UKC

For once Donald Trump makes a good point regarding what to do with those foreign national members of daesh who have been captured.

Unfortunately it seems we have little alternative but to accept them back into the country they once hoped would become part of their vile empire but how should we deal with them once they step off the plane at Heathrow?

lock them away, get any useful information from them and de radicalise if possible.  

Aim to forgive them; show them that this country is better than what they left for.

Yeah, it's a difficult one, if they sided with the enemy then they are the enemy, out in Seria or where ever I'd have happily seen them shot/bombed into oblivion along with any other members of the enemy force regardless of their countries of origin. 

Now they are defeated and have surrendered (I'm assuming that is the case?) then it's a problem. I'd like to think if you join the enemies of the UK then you revoke your British citizenship on the day you sign up and take on the citizenship of the enemy state (Islamic State?). That state if it ever really existed has now been destroyed meaning they are stateless, not by our hand but by ISIS collapsing. 

However, we are better able to control them on our own land in our own prisons rather than let them run free abroad where it'll be impossible to keep track of them. the problem then is, do we set up prisoner of war camps and can we ever let them out? In WWII you got shot for treason, seemed a pretty easy solution to the problem. 

The best thing to do with errant and misguided children is to be nice to them, welcome them back and keep an eye on them. 

It does matter that we're nicer than the ISIS and that people would rather bring their kids up here than in some other ideologically driven hell hole.

At this point there is no evidence that Shamima Begum has committed any (legal) offence under UK law or is intending to commit and (legal) offence under UK law.  Running away to marry an arsehole is unwise but legal (and rather common). Being unrepentant at 19 is, sadly, part of being 19. I'd much prefer her to be home and for her and her baby to be well cared for than all this macho bullshit.

That she ran away to do this is partially is our (collective) responsibility and we (her country) owe her sanctuary whether or not she is good, bad or like the rest of us somewhere inbetween.

I'm under no illusion that she's a saint but all this macho willy waggling makes us look stupid and wastes the opportunity to make something good of a shit situation.

Forgiveness is meaningless when there doesn’t seem to be any sense of remorse or perceived need for atonement 

I believe that being a member of ISIS is a criminal offence in itself 

Would you take the same view if it was a 30 year old ISIS combatant?

Not sure why you are referring to firm consequences as macho or willy waving.....as far as I've read she wants to come home to UK as her husband has been killed and their caliphate is in ruin. 

I agree.  But I also think we should ensure the safety of others as a first priority.  

We need to ensure that the ideology based grooming is stopped and doesn't continue. 

This is not just about one teenage mum who has hit the headlines.  There are others too. 

Shamima left the country on her sisters stolen passport.  What makes you so sure she hasn't committed other offences?  

As for accusing me of macho willy waving that is hilarious.  

It seems to me that in fact it is men who assume that females can't have done anything bad and must be the victims.  

It was young women who encouraged others to join them. 

The only sense in which her running away is our responsibility is our values, culture and democracy was that which she choose to reject of her own free will.

Stuff like this, I’ll often swap things about a bit in my head, perspectives and all that.

So, how much love and support do you reckon would be out there for an unrepentant neo-nazi, unperturbed by seeing the beheadings of loads of brown people and only coming home because their beloved white supremacist state had collapsed?

What makes the UK so attractive to her? There are a few Islamic theocracies around the world that she would surely be happier living in? We should offer her a free passage to either Saudi, Iran, Yemen or one of the gulf states.

with the atrocities that these animals committed. With their ideology based slaughter taken in to consideration. Forgiveness is bollocks. Shoot them, imprison them, cast them out to a deserted island, I don't care. But why would anyone want these vagrants mixing with people of our society 

Surely she was well aware of what this country was about (and likewise ISIS) before she left?  She prefers the offerings of extremist Islam, but now with a sprog, like a parent moving house to end up in the better school's catchment area, she figures that the UK offers the somewhat better option.  

Listening to Begum being interviewed, she still seems a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of an Islamic caliphate, seems unbothered by the "severed heads in bins", and seemingly self-centred to the point of wanting access to social services but utterly unwilling to cede anything in response. 

I get that some self-loathing "we're all western imperialists" types may feel Shamima just needs a hug.  But I'd hope they might spare some thought for all the non-Western victims of ISIS and that this girl offered direct material and moral support to ISIS's goals.  By the looks of it this runs in the family (according to her parents she's an angel) and is probably not as uncommon in the UK as we'd like to think.  

It will be a legal conundrum for sure.  But forgiveness doesn't enter in to it when many would end up serving time for lesser offences before they get that recognition.  Being a Nazi used to be about the biggest social faux-pas you could make.  ISIS eclipsed that.

It certainly is in Syria and one that will get you the death penalty from the Syrian government.   If they'd been smuggling drugs in a country with a death sentence for drug smuggling we wouldn't help get them out of that country, but if they got to the UK we wouldn't extradite them.  The same principle should apply.

If they get to Heathrow then they have rights under UK law but I don't see a compelling reason to help them get to Heathrow.   If the Kurds are determined to let them go rather than trying them then getting out of Syria is their problem.

As a young girl she showed herself to be very resourceful in planning, acquiring money travelling to Syria, marrying and having children. Now her life has gone t**s up she wants the easy option of returning to the family and country that she turned her back on.

At 19 years old she may still hold and be concealing evil thoughts towards the UK. I certainly wouldn't welcome her back, nor wish to pay the bills for all the police protection she will no doubt expect and be entitled to.

It's a very difficult call. Our prisons are overcrowded as they are, and it's well known that they are fertile ground for the radicalisation or further radicalisation of Islamic inmates. There is no way we can segregate several hundred extremist inmates, so on those grounds alone prison doesn't seem like a good idea apart from those who have committed violent crimes/murders against British citizens. 

We don't have the facilities for mass solitary confinement, anyway that's not civilised for long term use, and will just make them more bitter and anti "Western" values on eventual release

So what the hell do we do with them? De-radicalise if possible, but how would we know it's really working? I think the help of the British Muslim Community is going to be needed here in a big way.

Hang them over the Thames from Tower Bridge, after the security services are done interviewing them?  

The paradox of the tolerant state is that it can not both survive and tolerate the intolerant.

Really it’s easiest if these people don’t make it out of their war zones alive, then these difficult ethical questions don’t arise.  

I should care, I should feel sorry for a girl swayed by evil people, but I just don’t.  

She's 19! She was groomed and indoctrinated as a child! Kids rebel all the time. If they're groomed by extremists then of course their behaviours will be more extreme. Is this any worse than those preacher kids who preach fire and brimstone for sinners - hatred of gays, people that have abortions etc...?

There are enough rightwingers moaning about Albanian criminals clogging up our jails now demanding she be housed in the jail of another country, missing the hypocrisy totally.

She was born in the UK, raised in the UK and groomed in the UK.  She is our problem.

Curious that when it comes to Libyan terrorists or Russian poisoners the rightwingers clamour for extradition to face a UK court. But a groomed woman, barely left childhood, we change the rules.

Here's a thing; lets show Christian forgiveness . Let's live British values. Let's rise above using Trump as a moral compass and show understanding to this woman. The most powerful thing we can do is convince her of the superiority of our way of life and to appreciate what our society has to offer. Changing minds beats a bullet. She's young enough to change.

Guantanamo would work in this situation. 

Back in the days when Treason was a capital offence we weren't faced with these ethical and moral dilemmas, we just had other ones. Progress is rarely as simple as it seems at face value.

Trump is proposing that the UK should have our own Guantanamo

Reason still tells me that execution, let alone public execution, is clearly the wrong thing to do both morally and pragmatically.

