Of course Begum’s ‘not afraid’ of British justice
The Department of You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up has been working overtime this week. The police are considering scrapping the terms “Islamist terrorism” and “jihadis” when describing attacks by – oh, dear! – Islamist terrorists and jihadists. Possible alternatives to be used include the snappy “terrorists abusing religious motivation” or “adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology”, which is a bit of a tongue twister for Huw Edwards, if you ask me.
Apparently, the change was requested by a Muslim police organisation, which blames the official use of “Islamist” and “jihadi” for “negative perceptions and stereotypes, discrimination and Islamophobia”.
In other words, and if I’ve got this right, if suicide bombers blow up a train and leave behind videos indicating they are jihadists pursuing a “holy war”, the police must not make any reference to Islamism in case the public gets the correct impression. Can’t have that, can we? I don’t know about you, but I find it increasingly hard to suppress the suspicion that certain senior police officers see their function as protecting the guilty from the innocent.
That same gnawing doubt applies to the criminal justice system as a whole. Consider the Court of Appeal, which has just ruled that the so-called jihadi bride, Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK from Syria to fight the decision to remove her British citizenship, even though other cases have been conducted perfectly well via video link. The judges said that “fairness and justice must… outweigh the national security concerns”.
Fairness and justice for whom exactly? Not for the British people, that’s for sure. Eight in 10 of us (78 per cent) think that former home secretary Sajid Javid was right to remove the then 19-year-old’s UK citizenship. That’s not because we’re Islamophobic.
It’s because we are weary of being the mugs who accede to traitors returning to live among us at the expense of the very country they wished to destroy.
Begum’s solicitor says his client “is not afraid of facing British justice”. I bet she isn’t. Not much to be afeared of with m’learned friends conducting themselves like a lightly stoned legal outpost of The Guardian.
At least 425 members of Islamic State have so far returned to the UK from Syria and Iraq, and only one in 10 has been brought to trial. Most are on rehabilitation programmes paid for by guess who? Like all those jihadists – oops, sorry, adherents of Bin Laden’s ideology… – chances are, Begum won’t even serve a custodial sentence. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to provide evidence of what went on in
Raqqa, where the former Bethnal Green schoolgirl claimed to be an ordinary housewife who was merely putting out the bins.
One person who did survive claimed Begum served in the Islamic State’s brutal “morality police”, toting a Kalashnikov and whipping women who failed to abide by the strict dress code. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the wretched little bism. What I do mind about is that concerned liberals fret over poor Begum’s mistreatment while good people like Alan Henning and David Haines, charity workers executed in the most barbaric way by Begum’s buddies, are forgotten.
To add insult to injury, the decision to allow Begum to return means that up to 150 terrorists could now be legally entitled to enter the UK to challenge the decision in their cases. The Court of Appeal, it seems, is happy to add to the huge burden weighing down our counter-terrorism officers and put innocent Britons at risk as long as these appalling individuals get “justice”.
It makes you nostalgic for the days when the law was merely an ass. Now, it’s a self-righteous, metropolitan clique fully signed up to the creed of “human rights”.
Advocates for Begum, including former human rights lawyer, now Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, chide the rest of us for our lack of humanity. How dare they. It is a liberal elite that has overridden the fundamental instinct to protect our own while advancing the cause of our enemies which has lost its humanity – and its
marbles.