Minister calls for society not to ‘write off’ ISIS bride
Rev reckons rehabilitation and redemption should be considered
JONATHAN GEDDES
The minister of a Rutherglen church has called for rehabilitation to be considered in the case of controversial ISIS bride, Shamima Begum.
Reverend Alistair May, of Stonelaw Parish Church, made the comments in an online blog last week.
He later told the Reformer that he was not advocating people should get off “scot-free”, but that modern society should not write off rehabilitation, in either the Begum case or several others.
Ms Begum fled her east London home aged 15 to travel to Syria to support IS in 2015, but now wishes to return home for the sake of her third child, who was born at the weekend.
Her previous two children both died in Syria.
Her comments have provoked passionate debate over whether she should be readmitted to the country, with Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoking her British citizenship last week.
Mr May’s blog post discusses Begum, the actor Liam Neeson’s confession that he wanted to kill a black man after his friend was raped and Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who dressed up in blackface, and what the Christian response should be. He writes: “There is a pattern here: a morality that has no place for forgiveness and certain sins that seem, as if blasphemies against the Holy Spirit, to condemn you eternally.
“We may protest to be a liberal society, but just occasionally the mask of rejuvenated puritanism slips, and the witch-hunt begins. But might the Gospel offer our society a different narrative: a narrative of redemption?”
Mr May then gives examples from the Bible, such as Zacchaeus and Saul, who travelled on the road to Damascus, to illustrate his point.
He told the Reformer: “I don’t want people to misread what I am saying, because I am not advocating that Shamima Begum be allowed back into the country and told to go and live her life.
“There is a criminal justice system here and if she was charged then it would be a judge and jury matter.
“However, there is an attitude of writing people off these days, and that is not right. She is a 19-year-old, does that mean we should simply give up on her entirely?
“In all the examples there seems to be an attitude that there is no possibility of rehabilitation with people – which is not helped by social media – and the way that complicated issues can be reduced to brief Tweets.
“In Christian terms God reaches out to people who don’t deserve it, and redemption is not their starting point, but something that they may or may not reach.
“As Christians we sing Amazing Grace, which was written by a slave trader (John Newton). He had a spiritual conversion and was accepted, but it was not until years later that he accepted that he had been living a bad life.
“That testifies to how someone can be rehabilitated over a number of years, but it is not a simple process.”
The full blog post can be read at http:// ifimaypresume.blogspot.com.