I do wonder if part of the ISIS plan is to lure people away and then return them, knowing full well that they’ll stoke up nationalist and right wing sentiment back home, closing the loop that attacks our national fabric and sends people and money to them.  

But, still...  

Seems a reasonable and cost effective soloution to the problem of managing 800 returning Jihadi's...given that failure to manage them effectively may well lead to a nail bomb at a kids pop concert.

Kurt Russel stars in “Escape From the Island of Sheppey”

They aren't just the enemies of the UK - They made themselves the enemies of humanity.  Destroying lives in as horrific and cruel ways as they could manage, destroying cities, history, traces of civilisation and mincing up their victims.

I feel that a good test of whether we should forgive them is to imagine what we'd say if this had not just happened far away to some other less mattering people but in the UK to our friends and families as the degree of wickedness is unchanged.

Personally I'd have them put down, or at the very least delivered to the surviving friends and family or fellow inhabitants of the placesw where they carried out their crimes to deal with.  We cannot forgive as we are not the victims

"Less Mattering" is not my personal belief of course

Or we could actually look at evidence of the impact of Guantanamo; as George Bush wrote in his memoir, “the detention facility had become a propaganda tool for our enemies and a distraction for our allies.”

This is the problem with knee-jerk reactions.

To be frank, this strategy will only work on racists, the dim, the poorly read/educated. There can't be that many of them around....

Let the families friends and peoples of the thousands and thousands of victims be those who forgive.  We can't justify someone who has offended against other people.

These scum are our scum and our responsibility. We can't legitimately dump our scum on Syria/Iraq by making them stateless unless we would be happy for Syria/Iraq to return the favour by sending their scum to us and declaring Syrian/IraqI scum stateless here in the UK.

We don't (yet) know to what degree she felt under pressure to say 'the right things' because of having what she said heard or read by any ISIS members who might be plausibly able to do her harm, too, a refugee camp in Syria isn't the safest place to be.

Taking everything she says at face value could be something of a mistake.

Get all the intelligence then let them back In to society. It's what a kind, humane society should do.

The tabloids on the other hand....

'Trump is proposing that the UK should have our own Guantanamo'

I think a reasonable working hypothesis is whatever Trump suggests is probably wrong.

I don't understand the issue here. 1) If they are UK citizens then they have the right to return, they even have the right to ask the Govt to help - citizenship (and the rights that go along with that) is not at the whim of government. 2) But the deal is that they are subject to the rule of law, so when they come back they must be subject to it; which mostly means that they will be locked up. 3) If we're not confident that our prisons are appropriate, then we need to fix that. Fortunately one of the few competent and conscientious  ministers of the current crop happens to be in charge.

Yeah, it's totally different. The preacher kids are preaching hypothetical fire and brimstone at the hands of a hypothetical God. ISIS and their supporters weren't just preaching the punishments, they were doling them out as well. You can check out the results because they were so proud of their efforts that they videoed it. Then stuck it on the internet. So what you're comparing is support for hypothetical punishment versus support for actual beheadings, hangings, stonings, amputations, burning alive, burying alive, etc, etc.

It takes a whole different level of asshat to support that sort of crap.

What? it's only right wingers who want foreign assassins and terrorists to face justice? The major difference in this case is that the Libyans and Russians were seeking to avoid being looked after by UK authorities while Begum has stated that's exactly what she wants, to be looked after.

So all of a sudden 'British values' are superior to the rest of those poor ignorant savages? You'll be singing the praises of cultural imperialism next.

She's 19, not 9 and if 4 years of living under ISIS hasn't convinced her that her own moral compass is screwed, then I'd suggest there's very little that anyone can say or do that'll change her mind.

Neither do I.

Well maybe I do inasmuch as she's now 19, no longer a child and wants to get the benefits of the welfare state while at the same wanting the country that provides them to be destroyed. Sorry but I'd rather she rotted in Syria along with her husband who is still alive. Will he be returned to Holland and at some time in the future will they live together in one or other of their countries of birth? I'd rather they rot in Syria.

Regarding the other British daesh terrorists who are now US prisoners, I suppose Marsbar's proposal of putting them in jail and trying to redadicalise them is probably what we'll end up doing but the problem is that we can't throw someone in jail indefinitely in this country so what do we do when someone finishes their sentence but still wants to destroy us?

Yes, it is worse.  ISIS burns people alive, cuts people's throats and throws people off buildings.  Usually, because they are guilty of being different.  I imagine the "radicalisation" involved plenty of footage of this and lot of tub-thumping about unbelievers getting what they deserved.  If you are susceptible to that as "brain-washing" then I suspect they were pushing against an open door when it came to radicalisation.  She doesn't appear to want to come here because ISIS didn't turn out as she hoped.  She wants to come here because now she's in a refugee camp and there is no ISIS to run to.

I think those right-wingers might feel that if she's going to be sent here, then prison is the safest place for an extremist who wishes painful death on those who don't follow her strand of Islam.  But they'd probably prefer if she was left back in the crosshairs.

I reckon she had plenty of opportunity to see the superiority of life in the UK when she was busy watching beheading videos in the comfort of her parents home in Bethnal Green.  She chose sides then and, watching her speak, doesn't appear to have switched sides.

I'm more worried about how many others like her either continue to live here or joyfully gain entrance via the asylum system.  As the "citizen action" on the flight deporting a convicted rapist shows, there's no shortage of useful idiots using liberalism as a justification for accepting dangerous individuals into society. I'm sure ISIS must love that.

Don't call it Christian forgiveness. That's part of the problem with Daesh - polarising the cultures into religions Christians v Muslims., Muslims v Jews It's like talking about Crusades. Historically Christians have been just as bad as Muslims or Jews have. It's time we stopped using these "handles", and talked about Human Values and all that can be good about Humanity.

Would she still want to come back to the UK if IS were successful? 

By going to join IS she turned her back on the UK, our values, ideals, and our laws.

She's a British citizen and it's hardly fair to just export British citizens we don't want (especially with our current national stance on exporting foreign nationals we don't want).

Take her back, send her to jail. 

Couldn't agree more with you sir 

If you've any evidence she is guilty of these things then let's use the rule of law against her - but you haven't. You've simply been triggered. Exactly what the rightwits want.

If you're playing the guilt by association card, that's what ISIS call the infidel-card. You're both playing yhe same game.

She was groomed as a child for over a decade, and speaks now in dangerous circumstances. If it were your child you'd have more compassion and be looking at both options of radicalisation and the Christian value of forgiveness.  

I see useful idiots being triggered by rightwits. These are our citizens and our problem. Deradicalisation would be the biggest blow to ISIS.

I said "aim" for forgiveness - by that I was thinking in terms of requiring regret or remorse.

To be honest I'm struggling to get my head round your thought processes here.

Begum: supporter of ISIS, an organisation who set up formal market places for selling children into sexual slavery, revelled in the torture and mass executions of all who opposed, disagreed with or were just different from them and preached war and conquest with the end game of world domination...and your talk is all forgiveness, understanding, kindness.

However, if you happen to hold the view that supporting mass executions and legalised child rape puts you beyond the pale....well, in that case your talk is all 'rightwits', idiots, etc.

Weird that your forgiveness and understanding can extend so far in one direction, but not as far as people who slightly disagree with you.

dunno if this still applies but at one time nationalitie was  by the country in which you where born In that case the brat is Sirian and  should not be let in to our country

"Would you take the same view if it was a 30 year old ISIS combatant?" - yes. 

Arseholes made in Britain are still our collective responsibility.

