The news, and politics to that effect, brings out a certain kind of monstrosity within people. Monstrous stupidity or general monstrousness; your general right-wing lack of empathy, the left-wing befuddlement and infighting..I don’t know, it just becomes a mess. I think a story like Shamima Begum’s is quite a rare one, to be honest, but has not failed to pit the left, the right, and those with common sense against each other like vicious pit bulls in a Latin American dog-fighting ring. Shamima grew up in a Muslim family, like many in England, living a normal life up until the age of fifteen where she decided to flee the country, commit treason, and join ISIS.
Her plea for help, the part worth listening to anyway, as her story is probably the same as all the other deluded and brainwashed women who ran away to be sex-machines and general sperm-banks for the Islamists, is where we should begin to pay attention. What happens after she decides to leave ISIS, brushing past all the severed heads in bins, miscarriages, and all other scenes of warfare which she experienced at a young age, is she finds herself stranded in a prison camp within Syria. She claims, as of right now, that she didn’t hate the UK. She would like to face trial here, to rightfully face punishment rather than banishment, left to the clutches of a prison camp still within the Middle East, worrying in her tent each night that her infamous name might just get her killed.
You kind of have to balk at the sense of utter entitlement and deception. She is, for all intents and purposes, a traitor. Why betray a country you don’t dislike? That, seemingly, has not wronged you? The end goal of ISIS, we must remember, is destruction of Western society. Supposedly, it was her constricted lifestyle that caused her to flee and run to the arms of ISIS. Most kids, as they do in films and Shakespearean plays, run away and begin their new life on the road, working or pursuing their dream, or even beginning a new life with a lover. Where, I wonder, did Begum decide to dash all of that and throw into the hat her penny, a chip-in at the attempted destruction of the western world. BBC reported that she claimed to have been groomed for months, that the decision to flee was not impulsive whatsoever…And this raises an important issue. Begum is not wholeheartedly evil, it’d be ignorant to claim that she’s the anti-Christ or something akin, but nor is she a victim in the strongest sense of the word. She was groomed, yes. She was brainwashed. She’s about as innocent as the Manson Family, in that respect, isn’t she? Twisted and wretchedly contorted in a moral context until she can accept the occurrence of unspeakable acts done onto journalists (perhaps explains my bitterness), villagers, women, children, so on and so forth. How have Britain, one of the most surveilling countries on the planet, managed to let these get through? Begum is just a symptom of the internet-age, if you ask me. She’s not important to us nor ISIS (for, of course, different reasons. To us she’s treacherous and a terrorist, to them she is a woman), she’s just cannon fodder manufactured out of something that wouldn’t happen if it were not for the international outreach of the internet.
We all know that the internet — in it’s young age — brings good things like cat videos, and funny memes, but for as much schools are teaching children not to talk to adults they don’t know, there’s nothing about political brainwashing, which is arguably more of a problem. The so-called ‘Alt Right pipeline’ is consuming young preteens and creating a pseudo-Conservative of the utmost worst faith, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc. and either spitting them out as Neo-Conservatives or Socialists. I happen to be the latter. It’s draining, but it’s intensely personal. Young white men see themselves being bashed and finally have an outlet to see that being disproved, don’t they? Going back and watching a ‘Feminist PWNED by Ben Shapiro’s facts and logic’ video is like an alcoholic looking at a beer, licking his lips, and deciding that just one wouldn’t have any effect. Perhaps this was also the case, the rising Islamophobia and Xenophobia in Britain may have driven her towards this. But she didn’t hate the UK. Where’s this rabbit hole come from them, if not from a place of bitterness or hatred? Better yet; how can you support ISIS, and not hate the UK? You can’t put it down to her simply being Muslim. That’s obviously too simple. She found that she couldn’t live life the same way in Britain that she really had wanted to, and had found this escape within the radically Islamist terrorist organisation..Obviously.
There are probably numerous women like Begum, she’s not a rare gem; she’s just the remains of a once towering terrorist organisation. Now, Begum has been left in the dust to chew her words. Whatever will happen will set a precedent. Someone’s got to have her, but it seems like Britain wants to be as far away as her as possible. Worst case scenario, she comes back and serves a little bit of time. Parole? Undoubtedly, but now she must live as a recluse for the rest of her life. The best case scenario? She finds refuge someplace else where they don’t know her, or she dies and is spared the constant struggle of an anonymous life in a twenty-first century society.
