Current Affairs Bethnal Green Three

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Harryflashman said:
Seems mad though to me that corbyn is being pilliored for his opinion whilst JRM spoke about having sympathy for her and that she was a child when she went but doesn’t seem to have got anywhere near the same stick .
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I think there is a conception that Corbyn will do anything to gain the Muslim vote.

The mass waving of Palestinian flags at the last conference, and the ongoing anti semitism controversy, would support this for some people.

Corbyn and Momentum are moving Labour to the left, so he will be slated.
 
Between this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47335731 and @Blue 1 's post I think we should bring her back.

Not because of any feelings of sympathy or empathy, but because I think its an important step to preventing extremism in the future. Extremist ideology is all down to words, values and ideas. Its incredibly hard to stop the spread of ideas, all you really can do demonstrate they are wrong. ISIS may be losing its war, but unless we learn to safeguard against extremism, they or a similar group could rise again.
How can we learn? We bring back the people who left to fight for ISIS. Put them on trial and all that for crimes that were committed, but also try to undo the programming and grooming. Then we can use what was learned to fight against grooming attempts in the future.
 
Blue 1 said:
I've stayed away from this debate for the most part, as pretty much every comment I've seen on social media about it has been either rabid, pig ignorant or stultifyingly ill-informed, and I don't really wish to add to the shrieking, but I read the following today and it was food for thought:

This has come up a lot, so before we get started, know that Begum's father is not known to be involved in extremism (you're thinking of Amira Abase), and Shamima Begum is unrelated to Sharmeena Begum. On the flipside, Begum's mother did not die of cancer and that is not why she was vulnerable to brainwashing. Agree or disagree with the body of this post, but both sides of the debate have started to just post full-on lies to make their position seem obvious, and it's wearing thin. The whole point is it's complicated.

I'm super horrified by so many responses to the incredibly complicated Shamima Begum case (including by some people on my FB list tbh). "It's ISIS, even a 15 year old should know how dreadful a group ISIS is", "She shows no remorse", and "She's a threat to national security" seem to be the most common problematic responses. I've been listening to Rukmini Callimachi's phenomenal podcast Caliphate again recently - so largely for my own sanity, I'm gonna break these down based on what I've learned.

1) You gotta understand that ISIS has an entire recruitment strategy based around taking vulnerable Muslim children - kids who feel isolated and out of place and insecure about their faith - and making them feel like they have a new family. They hang out on message boards and groom kids, in the same way child sex offenders do. Over time, they paint ISIS as the misunderstood side of the story. Illustrate how they've been turned into the boogieman by the West. Show how Western society will never appreciate them they way ISIS does. They make lonely kids feel safe and wanted and make their home nation seem like the real enemy.

Then - here's the genius bit - having spent the past however long praising them for their faith, they then start to cast doubts in their mind. "Wait, you didn't know you were supposed to reject those around you who aren't Muslim? Have you even read the Quran? Maybe you don't understand this as much as we thought you did..." They make vulnerable kids feel safe and welcome for the first time in their life, then play on their insecurities to get them to fall in line. They employ professional recruiters to carry out this strategy. It's a dastardly sales technique, masterful psychological manipulation. Begum may have known what she was doing, but she didn't fully understand why.

2) Once you're in ISIS, their MO is essentially threefold, two of which are relevant here. One, they break down your empathy. Two, they convince you that everything they're asking you to do is religiously justified.

So they have counsellors who coach you through the process of leaving behind your family. Who teach you how to suppress any feelings of shame. For the men, who sign up for battle, they walk you through the emotions you're gonna feel when you first kill someone. They start you off in the slaughterhouse, then they have realistic mannequins that you kill, then you do your first kill as part of a firing squad, and all along there are people whose job it is to work with your emotions with the goal of removing your ability to [Poor language removed] feel anything.

You're living in a community of people who are constantly showing you how the group's actions are justified. They have educated acedemics, who teach you how to interpret certain sections of the Quran in new ways. Remember, you're a vulnerable, probably uneducated kid. They use that authority to convince you. And there's no one around to help you challenge that. Over time, as your emotions are worn down, you grow to believe that to show remorse would be sacreligious anyway. It is a tremendously common thing among new ISIS defectors, to have realised there are problems with ISIS and to want to leave, while refusing to accept that you regret joining and supporting them in the first place. Radicalisation takes time to deprogram.

3) Yeah, maybe she is a threat to national security. Who knows? I have to trust that the correct procedures will be followed to ascertain this, and that if she is, she will receive a custodial sentence, just like other people who are a threat to national security or those around them.

But to strip her of her citizenship? That's playing into ISIS' hands.

Remember I said their MO is threefold? The third thing they do is they make you believe that no one outside of ISIS will ever take them back. It's how they get people to stay for long enough to break them. They take vulnerable, isolated children, and make them believe that ISIS is the only place they will ever again be safe and loved. And every time a country behaves like this to one of their own citizens, you can be sure that becomes propaganda material. "Look at the callous, uncaring West, rejecting unhappy Muslim kids yet again."

The way we break ISIS' propaganda and programming strategy is by proving it to be demonstrably false. Let Begum be tried in a court of law if needs be. But for goodness sake, bring her back, and show some [Poor language removed] humanity. She was a child. She was groomed and brainwashed and programmed and had her entire sense of self destroyed and rebuilt by a murderous cult. To say she asked for it, that she deserves what she got, is the height of victim blaming.
I implore anyone who hasn't listened to Caliphate to do so - it's an extraordinary bit of reporting, phenomenal insight into a group that has surprisingly complex ways of operating, and how they managed to get tens of thousands of troubled kids to join up with them. It's terrifying, but I think it explains a lot of this really well.