That works both ways. I'm struggling to get into the the mind of an adult male, presumably educated, probably middle-aged and white, braying for a groomed BRITISH child to be denied due process.

All of those acts by ISIS are disgusting and abhorrent. If you've any evidence Begum participated in any criminal act (guilt by association is insufficient grounds), then bring it forth. Again, she was groomed not least by a militant father.

A silly strawman argument. You know i don't.  Your slipping in to that simplistic black and white thinking so beloved of extremists and played upon by the Daily Mail.

This sentence of yours doesn't make sense. Understanding and disagreement are not mutually exclusive.

I agree Trangia, but the Right are suspicious of Human Rights. Christian & British Values are concepts they can relate to, hence i use them when discussing issues thst fracture along these lines. But yes, as a secular humanist i agree with your analysis.

I tend to agree.....however, I don't believe that their desire to join organisations like isis is our collective (in part) responsibility which I interpreted from your earlier comments.....please correct me if this was not your inference.

I don't know what we should do.....

I have experience of extremists when I served in the forces, I don't think there is any way to deal with them except by force as their ideology is so fixed and any flexibility from our side is just seen as weakness to be exploited.

I work in mental health these days and previously worked in special hospitals for a while.....the idea of de-radicalisation I think is false, it's too easy to play the game.....I also met people who are beyond rehab and I fear that some of the people who left UK to join isis are like this...

Do we know of effective and reliable ways of de-radicalising people?  If so I'm all for them. 

Not quite sure what bearing age, colour or educational achievement has on an ability to comment on a news story, you think your race should be taken into consideration when posting on UKC?

 Personally, I'm sincerely hoping due process is adhered to. Is 19 a child now or are you just stretching categories because youth is the only tenuous excuse for supporting the vile shit that she has still not disowned. 

In my eyes the support of such horror is plenty bad enough without having to engage directly.

You misunderstand me. I wasn't suggesting you were a supporter. I was suggesting that it's weird that you offer no censure at all to Begum while having plenty of opprobrium to heap on people who have a slightly different view to your own

I respect your personal experience but my own personal experience with an Irish wife has shown me that in 25 years of going to Eire, attitudes have changed hugely in that time.

If you think Islamic extremists can't change then i suggest you look in to the work in deradicalisation  of the Quilliam Foundation and Maajid Nawaz in particular. 

You are right though that some extremists are incredibly fixed in outlooķ. Sam Harris has some excellent podcasts dedicated to this which I'd thoroughly recommend. There are some imprints - religion and subservience to royalty in particular, that are very hard to shake off.

Absolutely, at a young age she proved herself to be resourceful and cunning.

If she returns to the UK, prepare yourselves for the book and the film - an agent and some £££ss will probably indoctrinate her back into our western ways better than anything.

Not at all, but the gammon demographics seems to be a thing.

The point being she was groomed as a child. Neural development and the behavioural locus of the prefrontal cortex, doesn't reach maturity until well in to one's 20s. I love that you cling to the  hard lines of legal adulthood, but biology ignores such thresholds. She has spouted vile shit, but i think she's in a vulnerable position at the moment and likely unable to speak freely.

You must be appalled at Churchill's use of starvation tactics in India, "terror bombing" of Dresden, suggestions the Irish protesters should be strafed with machine gun fire or bombed from airplanes, poison gas used against 'uncivilised tribes' in Mesopotamia, his blind eye turned to the torture of Kenyans with cigarettes and electric shocks or, in Afghanistan where he declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.”. Churchill actually wrote “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”

I heap opprobrium on middle-aged men joining the pitchfork & torch wing of the Daily Mail. Begum's views appal me, but she's been groomed from a young age. Let's give her access to due process and deradicalise her. It'll be the best blow against ISIS.

Many teenagers are, I was and my friends could be towards not being found out for things.

The fact remains, we don't know what pressure she felt under not to say anything critical of ISIS, and we don't what experiences she has been through, which may make her feel like that, or experiences she 'hasn't' been through, too. With there being so much that is unknown, all we 'can' say is that she stole her sisters passport to go and join ISIS. How she should be treated depends on what she happens to have done, and what can be found out about that (imho), because that is how we do things in the generally civilised UK. It's illegal to join ISIS, so she should be charged for doing that and steps should be taken to de-radicalise her.

Or maybe not, depending on levels of cynicism?   

Not sure, but two quick fire questions:

1) do you hold the same political views now that you did at 19? 

2) how do you think an extreme event such as war, would change your views?

My personal views on the latter are heavily influenced by evidence from survivors of WW1.

Indeed.

If the situation were reversed daesh would have murdered her without a second thought. That we won't do that demonstrates moral superiority in my view.

No he isn't.

In this case, Trump's suggestion that captured IS fighters be deported to and then dealt with by the legal systems in their own home countries sounds pretty reasonable. What's your argument against it?

Stewart gets a sycophantic press, which you've just added to. Let's not forget his recent idiotic '80%' claim.

Yeah, that;s right, condemn a new born baby to an uncertain and likely dire fate because of the actions of it's mother.

I never realised the entire population of Eire were enthusiasts when it came to burning people alive, mass executions in the football stadiums, torture, sexual slavery and killing the unbelievers back in the mid 1990s.

I would fully agree that views can change, people can become de-radicalised.   As you say, Maajid Nawaz is an example.  But equally many people stay radicalised. 

Do we know enough about what changes people's minds? Can we design a de-radicalisation programme that works reliably?  

So we attempt to de-radicalise 100 people like this 19-yr-old. What would we expect the success rate to be?  50%?  10%?  80%? 

I don't claim to know the answer.  But I'm dubious about offering de-radicalisation as a solution unless we do know the answer.  

I'm not sure the degree to which you can say she was "made in Britain".  Her home may geographically be Britain, but the ideological environment she was brought up in is parked firmly thousands of miles, and hundreds of years, away.  Who exactly agreed to this becoming part of Britain?

Welcome to the flip-side of multiculturalism.  The thou-must-not-question ideology, where all cultures should be tolerated and embraced, where an extremist religious ideology gets to fly under the radar, dismissed as part of Bethnal Green's "vibrant melting pot", needing tolerance and understanding, and where doing anything other than celebrating difference makes you a right-wing, racist, Islamophobe.   

She was a product of her immediate environment, yes.  But that environment was not one which should be tolerated, cheered or considered wholesome.  Yet it has been allowed to exist with impunity.  A massive blind spot while the media we trust is busy handwringing about sexist tweets, insufficient diversity in BBC staff, or there being too many public school educated old-boys in the Tories.  

We can dismiss Brexit voters for their opposition to change, their antipathy to immigration, and their banging on about Islamisation.  But they may just be a bit more perceptive than people give them credit for.

Gammon, idiots, rightwits... you certainly have plenty of insults for those you see as on the right (not a category it'd be easy to fit me into I'm afraid).

Don't need a lecture, I'm aware of the science. I was also once a child, grew up with kids and am currently living with and attempting to bring up my own kids. I think we can both agree that this represents a reasonable level of child based experience. Occasionally kids can be evil little gits, but vanishingly rarely does this extend to being OK with crimes against humanity. 

 Takes a special sort of 15 year old, born and raised in one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities, who's never the less able to turn their back on all that and embrace a society that sees nothing wrong in enslaving and torturing Yazidi children.

A shit load of whataboutery there mate, but yeah, appalling.

Again with the middle aged men. I don't really agree with singling out groups of our fellow citizens based on physical characteristics they have no control over. Seems kind of Daily Maily.

...and again, I hope she faces due process. I just don't have much sympathy for her. My sympathy is reserved for ISIS's victims, not ISIS's enablers and supporters.

