Begum hasn’t played fair – but Britain still can
Ashooting range in the Wirral has used images of Shamima Begum, the 19-year-old Isil bride from Bethnal Green, for target practice. A spokesman said this was “lighthearted fun”, set up because of a “record number of requests” from customers.
This follows the declaration from Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, that Begum will be stripped of British citizenship – an assertion from which he is apparently retreating now that it seems London-born Begum does not also have Bangladeshi citizenship, and would therefore be rendered illegally stateless.
Both Javid and the shootingrange clients seem – in different ways – eager to define Britishness by the selection of a common enemy: in this case, Begum, a British Muslim teenager and new mother who has gone grotesquely astray. Yet both actually suggest the opposite: a country that is losing touch with its own values.
I do not agree with those
who seek to absolve Begum as vulnerable and brainwashed. She knew what Isil was doing to its “enemies”, including the systematic murder and sexual enslavement of Yazidis, before she chose to join up aged 15. She dehumanised non-muslims, just as Unity Mitford before her – another young British woman enchanted by a vicious regime – dehumanised Jewish people when she fell for fascism and idolised Hitler in Berlin. Yet Mitford, after a botched suicide attempt, was permitted to return to Britain, whereupon she announced, ungratefully: “I’m glad to be back in England, even if I’m not on your side.”
Mitford’s citizenship was not revoked, and nor should Begum’s be, particularly since that of other Isil returnees – including actual combatants – still stands. If she returns, she should be closely monitored and held legally accountable for her actions. But one of the values for which Britain is renowned is the principle that everyone is equal under the law. That didn’t hold true in Isil territory, nor in Nazi Germany – but the whole point, surely, is that we are different.