Jihadi-Waddy

“Let's go for a little walk” sang 70s pop combo Showaddywaddy, “Under the moon of love”. So off went the so-called ISIS brides for a little walk into Syria, except they went under a blood moon, for reasons that were the opposite of love. Today there is much misnomeric talk of ‘hate crime’ for expressing opinions. Whether out of ignorance or antipathy, hate is an inappropriately intense adjective, but to those who went to wage war against the world true hatred was at the heart of their devotions.

Now poor, duped Shamima Begum wants to come ‘home’. Home, to the country she left in order to support an ideology for which the utter destruction of the west was front and foremost on the wish list. Home, where the hated kuffar live, where one day her religious cult seeks to establish supremacy over all. “She was only a child when she went” say her supporters and white-guilt-ridden apologists. Yet she is reported to have said she wasn’t fazed by the sight of severed heads; they were the severed heads of those whose only ‘crime’ was not to submit to islam.

In her ‘community’ a white British girl who had multiple pregnancies in her teens would have been held as an exemplar of the worthlessness of the non-believer. Such supposed trash were exploited in their thousands. They were raped and traded for sex by Begum’s muslim brothers and nobody cared. The agencies which should have protected them shamefully turned their back for fear of offending muslims. Offending. Not raping, beating, maiming or beheading muslims. Not driving them out and rendering them homeless and stateless and utterly dependent on charity. Simply to avoid offending them.

Now, despite Sajid Javid’s bold words of defiance we know there is every chance that she could be quietly returned to the UK where she will be afforded, even as a war criminal, a dignity and sympathy denied the many victims of the doctrine for which she advocates. Yes she will be questioned, possibly she will be jailed, but with such a high profile there will be human rights vultures watching the authorities’ every move for signs of abuse. She has said she doesn’t regret what she did; she should be begging for mercy, not assuming she has any right to return. But if she returns the story won’t stop there.

Moors murderer Myra Hindley was arguably the same, caught up by a romantic dalliance with a psychotic lover; a mere follower of evil, not evil herself but misled. Lord Longford advocated for years that she had changed her ways and no matter that she was locked away, she has still not left the public consciousness. What’s to say a repatriated Begum won’t become some kind of high profile martyr to the cause? Some argue that mercy is what separates ‘us’ from ‘them’, that forgiving and showing compassion is more powerful than punishing.

But what do we gain from being the bigger man here if she brings her haughty arrogance and disdain for the non-islamic world back to the world’s recruiting ground for jihad? Far better, surely, that she is forgotten. Let the world she travelled to absorb her and bury her. Showaddywaddy also reprised ‘Three Steps to Heaven’, but there is really only one. Let’s leave her where she is and let her complete her jihad by taking that first step.