Couple of updates.

1) Welp, this went a bit viral, that's a surprise. In light of this I want to clarify two things that have been strangely misconstrued a few times.
One: You can feel free to take this as a complete and utter rejection of ISIS and its beliefs and and behaviours. It is a terrorist group, a fake state that has only ever existed to expand and exert power, in the name of a religion that almost exclusively rejects its ideologies. ISIS has done, and continues to do, awful things, one of which is to employ sophisticated indoctrination techniques to convince young and vulnerable children to join its ranks. This makes it an enormously complicated situation - because in a very real sense, they are both criminals and victims.

Two: I have no idea whether or not Begum is a security threat. The correct way to deal with this, if there is a suspicion that she is, would be to put her on trial. Due process can then be followed to determine the best way to deal with the situation in order to protect the wider population. All I know is that ISIS indoctrinates children and that, in this sense, she is a victim. In any case, she is not just being treated as guilty before being proven so, but ripped of her citizenship - something so fundamentally a part of a human being's rights - before there has been any attempt to understand the circumstances of her joining ISIS, and pretty much exclusively because of the media attention on her specifically (and not the hundreds of other people who have been allowed to return from the IS and keep their citizenship). That's what is at issue here.

2) The foreign minister of Bangladesh has just now released a statement saying Begum cannot claim Bangladeshi citizenship. This means that if the UK proceeds with its plans to revoke her British citizenship, Begum will be stateless. This means she will not legally be able to settle anywhere on the planet. It is to sentence her to life as either a refugee or a criminal. It is also in breach of international law but I honestly think that's beside the point.

Additional update: People are getting muddled in the comments between this case and another case of a British Muslim who left to join ISIS, around the same time, who has a similar name. There is no evidence that Shamima Begum's family were in any way involved with or supportive of ISIS or Islamic extremism. You are thinking of someone else.
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I actually missed this. It’s a brilliant post and hopefully pours water on a lot of the baseless hate that has been spouted in here.
I know theirs certain people who won’t want to acknowledge it though
 
Zezti said:
Between this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47335731 and @Blue 1 's post I think we should bring her back.

Not because of any feelings of sympathy or empathy, but because I think its an important step to preventing extremism in the future. Extremist ideology is all down to words, values and ideas. Its incredibly hard to stop the spread of ideas, all you really can do demonstrate they are wrong. ISIS may be losing its war, but unless we learn to safeguard against extremism, they or a similar group could rise again.
How can we learn? We bring back the people who left to fight for ISIS. Put them on trial and all that for crimes that were committed, but also try to undo the programming and grooming. Then we can use what was learned to fight against grooming attempts in the future.
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The UK has an entire Anti Terror strategy based on this premise, seems remiss to completely disregard the guidance in it.
 
bol-uk said:
Why? In her case I mean. Compared to the murderers and paedos around the world who get out of jail and live a normal life, why this bird in particular does not?
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I'm not just talking just about her case, I mean certain cases in general - however she has shown no remorse, expects sympathy and only wants to come back now ISIS has pretty much dissipated.

In my opinion, she's made her bed... She can lie in it. She wants to come back so her child can have a better life, what about the lives of the families destroyed by her beloved ISIS?

It's about time we put victims first.
 
Mutzo Nutzo said:
I think that what people are concerned about is that their maybe insufficient evidence to convict her of more serious crimes under existing anti-terrorist legislation. Lack of eye witness evidence, lack of hard intel etc...

So she is guilty of belonginging to a terrorist organisation that much we could prove - so if she ever did return to this country, she could very well be tried and convicted of that although I'm not sure of what type of sentence she would be given. This would probably be followed up with many years of a probationary monitoring system being put in place (has to report to police station 3 times daily/nightly curfew, blah blah). All running alongside some form of rehabilitation / de-toxification process.

Personally I don't think she herself presents a threat to the British public, however she could be seen and used by shadier figures as a figurehead, a living, rallying symbol of western oppression against Islam. So in that sense she does still pose a security risk and that needs to be taken into consideration.

Don't know what the answer is here. I hope that we don't let her back. I don't care where she ends up beit Bangladesh, Amsterdam or rotting in Syria.
There's hundreds more just like her in Syria being held by Kurds/US/Syrians and they will want to come home as well. What do we do then?
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Membership of a proscribed organisation is normally 4/5 year sentence in English law.
 
I could be late to the party on this but are we to believe that Jihadi Jack, presently imprisoned by the Kurds wants to come back to the UK because he's missing his mum and Doctor Who.
Getting silly if true.
 
Zezti said:
How can we learn? We bring back the people who left to fight for ISIS. Put them on trial and all that for crimes that were committed, but also try to undo the programming and grooming. Then we can use what was learned to fight against grooming attempts in the future.
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That's kind of locking the door after the horse has bolted.

You're effectively saying you can go join a terrorist organisation, change your mind then come back, have a bit of therapy in an open prison all the while your family is being taken care of at the tax payers expense - more than likely a change of name and address and then be released to live out your days on benefits because you're effectively unemployable.

Personally I'd make the punishment a deterrent rather than bring them home with open arms and give them a slap on the wrist.
 
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