Shamima Begum: the making of a martyr
Is Shamima Begum’s situation all about Islam? Called “foolish” and an “abstract concept” for joining ISIS, media reaction to the teenager who joined an outfit committed to mass murder, who expresses no remorse for having done so, can be compared and contrasted to the treatment meted out to the Covington Boys. Like Begum, the Covington boys are religious, attending a US Catholic high school.
They are mostly white. Begum is dark skinned, her parents hail from Bangladesh. The Covington boys’ crime was to have attended the anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. and in the face of a prolonged verbal onslaught by the Black Hebrews as they waited for coaches home – during which they were called “fagots” and “products of incest and paedophiles” – were filmed smirking at Nathan Phillips, a Native American who had approached them. For this the boys were called “vermin“, racists, Trump fans whose MAGA hats were “akin to the new white hood” and “products of a hate factory”. The boys were the embodiment of “blatant hate, disrespect and intolerance”. Begum, on the other hand, was “groomed“.
The Covington boys apologised, although it remains unclear to anyone sane what they did wrong. Being a surly, sarky teen is no crime.
Begum has expressed no remorse. She says she only left the battlefields to return to the UK and have a child on the NHS.
What is it about fair-mined liberals that turns white, Catholic teenage boys in baseball caps into something less than human and demonic, but presents a dark-skinned, Islamic teenage girl who joined a death cult into a victim? They marched peacefully to end abortion. She joined a group that pledges to murder gays, Jews and Christians, rapes underage girls sold in slave markets, and murdered children at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. They smirked and danced. Her reaction at being shown the remains of her gang’s handiwork was “When I saw my first severed head it didn’t faze me at all”.
The prejudice is blatant. But why is it there?
Not that this is to say anti-Islam bigotry is not prevalent. The Mail gives space to Tania Joy, a former jihadi who “called for Begum to be given a second chance for the sake of her unborn child – and for a law ‘to protect children from their religion’.” Ban Islam? Make it a crime to be Muslim? Why give space to such an abhorrent view?
The argument that all of Islam is to blame for a death cult is patently absurd. What of the Islamists’ many Muslim victims? But let’s no dig too deep. If you need more time to work out why calls to ban a religion are revolting, why are you here?
The paper adds:
In comments that place much of the blame on Islam rather than on personal responsibility, she added: “I wish there was a law in England that could protect children from their religion.
“If I had grown up in an agnostic, atheist, or even a Christian or Jewish home, I would not have been exposed to these suppressive ideas of women and how god controls everything – and it is just such a lie.
“I feel sorry for [Shamima], she is so young, she has been in a toxic environment for all these years where she is not allowed to think anything different from the rest of the group. She is still in that state. She is only 19 and that’s when I radicalised.
Can Shamima Begum be saved by turning away from Islam and towards Jesus?
Today, estranged from her British family, Miss Joya is the wife of IT executive Craig Bruma, 49, who answered an advert she placed on dating website match.com stating: ‘I have four kids. My husband abandoned me to go and become the next Osama Bin Laden.’
Twice divorced himself and a father of three sons, he has introduced her to ‘Unitarian Universalism’, which is based in Christianity but advocates a ‘search for spiritual growth’.
Mohammed kills. Jesus saves. An odd take on the Shamima Begum story, for certain. And it avoids the biggest question: why did Shamima Begum seek an alternative life with ISIS to the one offered in the UK? It’s lazy to see her as a passive target of grooming. You don’t happen along a video of a man preaching genocide and global jihad, keep watching and eventually sign up unless his message chimed with you. And you don’t prevent social division of a sort so violent it ends up in mass murder by presenting one group as eternal, unalloyed victims who must be tip-toed around less offence be caused.
Come home, Shamima, by all means. Face your days of reckoning. But let’s not let prejudice turn her into a martyr.
Posted: 16th, February 2019 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