Eidit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47270857

The 19-year-old told Sky News: "People should have sympathy towards me for everything I've been through."

Asked if she had made a mistake by travelling to Syria, Ms Begum told Sky News: "In a way, yes, but I don't regret it because it's changed me as a person.

"It's made me stronger, tougher. I married my husband. I wouldn't have found someone like him back in the UK." (just to be clear- an ISIS combatant)

She continued: "I had my kids, I did have a good time there.

"It's just that then things got harder and I couldn't take it anymore".

Thinking around the issue, the problem is, is we don't know exactly what she knew about ISIS before flying over there, or about the process of radicalisation, too, could it have involved something along the lines of 'It's all propaganda, what they're saying about enslaving children and all that, it's because they're against Muslims in the West'? The people who radicalise are skilled at what they do.

Hmm, I don't think i'll be taking advice from George Bush, given his record in the middle east. 

As you say, being a member of a terrorist organisation is a criminal offence.

What we know is that she, along with 2 friends, left the UK of their own accord . They made their way to Syria and within 2 weeks were married to ISIS fighters, an arrangement they willingly entered into. Before you say they were only 15, the accepted age of reason is recognised as bring 7. She knew fill well what she was doing. She then lived her life in a radical extremist violent society where beheadings were common place only making it known she wanted to return to the UK after the ISIS stronghold she was living in was overran by Syrian armed forces. Her Dutch husband was captured by the Syrians, I don't expect a happy outcome for him. She in the meantime decided she wanted to be repatriated as she was 9 months pregnant and had lost her 2 earlier children to sickness/illness. She comes across as self entitled and unrepentant. There are no British representatives in Syria so she should be made to make her own way to a British consulate or Embassy in which case she will probably be repatriated. In any event, she needs to be made to face the consequences of her actions which should include her Baby being taken from her and facing the full force of the criminal justice system.  Her Father states that she poses no threat. How does he know? There is talk of her being sent to Bangladesh which is where her parents are from. Let's not forget what Isis stood for and what horrific crimes they carried out in the name of Islam. She was happy to be part of that regime and I myself can find no sympathy for her or the circumstances she finds herself in. 

..and if we don't know the chance of success how could we (should we) decide to put finite cash and resource to this?

We cant seem to sort out basic things right now, like homelessness and child poverty, so is it right to spend money on uncertain deradicalization at the cost of those things?

I am really not of the flog her/keep her out to serve her right brigade, but should we chose to help her and her ilk and therefore not to help so many others here? Tough choice.  

I think we collectively failed to protect this person from acquiring a hateful ideology.

In this particular case, "The families of the girls received an apology from Scotland Yard, who did not tell them about Sharmeena Begum, the other girl from their school who went to Syria in 2014" (apologies for weak wiki reference) and "Police gave letters to the three girls, as well as four others, to give to their families about the schoolmate who had already gone. But the girls did not pass them on, raising questions over why police did not send the letters direct to the family homes.", apparently they were known to the police and in this case the letter was found in her school rucksac after she was gone. 

So while I don't feel "we" are responsible for their views "we" do bear some responsibility as a society for letting them get that way and for the consequences.

NB: Regardless of apportioning blame I believe that Britain is responsible for British citizens and we should never shirk this responsibility by making people stateless.  If this is a mess, it is our mess and we remain responsible. Furthermore, we do ourselves (liberal western democracy) no favours by writing off our citizens and disowning crap that grew here under our own noses. We do not gain the moral high ground (whatever that is) by making people stateless, absolving ourselves of our responsibility because it is unpalatable or failing to honour the due process of our own laws.

'We'? No thanks -  I don't accept any such responsibility.

Britain cannot legally make its citizens 'stateless' - in this or any other case.

The accepted age of reason? If you mean the age of criminal responsibility, the UK age is much lower then some European countries, and child psychologists have deep concerns about that.

Alternatively, she felt under pressure not to be critical of ISIS because of the potential consequences. That's been raised on the news by 'people who's job it is to know about this kind of thing'. 

So far, all that can be proven is that she joined ISIS, which is as far a charges should go unless more is found out.

Being objective, we don't (yet) know whether or not the process of radicalisation involved painting what has been in the media about ISIS as 'propaganda against the caliphate'. If people can convince themselves of nutty 9/11 conspiracies, it's definitely possible that some people can be led to believe that what's in the news is untrue. The people who radicalise are very skilled. 

However we 'feel' about all this, we must stay objective, and follow the rule of law too.

There is no attainable moral high ground here.   

The age of reason is when you can reasonably be expected to understand the difference between rightabs wrong. It has nothing to do with criminal responsibility. The age of reason is 7. She knew what she was doing was wrong. That's why she and her friends concocted an elaborate cover story to leave the country in the first place. 

I don't buy that she deliberately avoided criticising Isis. If there was any danger I  that why let the Times publish the story in the first place if there was a risk of repercussions as you are suggesting. I heard the recording of the interview. She couldn't care less would be a fair way of describing her attitude.

I've got no idea what you mean below.

"Being objective, we don't (yet) know whether or not the process of radicalisation involved painting what has been in the media about ISIS as 'propaganda against the caliphate".

But reading between the lines you are trying to defend the indefensible. 

I think its safe to say she did a lot of googling and probably had a far better idea than you or I.  I strongly suspect she was well and truly immersed in their culture and their social media presence long before she went.  Wouldn't you have to be to decide to leave everything and arrange travel to one of the most difficult to reach and otherwise-hostile countries on the planet?

Keep in mind, by the year she went, mainstream media was publishing continuous reports of their propensity to burn people alive or saw people's heads off.  ISIS's own media channels proudly report this kind of stuff and you don't need to venture far into LiveLeak to find the full extent or extremist Islam's PR work - they were open, honest, and proud of what they do to infidels.  It's their USP.

We seem to be quite quick to point towards external forces and a lack of agency in these girls actions, which is seldom granted to the majority of society - be that the Covington High School kids or your football thug/neo-nazi.

Why?

They werent. You've been been silly by rushing to an absurd interpretation.

In a straight forward way - that's the danger of reading between the lines. I simply mean what I posted. 

Painting what is in the media as untrue is something which people in a few awful organisations have been found to do, either when recruiting new recruits, or talking to the media. So, not knowing anything about the process of radicalisation she went through, I'm not discounting the possibility that there was an element of that involved before she decided to join ISIS. 

Edit: In your condemnation of her, do you also know what radicalisation process she went through?

I'm genuinely torn as to what to do in this situation.

I genuinely want to believe that repatriation and reintegration into a tolerant British society is what is best for radicalised folk as tolerance is a core British value. That said, I am not naive enough to believe that opening our arms to the prodigal sons / daughters will change their beliefs in all cases leading to the inevitable security risks.

Times like this I'm glad I'm not home secretary!

Because she was clearly very very interested in the Islamic State.  To the point that she ran away from home to migrate there, at an age where the methods for doing so would not be immediately obvious without a fair bit of research.  I suspect in the circles she mixed in, and given she was already known to police, the goings on of ISIS were pretty well known.  ISIS has a PR machine, Twitter account, its own magazine.  All those beheading and immolation videos were filmed on secretly smuggled-in cameras - they were major press announcements by ISIS itself.  Anyone who dreams of marrying an ISIS fighter has a rather unique view on the world.

Its a bit like Alex Honnold's climbing escapades.  We live in the climbing world and few of us here, no matter how young, are unaware of what he's up to.  Outside of our bubble, most people have no idea who he even is, and those that do are only aware of him being the "free climber" in the scary movie that just came out.  Shamima, and I suspect a lot of people in her community, would most definitely be living inside the ISIS version of that bubble.

