Thursday, March 12, 2015

The parents of those Jihadi runaway girls must take their share of the blame writes SAIRA KHAN

The parents of those Jihadi runaway girls must take their share of the blame writes SAIRA KHAN 


The explosive saga of the so-called Jihadi girls from East London has descended into an unedifying blame game, with both the police and school authorities under increasing attack for failing to prevent the trio’s departure for Syria.

Yesterday, the families of the three schoolfriends — Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, who travelled together from London to Turkey and crossed into Islamic State-controlled Syria — took their case to Parliament.

There they complained bitterly in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee that they had been given no official warnings about any potential involvement the teenagers might have had in murderous jihadism.

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'Instead of wallowing in victimhood and looking for scapegoats, surely the families of the three girls should be looking at their own role in this grim tale'
'Instead of wallowing in victimhood and looking for scapegoats, surely the families of the three girls should be looking at their own role in this grim tale'

There had been no reason to suspect their children had been radicalised, they said, a claim backed up by their solicitor Tasnime Akunjee.

He argued the police had failed to give them crucial information about the likelihood of the girls becoming radicalised, and said their negligence towards the families had been ‘a disgrace’. 

I find this attitude quite astonishing. I’m sorry, but instead of wallowing in victimhood and looking for scapegoats, surely the families of the three girls should be looking at their own role in this grim tale and facing up to their own culpability.

Their main complaint is that the police failed to communicate with them. Well, what about their own communication skills? Why were they not communicating with their own children?

To my mind, the decision by the three girls to join the extremists of Islamic State in the Middle East points to a catastrophic failure not in policing or schooling — but in parenting.

Of course I feel sorry for them — it would be utterly devastating for any parent to see a daughter run off at such a tender age to join the evil barbarians of Islamic State in Syria, where they will be subject to appalling sexual servitude and possible death.

But my sympathy is conditional. As the families lash out against the British state, they seem utterly unable to accept any responsibility for their primary role in the scandal. 

After all, they are the ones who created a home environment in which their children colluded eagerly with a murderous death cult.

Rather than displaying anger at the police or their daughters’ school, Bethnal Green Academy, a period of embarrassed silence from them would be welcome.

Sadly, the determination to evade responsibility has become all too common in these cases of British-born jihadists and their deluded supporters.

Kadiza Sultana 16, and Amira Abase, 15, are among the trio of who left East London two weeks ago to travel to join ISIS in Syria, and are now believed to be in the group's headquarters in Raqqa
Kadiza Sultana 16, and Amira Abase, 15, are among the trio of who left East London two weeks ago to travel to join ISIS in Syria, and are now believed to be in the group's headquarters in Raqqa

Though I know little about the specifics of his case, I was deeply disturbed when associates of the notorious Mohammed Emwazi, nicknamed Jihadi John, immediately put the blame for his lethal extremism on harassment by MI5.

And I was shocked when the pressure group Cage, which has received substantial funding from a number of liberal charities, described Emwazi as a ‘beautiful’ and ‘gentle’ young man while its spokesman Asim Qureshi refused to condemn the stoning to death of women when he was asked about it in a TV interview.

In the case of the schoolgirls, much of the families’ anger has focused on a letter written by the police and intended for parents of children at the school, which warned that another pupil had travelled to Syria a few months earlier with the aim of joining Islamic State.

Instead of giving this letter to the parents, the police handed it to the girls and asked them to pass it on. They reportedly hid it in their school notebooks.
Shamima Begum, 15, who also left the UK to join the terror group. Today her parents blamed the police for failing to inform them she was at risk
Shamima Begum, 15, who also left the UK to join the terror group. Today her parents blamed the police for failing to inform them she was at risk

And this failure, according to the families and their solicitor, is why the police are to blame for the whole subsequent jihadist catastrophe. If only the letter had been sent directly to the parents, they argue, the girls might never have fled to Syria.

Indeed, their solicitor told the Commons Home Affairs Committee yesterday that the families would then have been ‘on notice’ for signs of radicalisation or plans for travel in the Middle East.

Instead, in the words of Tasnime Akunjee, they had been ‘disabled from intervention’.

Like the families he represents and the apologists for Jihadi John, the solicitor is determined to find a scapegoat and portray those truly responsible as victims of institutional failure.

Sadly, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has given some credence to this deluded reasoning by making an apology for the way the letter was delivered.

He should not have bothered, for his instinct to appease only feeds the climate of buck- passing. In fact, far from absolving the parents from blame, the police letter only highlights their responsibility.

If I had received such a letter from the police when I was a Muslim teenager growing up in Nottingham in the Eighties, I would not have dreamed of hiding it from my parents.

The fact that the Bethnal Green girls did so again points to a disastrous breakdown in their familial relationship.

This goes to the real heart of the problem. Contrary to what some commentators argue, the cause of these girls’ attraction to jihadism in Syria is not brainwashing or Islamic radicalism — but their home environment.

In truth, the genuine Muslim faith, with its emphasis on compassion and concern for others, is the very antithesis of the Islamic State death cult.

The great majority of Muslim parents believe the most important responsibility in life is to bring up children to be decent citizens. 

Over recent weeks, I have not met a single one of my Muslim friends in Britain who is not appalled by the vicious, totalitarian, misogynistic savagery of the jihadists.
The real explanation for the girls’ behaviour lies not in religion, but in a culture that has its roots in the Asian subcontinent.

By all accounts the girls were raised in a closed, claustrophobic world where they were denied the self-expression and freedom that comes naturally to western teenagers.

All their choices, from their career path to their choice of husband, are dictated by their parents. That is a culture I know only too well from my own upbringing in Nottinghamshire.

I was lucky. My father was enlightened and valued education and independence for women, above everything. Yet even so, he still expected I would marry someone from my family’s village in Pakistan.
The families say that police stopped them from intervening in their daughters' radicalisation by failing to pass a letter to them warning that another student at the girls' school had fled to the Middle East
The families say that police stopped them from intervening in their daughters' radicalisation by failing to pass a letter to them warning that another student at the girls' school had fled to the Middle East

As a youngster, I understood how the whole weight of the family’s honour can fall upon a young girl’s shoulders.

Any challenge to this honour code, whether it be ‘talking out of turn’, ‘seeing the wrong boy’ or wearing ‘the wrong clothes’, can lead to severe disapproval.

There are two consequences of this. The first is that it fosters a spirit of resentment against parental authority, reflected in a desire to embrace normal teenage enthusiasms, such as fashion, pop music and romance. 

The second is an ingrained habit of concealment and duplicity. Muslim girls are very good at developing two different personalities: a dutiful, submissive one for the home and another, more outgoing one, for friends.

This double life is made easier by new technology. Away from the prying eyes of their parents, most of whom do not have a clue about social media, Muslim teenagers can live fantasy lives in the privacy of their bedrooms.

And the jihadists, who are internet savvy despite their addiction to medieval barbarity, are cynically brilliant at exploiting this mix of innocence and technological awareness.

Through their persuasive online propaganda, they present jihadism as a kind of Muslim extremist version of following the pop singer Justin Bieber, full of attractive male hunks and fan worship.

Jihadists become young girls’ pin-ups and idols, just as pop stars do for Western girls.

Tragically, too many Muslim girls in Britain are falling for this nonsense. Like teenagers throughout modern history, they seeking to rebel against what they see as oppression.

But the paradox in this case is they are colluding with a dark, malevolent form of tyranny that brutally oppresses women.

That is what we should be standing up to, not indulging in nonsense about police failings over correspondence.


Saira Khan is ambassador for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

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