Stop Making Excuses

Alison Pearson writing in The Telegraph makes a strong case that the runaway 'jihadi brides' deserve little public sympathy; that they are old enough and sufficiently well-educated to understand that the Islamic State (IS) has murdered and enslaved fellow human beings for not sharing their extreme religious beliefs. 

I imagine these young women are now enjoying a 'honeymoon period' in Raaqa, the Islamic State's stronghold in Syria, where they will be feted as celebrities and treated very well for a while before reality intrudes a lifetime of domestic drudgery and servitude begins. 

Now I think it's difficult not to have mixed feelings about the is whole business, especially if you've brought up teenage children, because the natural reaction is to cut them a bit of slack.

But on the other hand these young women haven't run-off to T-in-the-Park or Glastonbury for a rebellious few days of drink, drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll - they've thrown their lot in with a bunch of religious fascists with all the appeal of the Manson Family except on a much bigger and even nastier scale.

Let's stop making excuses for these 'jihadi brides' 

Why are three straight A students from East London, who went to Syria of their own free will, deemed more important than the 1,400 mainly white girls raped and pimped in Rotherham


From left: Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase going through security at Gatwick airport Photo: Metropolitan Police/PA



By Allison Pearson - The Telegraph

Well, we may have just the opening for you! Young British girls sought to take up exciting position as jihadi brides in some of the world’s major hotspots.

If you find 21st-century life a bit much, no problem. We can get you back to the 15th century faster than you can say halal marriage. Sexually frustrated because your strict parents refuse to let you get a boyfriend and integrate into Britain’s decadent, kuffar society? Well, waiting for you is your own personal “holy warrior”, hot off the battlefield and eager for your cool, soothing embrace.

This full-time position comes with a house, which you are at liberty to leave (in exceptional circumstances, and accompanied by a charming male guardian). There is a generous clothing allowance, which will enable you to wear double-layered veils, loose, floor-length abayas and on-trend gloves. Don’t worry about the veils. You won’t really need to be able to see anything when you go outside – probably better not! – and your guardian will hold onto you.

Perks include:

- Regular sex with your holy warrior

- Regular barbecues (of hostages)

- Spoils of war – other women’s clothes, possessions etc

- Widowhood classes

- No need to worry about revising for boring old GCSEs. Result!

- One-way ticket to Syria

- No more unflattering trousers!

- Plenty of opportunity to meet interesting new people, and watch them being beheaded.

- The ideal female candidate for this exciting role should be aged between 9 and 19. Fear of blood a disadvantage.



Preferably able to start immediately. Don’t delay: your holy warrior awaits!

You may have noticed that another three British Muslim girls have dashed to Syria to become jihadi brides. Let’s face it, unless you got locked in the loo for a week, it would be impossible not to. The fate of Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana has dominated BBC news. Blame for the trio’s flight has been laid variously on the immigration authorities, who failed to intercept them, the airlines who let them board, and on the police, who were too slow to react apparently. Our Prime Minister went so far as to implicate the entire British people. David Cameron said the disappearance of the Bethnal Green schoolgirls was “deeply concerning” and “we all have a role to play in stopping people from having their minds poisoned by this appalling death cult.”

Do we really? I don’t know about you, but my ability to influence Muslim teenagers who fancy shacking up with an Islamist mass murderer is a bit limited. And I resent the money that is spent sending British police to Turkey to try and bring them back. Why, come to that, do three “vulnerable” Muslim girls monopolise BBC headlines night after night when the fourteen hundred mainly white girls raped and pimped in Rotherham by men of Pakistani heritage struggled to get their abuse aired at all? I know whom I feel more sorry for.

The three new ISIS recruits are invariably described as “naïve”, but airport-security pictures show rather confident young women striding purposefully towards their destiny. “Jihadi brides are not shrinking violets,” one expert told Radio 4.

The British people, I suspect, are fed up of being required to feel worried about these girls, who are all 'Straight A’ students and could be expected to know better. Googling Islamic State recently, I came across one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen. At the front of the photograph was a toddler who was smiling and holding up a scabby football. Behind him was his proud father, toting a gun and laughing and gesticulating at the little boy. On closer inspection, it became clear that what the toddler was holding was – oh, dear God - a bloody human head.

The image made your mind melt. Such cruelty, such depravity, such gleeful corruption of innocence may be difficult to comprehend, but it is easy to identify for anyone who has been raised in a civilised, liberal society. Shamima, Amira and Kadiza were lucky enough to be born in such a country, they benefited from its education system when tens of millions of Muslim girls in other parts of the world are barred from school. In their online searches, the East End girls will definitely have come across videos of stomach-churning barbarity – the mass beheading of 21 Coptic Christians is only the latest Isil snuff movie - yet they chose to go and plight their troth with the culprits.

Teenage infatuation is nothing new, nor is running away from an unhappy or restrictive home. Yet, normally, youngsters break out from repression into liberation. To run of your own free will into what is essentially slavery is freakish and disturbing.

Once again, instead of Muslims scrutinising their own culture, blame is projected outwards. Even if Gatwick passport control had been more on the ball, and stopped the three girls in their tracks, it might have spared their parents grief, but it would not have provided an answer. You can’t blame the stable door for the horse having bolted. What did the horse think it was bolting towards?

A poll for Radio 4’s Today programme found that more than a quarter of British Muslims sympathise with the motives of the gunmen who killed 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The soothing BBC headline on this story was: “Most British Muslims oppose Muhammad cartoon reprisals”. Certain listeners, choking on their Shreddies, might have felt the more newsworthy point was that 27 per cent of Muslims think those cold-blooded murderers had a point when they wiped out a bunch of cartoonists. If the Muslim population is around 2.8million, then there are approximately 700,000 of our fellow citizens who believe that killing someone for offending you is sort of OK really.


Veiled and ready for the public - the dress expected for a jihadi bride

Presenter Justin Webb asked Baroness Sayeeda Warsi about the Muslims who tacitly condoned the Paris attacks. Her reply was sly and self-serving. She suggested that you would get a similar response “in other faith and non-faith communities” if you asked them whether they felt violence would be justified in relation to something they felt strongly about.

What an appalling apologist the former Foreign Office minister has become! Name me any other community in the UK in which 27 per cent of people would condone violence because of a perceived religious insult?

The poll also found that 31 per cent of respondents would like their children to go to a Muslim state school and 20 per cent believe that “Western liberal society can never be compatible with Islam”. Well, it’s certainly not going to be compatible until Muslim parents let their children mix with – and even marry - other people’s children, and girls and boys are treated as equals.

It is entirely admirable that 95 per cent of Muslims say that they feel a loyalty to Britain (far higher than most other groups). But it is strange, at the same time, that so many who profess that loyalty should have very little grasp of what living in a free and democratic society entails. Tolerance is a two-way street.

Today, Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana may well be settling into their new lives in the Isil stronghold of Raqqa. What a weird thought. I wonder how long it takes a girl born into 21st century freedom to submit to the beastly constraints of the 15th? How long before she realises that she can’t even use her beloved hair straighteners, let alone that her holy warrior is an unholy brute? Of course we should feel sorry for their families, but for the girls themselves, I’m not so sure. If you make your bed with barbarians, you can lie in it.