True. We need research. It'd be a noble pursuit. For sure we know the outcome of the bullet and the bomb. We know the problem of blowback.

On the issue of deradicalisation, we know the role of the prefrontal cortex in inhibition, and how late in to the 20s it takes to mature. There's a significant degree of neural plasticity evident in teenagers. 

Yes, they have a unique view of the world, which can include being radicalised in a way which involves them being told that what is in the media about the horror of ISIS is 'untrue propaganda against ISIS'.  So they fly out there, and come out the other side saying 'Nobody knows what I've been through' - like she has done.  Edit: Having got to know very well somebody who has been brutalised, and seen the eyes of Yazidi women who have been, to my mind, I see a similar 'look' in the eyes of this 19 year old, which is what has me holding back from condemning her too readily. I she has the eyes of somebody who has been through a lot.  

No, it's nothing like that at all. 

By that question alone, I'm fairly certain that you've not had much exposure to the habits of teenage girls. To say they're obsessive about their hobbies and interests (be that ponies, James Charles or even Jihad) is like saying Emelda Marcos was partial to a new pair of shoes.

These terms perfectly capture a demographic.  We both know the demographic. Such handles save time. Not sure i called you an idiot. But i saw Gillet Jaunes attacking police in London this weekend that i'd gladly label Gammon, idiots, and rightwits.

You're being very sensitive here. There was no lecture. Indeed if your aware of the neuroscience I'm surprised you're so happy to condemn a 19 year old heavily indoctrinated throughout her childhood.

I thought you knew about neuroscience?

You appear to have been triggered. 

Have a look at the Gillet Jaunes in London attacking police this weekend, or the leading pro Brexiters, or the people taking a similar line tou yourself on the Begum case. There's a curiously common set of traits.

As is mine. But my empathy extends to groomed kids. Deradicalisation seems to be a win win.

Ooh, these phrases will trigger DM readers. And gammon.

Almost as silly as equating Eire with the Caliphate?

The implication behind what he posted is that she knew exactly what she was getting into, ie 'with her eyes wide open'.

Which is a very good position to condemn her from, when, in reality, we don't actually know the process of radicalisation she went through, and in what light she saw ISIS before she flew over there. Hence my question of 'Why?' 

She seems well aware of and not particularly concerned about the horror - its clear enough from her interviews.  Again, ISIS advertises what it does.  They're not trying to be secretive about it.  So I don't think anything was hidden from her before she went.  Seems far more likely that this was a drawcard.  She had the luxury of not being one of the unwilling masses who had no choice but to become ISIS supporters when their villages were invaded.  

I suspect she looks at anyone other than Salafis in the same way we would look at Nazis or Japanese in WWII - fitting targets for nuclear weapons and firebombing. That will include 95% of the UK population.

I do understand her feeling like she's been through a lot and deserving of sympathy though.  Afterall, she's now in a refugee camp.  And her home, the caliphate she immigrated to, and its accordant Sharia law, has been destroyed. And because she's been separated from her prince-Charming husband and father to her child - the ISIS fighter. 

What's it like then?

This is non science.....if you want to quote and reference the relationships between extremist/ ideological/ fixed belief and neural development/ dendritic branching please do....I'd be very interested.

No. Not like that. Perhaps closer to spotting hatred as a human trait. That hatred & prejudice may be towards 'Brits' or 'Infidels'. How these hatreds manifest can vary depending on ideology. Plenty of these hatreds lead to an excusing of torture and executions.

No I dont but nor do you and yet again i will bring you back to being able to undestand the difference between right and wrong.   What I do know is that her Father had form as an Anjan Choudry supporter so I suppose that didn't help her develop a liberal view of the world. I don't condemn her specifically but condemn all those that seek to bring death and violence and destroy our way of life. 

We don't make allowances for criminals breaking the law. Nor should we for people joining terror organisations who provide the lifeblood of support that helps those organisations kill innocent people in our football stadiums and pop concerts and the local transport networks. Radicalized? I'm not all that interested to be honest.  I expect most of those who have been radicalized have been willing "victims" one way or another. It's easy to blame society's failings on governments or austerity but some people are just evil and aren't capable of living responsible balanced normal lives.

Interesting points raised in this thread. Moving on from my original position, I now think the best course of action is to follow the law of our land. She comes back here knowing that she will be prosecuted for any crimes committed, up to and including treason, and, assuming that 12 of her peers find her guilty, spends the appropriate amount of time in gaol.

If we believe in the rule of law above all else, that's what needs to happen.

I've made the case for neural and plasticity in to ones 20s (and so behavioural change), because of the late development of the prefrontal cortex.  This is a matter of record.

Highly unlikely I'd be able to give you a crash course over UKC. 

Straight out of the Dr Goebbles playbook. Pick an enemy, depersonalise, lump em all together...saves time.

Wasn't being sensitive, just trying to be helpful letting you know that I understand how kids tick. Bit of rebellion is normal, the odd fag, bit of weed, maybe even a touch of shoplifting. Running away to join a death cult and marry the man of your dreams (looks unimportant, but interests must include stoning homosexuals and wiping out the Kuffar)...absolutely not normal.

Wow....Gammon, rightwits, triggered. You appear to have swallowed someone else's script wholesale. I'm wondering if you might be in need of a deprogramming yourself.

Well I don't support Brexit and have no sympathy with anyone attacking police officers, so what you see as common traits actually seem to be unfounded prejudices.

She's not a kid anymore and if she wants my sympathy she's welcome to it, just as soon as she spares an ounce of her self pity for some of her death cults many thousands of victims.

By phrases I assume you mean her own words?

LOL...or even Gammon or Rightwits?

Quite. Always worth bearing in mind before you start lumping people together based on physical traits and prejudiced assumptions.

That is all true, but she is British so she is our problem. We can't foist her on some other country. 

I couldn't believe her audacity today saying that people should be sympathetic! However, we should be sympathetic to other countries who currently have our terrorists living on their soil. She is not their problem, she is ours. We need to work out what we are going to do with such problems, but we can't leave them to others to sort out.

Godwin.

Then you don't understand kids half as well as you think, because many kids brought up in Islam, and specifically in places likd Saudi Arabia, hold these views.

Gammon was first used in the 1850s. - happy to swallow knowledge with a long history. It's possible i do need reprogramming. I'm self aware sufficiently to entertain the thought. 

The Venn diagram will have limited intersection. Did i get your gender, approximate age and colour right?

I don't really want to have to repeat the point that a damaged child will grow in to a damaged adult. I think the best policy is one based upon curative action.

Yes, incendiary phrases that will trigger some. Click-bait really. 

I really, really struggle with this however I also suspect that she thinks the same, but has been convinced that we in the decadent West are those evil people. This isn't a sadist sociopath we're talking about, it's someone who's been convinced that the all-powerful sky fairy has picked Daesh as his guys to do his bidding and therefore anything done by them is automatically good. This doesn't mean that she shouldn't be held accountable for her actions, far from it, but what it means is that it's highly highly unlikely that this person is, if anyone can be, "just evil".

I don't think we should bust a gut to get her back, but if she makes it to a British consulate, then we should repatriate her, charge and prosecute her to the fullest extent but also try and rehabilitate and de-radicalise her. 

Except we do - mitigating circumstances, first offences, family background etc. These are all things that would be taken into consideration during sentencing. 

Is this allowed or are you just planning on doing away with due process and doing some extra judicial killing just to show ISIS how much we hate their feudal and barbaric system of justice?

