but whatever, how far do you dismiss the impact of all of that when shit has happened now?

Prob stands quite a lot on believing, or not, that they were groomed in the first place, I suppose.
 
SpookyFrank said:
Well the policy on this has got to be coherent and universal. If you're letting people come home after creating ISIS as adults but not after joining it as children, that's incoherent.
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No one is stopping her coming home, if she does, there's nowt we can do but let her in, investigate, possibly prosecute and jail her, and take her child into care.

There's no requirement for us to 'rescue' her & bring her home, so your comparison is frankly nonsense, Frank, which is hardly surprising coming from you.
 
sheothebudworths said:
Not sure if it's been mentioned but I'm just wondering whether anyone is aware of the (government run) 'Prevent' programme - where the training is supposed to extend to every member of staff, in every school - and other orgs beyond, as it happens.

Timing-wise, it may have been totally due to this case, actually :hmm: - but it absolutely compares radicalisation to (for eg) sexual abuse, in terms of the potential for grooming.

Within that, the process of making travel arrangements is also never (quite fucking obviously, imo - fucking hell, have you ever listened to teenagers trying to make even basic arrangments) one that will have fallen to the child (and that's written into the training, afair, too).

Seems fairly clear that these girls were recognised as being at risk by their school, too - and that it was a significant failing of the school to send a letter back to the parents, warning of their concerns, with the girls (cos that'd be pretty fucking idiotic even if they'd just pissed off to the park for the afternoon) - but whatever, how far do you dismiss the impact of all of that when shit has happened now?

Prob stands quite a lot on believing, or not, that they were groomed in the first place, I suppose.
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It's possible for both things to be true - that they were 'groomed' (and let down generally by the system) and that they actively sought it out. For me, one test of that way of thinking would be to consider a boy aged 15 who ran off to Syria to fight for IS, marrying one of these girls in due course perhaps, but carrying out the killing and torturing and enslaving. What role would the grooming play in considering his case? I don't see much difference morally between the two, tbh - both are taking on jobs in pursuit of the same cause.

Thing is, most people who do terrible things are themselves badly damaged in one way or another.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
It's possible for both things to be true - that they were 'groomed' (and let down generally by the system) and that they actively sought it out. For me, one test of that way of thinking would be to consider a boy aged 15 who ran off to Syria to fight for IS, marrying one of these girls in due course perhaps, but carrying out the killing and torturing and enslaving. What role would the grooming play in considering his case? I don't see much difference morally between the two, tbh - both are taking on jobs in pursuit of the same cause.

Thing is, most people who do terrible things are themselves badly damaged in one way or another.
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I'm really not sure exactly what I feel about this, tbh - it's just pretty fucking horrific all round.
I thought it was right to correct the notion that radicalised children have not been groomed in the first place, though.
 
Rob Ray said:
I'm not "denying her agency", I specifically said in the second line that she's not absolved of guilt. And yes, the whole point is we know fuck all about her psychology either before, during or after, other than that she was 15 and religious at the start and is talking tough at the finish. Everything else is making assertions based on little more than what a 19-year-old refugee trapped in a camp (which may or may not also have a number of people in it who wouldn't take kindly to say, a full-on recanting of prior affiliations) has to say about her experiences.
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I actually don't like talking about agency in these circumstances because obviously agency is limited and I didn't want to say responsibility either or choice for the same reason, but I didn't know how else to talk about the part that she may have played in all this, otherwise it comes over as her just being done to, rather than a process she was part of.

Anyway, as we have both said, we don't know very much about her.
 
I'd still wonder what might have happened to that 15 year boy if things had gone differently, too, fwiw.
Him and then all the other people he went on to harm and/or kill.
I'm also NOT laying fault at the school's door - I didn't mean it to sound like that.
It just makes me despair, really.
 
gentlegreen said:
A veritable jihadist factory.
I hope this child gets taken into care.
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gentlegreen is the most blatant slut-shamer on this thread, but I wonder how much misogyny plays a part in the reaction to this story. We live in a society which still harbours a degree of contempt for young women who get pregnant. Does disgust with a 15 year old who runs away with the aim of marrying an getting pregnant affect reactions either here or in broader society? The Maxine Carr hysteria was not that long ago, and showed that as a society we still judge women by different standards to men

I also wonder why reactions to this case are so different from that to the case of the British Citizens and British residents who were detained in Guantanamo. They were, after all, captured by the US in Afghanistan post-invasion. For all its faults Guantanamo was probably safer than a Syrian refugee camp, but there was a strong campaign to get them repatriated, supported by posters here. Perhaps that was more related to hatred of Bush.