I agree with you on most counts. FWIW I don't think she's 'evil' but certainly there's a lack of emotion and compassion which would suggest she doesn't see the world quite the same way we do. When I said evil I was referring to ISIS and Daesh more generally. 

Oh come on, to come back with Godwin is like pointing out that the other bloke that no one has ever heard of came up with evolution before Darwin.

Then you don't understand this story half as well as you think you do cos she was brought up in Bethnel Green not Islam and not Riyadh.

Sophistry is the last refuge of the poor argument.

You're back to age, gender and colour. Yet again. I'm sorry that you're so caught up on a person's physical characteristics rather than their thoughts and actions. It's not an attractive trait but one that has a great deal in common with the worst journalistic excesses to be found in the Mail.

Well, Churchill was certainly very damaged as a child but you don't seem to have much sympathy for him. Physical characteristics not to your taste I suppose.

Incendiary phrases? You mean her own words? Didn't find them incendiary myself (I'm not very combustable by nature), I just think she's a bit sad.

I knew someone who went and opened a bar on Costa Blanca with some money he had raised. Eventually it ran into financial troubles and due to that failing health he wanted to return to the UK. 

We saw though him though and met him at the airport with pitch forks to make sure he didn't set foot on British soil again

I don’t say this often, but I think the Tory minister got this right. We should not risk any officials to get this girl home, but if she makes it to a British consulate, then we will follow due process and deal with her legally. If she does end up in a UK prison, we should staff that prison properly to reduce the risk of cross radicalisation. 

Must say, I’m glad it was Ben Wallace though, I hate to think what gavin Williamson would’ve said. 

Apologies for link to the express - 

https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1087134/ITV-GMB-Shamima-Begum-IS...

Eh?

No one has disputed this. Religious ideology extends far beyond physical geography.

Eh?

I find your thoughts and proposed actions regarding Begum irresponsible, lacking empathy, and missing an opportunity to effectively strike a blow to Isis. 

You've no idea of my thoughts on Churchill. You've merely seen me list some of his less noble actions.

Indeed they are her own words. They seem to be triggering plenty of outrage on social media. Wall to wall coverage.

Fortunately most people see a degree of difference between someone running a metaphorical pub and someone migrating to a culture and legal system that grants violent corporal punishment on everyone who holds a contrary point of view. 

...except ISIS of course.  They see pub owners as deserving of a fiery death every bit as much as unbelievers.

You seem quick to grant sympathy to supporters of a global genocide against the infidel, while heaping venom on those whose major crimes seem to be voting Tory and a ruddy complexion.

And what exactly are my thoughts and proposed actions that you find irresponsible? I've said that due process should be followed and that she'll get my sympathy when she shows some empathy towards ISIS's victims...How very irresponsible of me!

I get the impression that you regard Churchill as a racist, mass murdering, war criminal (not an unfair assumption). Am I wrong?

Not seeing much outrage on here though. Then again, perhaps my 'trigger' threshold is lower than yours.

As do I, the point is we have a way to treat people, including ones we don't like. Its Its  law is for, it's what our penal system is for. We seem to have a lot of people advocating violent corporal punishment on people for supporting a culture that supports violent corporal punishment! 

To be fair, this metaphorical pub was awful, faux horse brasses, West Ham shirts in frames that sort of thing.

She comes across as very self-centered, entitled and emotionally immature just from the short snippet we have of her. I reckon her parents were getting on well with making her a poor human being without Daesh getting in on it as well.

It is perhaps worth noting that Jacob Rees Mogg agrees with your analysis of the Begum case. Stating that Ms Begum has been a victim of child abuse, is a British citizen and should of course be allowed back into the country (Question Time last week). Assuming that because people have one set of opinions they will have another is maybe what irritates people when you (not you in particular) use terms such as gammon or any other generalisation. 

And ultimately the only sustainable option.

Are you talking about Banks, Farage et al ? If so, I’m all for their prosecution post haste.

"I'd suggest there's very little that anyone can say or do that'll change her mind."

I am not a Christian and have some loathing for organised religions, but whether you call the various wise people through the ages "prophets" or "son of god" or whatever, they all have a consistent theme of basing our actions in love, not hate, and that, in my view, has to be fundamentally correct, irrespective of religion.

Much as it sticks in my craw to peddle a Christian saying, if we ask "what would Jesus do," I think the answer is probably obvious. And if we decide to do differently, we have to ask ourselves why we think we know better

We know better because we're not some bloke born in 34 A.D or whenever who ended up a cult leader (and died in a fashion that Ms Begum probably thinks is too good for us kuffar)?

You wrote..

I asked what those 'thoughts and proposed actions' were, that you find so irresponsible and lacking in empathy and all you can come up with is to selectively quote this..

Wow, how irresponsible, makes running away to join ISIS look the height of rationality.

From your many references to me as middle-aged and white, your mistaken assertions to other views you assume I hold and your defence of lumping people together by characteristics such as age, gender and race and then labelling them with derogatory terms such as 'gammon'..."cos it saves time", I can only assume that you're extremely prejudiced by nature. I hope that at some stage in the future you can see beyond a person's physical characteristics, at which point perhaps you'll be able to engage in discussion without projecting imaginary narratives onto what they're actually saying.

The only way we can, within the constraints of our law. If we're serious and sensible about minimising harm rather than treating them as a political football some will prove an asset. Some will doubtless remain costly liabilities, all but the most dangerous of them will remove themselves from society in time anyway. The most dangerous few would be dangerous wherever they were, probably better we know where that is.

jk

Sure, if the aim is to assist in the radicalisation of the next generation.

jk

Ridge, I have already expressed my reticence about organised religion (although Buddhism does hold some attraction for me).  I am not sure on what basis you presume to know better than wisdom that has been accepted since the beginning of humanity though?

p.s. Jesus was born in 1 AD - BC meaning "Before Christ"....

To paraphrase your own words, "You mean [your] own words?"

Yep, and I'd stand by them, and unlike you, I've managed to engage with this thread without chucking insults about or making prejudicial statements based on what people look like.

The aim would be to prevent any of the 800 returnees's committing mass murder against us; the almost inevitable consequence of allowing them back into our society...and to prevent them from radicalising the next generation while they're at it.

They can't blow themselves up a kids pop concerts while they're incarcerated at Guantanamo, or roam the streets of Paris armed with AK47's, or attempt to persuade the next generation to behave as they have.

I very much doubt that Guantanamo bay is as strong an influencer as the local imam being a battle-hardened, ex-Jihadi on a mission to continue the fight. 

No one ever said that if someone else was killed or injured or tortured that his followers should make that someone else "turn the other cheek".   Do you think we should forgive the concentration camp guards or those who threw babies into furnaces?  We could, but it would be meaningless and dissmissive of the ones who suffered that fate and their relatives.

Apart from the practical draining on resource of processing an unquantified number of people who would have to be accommodated by the justice system, held somewhere, fed, subject to monitoring and surveillance and policed specially for the rest of their lives, using resources we need to protect our society from current threats.  All this at considerable risk not only of these bastards harming us or our children but also of infecting other people with the will so to do.

These people abandoned their UK domicile and took it on themselves to have the right to act as lawgivers, judge jury torturer and executioner in another domicile.   That is where they should be held to account.

I apologise for using terms like gammon.

Let's conclude on our common ground. ISIS hold appalling views. A young British woman was heavily radicalized as a child - a rebellious age were people are highly susceptible to environmental influences. She still has the capacity to change, but it requires patience and empathy - a tough order given what she has endorsed. She was radicalized in the UK and is our problem. She should be subject to due process. But if deradicalization is successful, it would be a huge blow to ISIS.

Interviews with her are likely to be spun for clicks, possibly made under a degree of duress, and are only one dimension/snippet of her opinions.

Sound fair?

Fair enough and I wouldn't disagree.

I am not saying that they should not be held to account; or controlled; or punished. I am not even expressing a view as to whether they should be allowed back into the country. Nor am I trying to dictate whether or not those who were caused harm should forgive them. All I am saying is that we when we consider the issue, should begin from a viewpoint other than hatred, and, ideally, aim for  resolution that ultimately recognises our common humanity, rather than perpetuating division and conflict. The Good Friday Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa may be good models 

...and if the de-radicalisation programme unsuccessful we'll have to fund a life time of intensive surveillance or risk a bomb attack at your local railway station / football stadium / concert venue / airport.

Which would be a huge boost for ISIS, and encourage others elsewhere do do the same.

Try her for terrorism. Incarcerate her for life.

"Heavily" being the operative word here.  This is unlikely the case of just a few recruiters leaning on her.  It is a home and cultural environment in the wider community that leaves not just teenagers but people from across the Muslim demographic willing to leave everything the secular West offers in favour of ISIS.  An American girl has now popped up in a similar situation to Shamima - all full of contrition now that the chips are down.  Reading what she was preaching previously it was full on fire and brimstone, inciting murder in the most bluntest of terms.

I think just how fertile swathes of Islamic culture in the UK are for ISIS isn't really recognised.  If been astounded by views from moderate and outwardly secular Muslims I've known (9/11 is a Jewish conspiracy, Charlie Hebdo cartoonists brought it on themselves, the prophet muhammed should not be criticised, etc.). Deradicalisation is like giving neo-Nazi's bound for prison the option of freedom if they sign up to dance-therapy classes - you might get the odd success but most are going to go through the motions full of contempt with not a shred of change likely.  Bringing her back to the UK shows ISIS sympathisers just how weak our liberalism is.

Losing one supporter would seem a rather minor blow. 

But, what if deradicalization is not successful, what if she then has 4 sons who grow up in an ISIS-supporting household?   Presumably, once she has returned, and as a British citizen, her spouse (an ISIS fighter) would be allowed to join her also?

So we lock them up without due process giving thousands more a quite legitimate grievance?

No but many more can in protest at our unlawful treatment of them.

Well we're all entitled to our opinions, at least you have one.

jk

It probably doesn't even need to be that long.  I've seen it reported that rather than length of jail term what matters is the age at release.  While largely related to males, it seems once you hit 40, the propensity to commit crime drops away sharply.  Keep her in the slammer until then, after which forgiveness can be dished out.

That is not how Law works. The Secret Barrister's book is rather illuminating. 

Wait what? Does that mean that Christmas Day is in fact also New Years day?

Instead of sending he to prison why not force her to convert to Christianity then to attend her local church every Sunday? Churches in the UK need all the help they can get, what with falling attendances etc.

It's the propaganda value.

What if indeed. What if she has 4 sons who go in to medicine, become firefighters, or take up climbing?

The law proscribes the fate of an ISIS fighter.

Who said anything about denying them due process?

Membership of a terrorist organisation (proscribed group) is a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 with a weighty sentence attached.

Based on her own admissions when interviewed by the press, her marriage to an ISIS murderer, her presence in Syria during the war etc etc I doubt we'd struggle to get a guilty verdict at court.

There's been much ranting about taking the moral high-ground and treating her in accordance with our laws. I agree. Try her at court and, if found guilty, treat her as we would any other person who had committed such a serious offence. Life imprisonment.

In this context, who gives a f*ck about climbing?

s/proscribes/prescribes/

I think that there are a lot of assumptions there. I don't know enough about her circumstances to either absolve or condemn, I do know that it was fairly well established from psychological experiments such as Milgram and Zimbardo that even supposedly reasonable adults will generally 'fall in line' with the actions of their peers, regardless of what they know to be unethical behaviour, and in opposition to what we like to think about ourselves. Given that, I think there is 'reasonable doubt' that she actually knew what she was doing.

All that said, she isn't 15 any more and it's difficult to show sympathy for her present situation when she doesn't show any remorse for aligning herself with ISIS and everything they stand for.

What on earth makes you think that we are any more civilised or are better in any way than people 2000 years ago?? 

I mean, yeah, we have smart phones but the mind directing the finger is no more advanced than the one engraving the stone tablet.

I've read the Secret barrister...an enjoyable read, but basically a long-winded whinge by a barrister who wants a pay rise!

You seem to be assuming that a fair-trial is no longer possible in the UK...because the state no-longer funds a corrupt legal aid gravy train which served as much to make barristers rich at it did to administer justice. I don't think this is the case.

Perhaps there's still time to put her on trial at an ISIS Kangaroo sharia hearing; presumably she wouldn't object to the inevitable sentence of execution by a combination of rape, hurling from a 2 story building, immolation and stoning in-front of a baying crowd?

Conversely, what if she has four sons who grow up 'hating' the country that refused their mother, a British Citizen, re-entry into the UK? Hypothetical of course, but at least in the UK those children would have the chance to experience living under a liberal democracy (not that that's any guarantee that they would adopt those values, of course).

If she de-radicalises and becomes a campaigner for moderation (as Maajid Nawaz) then there is propaganda value.  If she de-radicalises and then lives a quiet life then there is likely no propaganda value at all.

Sure, but the likelihood of people brought up in that environment becoming a terrorist is surely vastly greater than normal?

True, but British courts (quite rightly) demand a high threshold of evidence and proof.  In a situation like the Syrian War it is usually very hard to link a particular person to particular acts securely enough to convict them.   So the likelihood is that her husband could decide to join here, with no sanction. 

If they're in Syria then likely it would not be a problem for us, they'd simply join the myraids of others who dislike the West.  They would be far more a danger if they were here. 

I'd be more than happy for every single one of these ISIS sh*ts to be dealt with in that way.

Maybe the Yazidis could be invited to treat them in the manner to which the Yazidis were treated. I'm sure there are a large number of Yazidis who'd be more than glad to exterminate the little sh*ts. (And yes, whilst I have always regarded what the Nazis did to so many groups they didn't like as abhorrent beyond belief, I really do now mean EXTERMINATE anyone involved with ISIS).

I would have thought it self evident that we are more civilised and in some ways 'better', merely by the fact that whipping people through the streets, crucifixion, slavery and gladiatorial fights to the death, are all no longer common everyday occurrences.

But perhaps you have a different measure as to what constitutes 'civilised'?

That's entirely the point of 'prisons' like Guantanamo, operated outside of the legal systems the rest of us are subject to.

So process them through our domestic justice system.

Which isn't what you were proposing with your 'Guantanamo' suggestion.

jk

Yeah, but they didn't have television or video games to watch!

Is this the person you mean? Anyway here's an article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/us-woman-hoda-muthana-deeply-...

I don't know if it would be that cut and dried. News of deradicalisation has currency.

Do you mean in the UK? If so it is essential we try to understand the process of radicalisation.  Only today has there been talk on the news of fake news and its corrupting, corrosive effect via Facebook and Youtube, on societal cohesion. (Would recommend James Patrick- Alternative War on Russian disinformation campaigns.)

She's a British subject so I'm not sure how we can stop her returning to the UK. Her husband is a trickier situation - should we abandon legal frameworks in certain cases and follow emotional judgement, or uphold the rule of law? I'd argue for the latter.

Agree.