Force feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo

Guantanamo

Frankie Boyle funds Guantanamo prisoner's suit against MI6 for defamation
 
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sheothebudworths said:
I'd still wonder what might have happened to that 15 year boy if things had gone differently, too, fwiw.
Him and then all the other people he went on to harm and/or kill.
I'm also NOT laying fault at the school's door - I didn't mean it to sound like that.
It just makes me despair, really.
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Keeping in mind the things we don't want to imagine is why we have loads of CP training isn't it? So we keep our eyes open and act even when we don't want to believe what we see. It's really hard to see what's in front of us sometimes, it really is, which is why there's so much emphasis on team working in schools and services, and it's why we're supposed to report everything and not make assumptions ourselves. This stuff is so hard.
 
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tim said:
gentlegreen is the most blatant slut-shamer on this thread, but I wonder how much misogyny plays a part in the reaction to this story. We live in a society which still harbours a degree of contempt for young women who get pregnant. Does disgust with a 15 year old who runs away with the aim of marrying an getting pregnant affect reactions either here or in broader society? The Maxine Carr hysteria was not that long ago, and showed that as a society we still judge women by different standards to men

I also wonder why reactions to this case are so different from that to the case of the British Citizens and British residents who were detained in Guantanamo. They were, after all, captured by the US in Afghanistan post-invasion. For all its faults Guantanamo was probably safer than a Syrian refugee camp, but there was a strong campaign to get them repatriated, supported by posters here. Perhaps that was more related to hatred of Bush.

Force feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo

Guantanamo

Frankie Boyle funds Guantanamo prisoner's suit against MI6 for defamation
Click to expand...

The were beig held captive without trial by a so-called ally. Her situation is quite different.
 
sheothebudworths said:
I'd still wonder what might have happened to that 15 year boy if things had gone differently, too, fwiw.
Him and then all the other people he went on to harm and/or kill.
I'm also NOT laying fault at the school's door - I didn't mean it to sound like that.
It just makes me despair, really.
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So would I. Apols it was a bit of a cheap point really, not really aimed at you, prompted more by wondering whether the Guardian would be publishing articles about him.
 
tim said:
gentlegreen is the most blatant slut-shamer on this thread, but I wonder how much misogyny plays a part in the reaction to this story. We live in a society which still harbours a degree of contempt for young women who get pregnant. Does disgust with a 15 year old who runs away with the aim of marrying an getting pregnant affect reactions either here or in broader society? The Maxine Carr hysteria was not that long ago, and showed that as a society we still judge women by different standards to men

I also wonder why reactions to this case are so different from that to the case of the British Citizens and British residents who were detained in Guantanamo. They were, after all, captured by the US in Afghanistan post-invasion. For all its faults Guantanamo was probably safer than a Syrian refugee camp, but there was a strong campaign to get them repatriated, supported by posters here. Perhaps that was more related to hatred of Bush.

Force feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo

Guantanamo

Frankie Boyle funds Guantanamo prisoner's suit against MI6 for defamation
Click to expand...
It’s the complete polar opposite. The line most people are taking is that she had as much agency, choice and mis placed courage and grip as any male fighter. I think you are deliberately misunderstanding though, for the effect like.
 
I fully expect she will be allowed into the UK, investigated and probably charged with being a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation.
If she is jailed the baby will be taken into care. Her only salvation is if she tells the security services everything she knows, though that would be a self-imposed death sentence.
The law must be seen to be being upheld above all else, as far as the State is concerned.
 
tim said:
gentlegreen is the most blatant slut-shamer on this thread, but I wonder how much misogyny plays a part in the reaction to this story. We live in a society which still harbours a degree of contempt for young women who get pregnant. Does disgust with a 15 year old who runs away with the aim of marrying an getting pregnant affect reactions either here or in broader society? The Maxine Carr hysteria was not that long ago, and showed that as a society we still judge women by different standards to men

I also wonder why reactions to this case are so different from that to the case of the British Citizens and British residents who were detained in Guantanamo. They were, after all, captured by the US in Afghanistan post-invasion. For all its faults Guantanamo was probably safer than a Syrian refugee camp, but there was a strong campaign to get them repatriated, supported by posters here. Perhaps that was more related to hatred of Bush.

Force feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo

Guantanamo

Frankie Boyle funds Guantanamo prisoner's suit against MI6 for defamation
Click to expand...

Ok this is heroic whatabouttery now. They were being held without charge and yes there was a campaign to have them released. It was an affront to human rights that they were treated in this way. What the hell has that got to do with this case?

As for your first point, I agree with A380. My reaction has nothing to do with the fact of her getting pregnant and everything to do with her joining IS. I actually suspect this same discussion about a man who'd joined IS in similar circumstances and fulfilled a male role in that twisted society would involve much stronger condemnation.
 
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