We had no problem hunting down and executing or imprisoning the Nazi's after the war, it's difficult to see why we shouldn't apply this model to ISIS. The suggestion that this would somehow encourage the next generation of Muslim youth to take-up arms against us appears to be baseless.

This approach didn't lead to the '(Nazi) radicalisation of the next generation'...nor did the extra-judicial activities of the Israeli security services in hunting-down and assassinating Nazi's-in-hiding make the younger generation of German's more likely support the Ayran ideology. 

If anything, our experiences with the Nazi's would suggest that the threat of imprisonment or death upon your return from the Caliphate would further dissuade people to go...

Perhaps civilised was a clumsy way to put it, but Ridge's point that we know better because we are not some bloke from 2000 doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

In terms of it being self evident, we are currently talking about a girl who lived in a state where such things were common place. We live in a world where countries practice beheading, lashing and stoning for relatively minor offences. Even in our own country people are sold into slavery, abused in some of the most horrific ways possible and if you go into any town centre on a weekend you will see significant levels of violence. 

I think it is fair to say that whilst we can construct a veneer of civility and mask the darker side of human nature, it is very much there and it doesn't take much scratching to get under the surface and unveil what lurks beneath. So to that end, no I don't think humanity is really any better than it was 2000 years ago. 

If they're sent to Guantanamo after conviction, I can't see a problem with it. This would certainly address the problem of prison-radicalisation.

THE TIMES says her husband is Dutch

"happy"

You demean yourself and our way of life by advocating to make exceptions to human rights. Ultimately, it's not you that gets to decide how anyone is dealt with but by our authorities - are you really willing to let them decide which of our citizens our laws apply to?

That's the one.  19 years old at the time, married a Jihadi, wrote "Go on drivebys, and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriots, Memorial, etc day … Kill them.”....but now captured by Kurdish fighters and living in a camp claims a miraculous change in outlook.  Excuse my cynicism.

I don't think that radicalisation is that hard to understand.

Suppose we, as a society, said to kids: Here's some low-grade cannabis, it's good for you, we'll give you a dose of it most days. So the kids take it and adopt it as their culture. 

Would those kids then be vulnerable to someone coming along offering: "Would you like to try this high-grade stuff? Way purer and more potent,  this is the real thing, not like that watered-down stuff they've been feeding you. You should try it." 

The difficulty is that ISIS  feel just as morally entitled to exercise violence in pursuit of what they deem to be the correct world order as you appear to. So although you may feel that you are justified in your view as you are defending yourself, your thought process is just as faulty as theirs.

why should we deal with this young girl any differently than we do any other criminal? If we can grant the likes of Fred West a fair trial and incarceration, why not someone who was undoubtedly lead astray given her young age at the time?

One of us isn't understanding something.

jk

You are making grand assumptions from what are quite complex and mostly unknown mechanisms.....if you are suggesting that people are able to change their views as they age then its a reasonable position to take, it doesn't need any neurocognitive rhetoric to support that....

Well I am a bit rusty.....my clinical doctorate was some time ago but was related to the effect of cumulative trauma in the development of dendritic branching within the pre-frontal cortex...

What don't you understand?

I was responding to dh17's assertion that Jesus was obviously far more enlightened than we are today as he was in touch with some immutable truth about humanity.

Jesus was an activist who got nailed to a cross for his troubles, which is something I personally don't aspire to.

Not disagreeing with the above, but I think it's fair to say Western European judicial systems are far more enlightened than those of the Romans in Judea or those of the UK in 1910, although criminality obviously still exists.

Humanity certainly isn't any better now, or will be in the future, although systems have evolved to try and reduce the level of barbarism in general.

As regards Begum, it looks like we have no other option to accept her back as she is still a British Citizen. Likewise we'll have to do the same for returning IS "fighters"*.

(*It seems odd that the IS recruiting campaign was exclusively focused on the "burning infidels alive in cages" aspect of the job, yet Begum and everyone else returning seem to have joined up for the cuisine, opportunities for travel and adventure sports, and had nothing to do with the "fighters" in the other IS that they knew nothing about before they got there).

As there is very little chance of gathering evidence sufficient to charge any returnees with serious crimes in a UK court, it looks like we're going to have to live, (and people will no doubt die), with the fact they they will be living amongst us and spreading their hatred. 

As someone who's elected to live in a democratic society I have to accept that, although I strongly believe filling a mass grave somewhere in the desert would be a far better option for both the UK and the world in general.

Islamic radicalisation is wrapped up in religiosity though, isn't it? It's very hard to get people to lose such an imprint. Many of these people think they're doing God's work.

Maybe radicalisation is well understood but your weed analogy seems to be a "thin end of the wedge argument ". Religious behaviours surely run deeper? I can hurt myself with drugs, but to hurt others seems to be a big step.

Well, we'd ensure legal action was taken whilst still reflecting and respecting her cultural sensitivities...

Why you think the solution to people returning from Syria is for us to build a (or restock someone else's) concentration camp. You seem to be confusing a properly functioning criminal justice system with a containment and torture facility very deliberately built and operated outside of one.

jk

I think religion has caused quite enough trouble already without adding Jesus to the mix.  

"I was responding to dh17's assertion that Jesus was obviously far more enlightened than we are today as he was in touch with some immutable truth about humanity."

I made no comparison at all between Jesus and people in this day and age (as opposed to in any other day and age). I think you mis-read my post

Oh right, I see what it was you didn't understand.

I'm advocating the rule of law.

Trial, in line with UK law, followed by appropriate sentencing, also in line with UK law; which would be a lengthy period of imprisonment.

It doesn't have to be Guantanamo - although, given that our gaols are full to bursting and Guantanamo is an extremely secure facility designed to prevent prisoners from socialising with, and further radicalising, one another, it would be a suitable venue.

If it helps, I'd be happy for them to be sent to a maximum security gaol in the UK.

Any clearer? 

There seems to be a move, in this debate, away from the rule of law...welcome them 'home', some kind of pie-in-the-sky de-radicalisation tosh, group cuddles etc. In a fair and tolerant society, the rule of law applies to everyone...including this lot!

Why does risk taking behaviour peak in/around  teenage years?

I don't read that from his comment, there isn't anything in it that says Jesus was in touch with any kind of immutable truth, rather that he espoused love and reconciliation.

In terms of him being an activist who got nailed to a cross for his troubles, it doesn't mean that you have to disagree with his teachings. You can believe in love and forgiveness without a messing ending.

In terms of the punishments meted out maybe, but again it is a bit of a stretch to hold the West up as evidence of humanity being "better". There are two separate issues in your point, one; the fact that there is still criminality which indicates a lack of progress. Two; the enlightenment of the western judicial systems. Remember we still have a judicial system that allows people to be imprisoned without charge and, in some circumstances, for the death penalty to be imposed without trial (Bine Laden, drone strikes etc).

Agreed, which was sort of my original point, albeit poorly articulated!

Interesting that your human instinct is to kill a large number of people because of their beliefs, not that far removed from what the Romans used to do

No one seems to want to remember that it is Britain's colonial past that makes her a British citizen.  We do like to ignore the back stories and act as though Britain is some kind of friendly paternal country that kindly allowed people in, not a past colonial power who caused chaos and wars in the region of her family heritage.  

I think she was extremely stupid  (in the way many 15 year olds are) not to realise how good she had life, how she was on track for good qualifications and potentially a way of life her ancestors could only dream of if she used those qualifications to get a job.  Instead she ran off chasing a ridiculous dream.  She needs to take responsibility for what she has done, as does the country.

But you're not or at least you weren't. With your suggestion of Guantanamo you were explicitly endorsing the subversion of our law and the denial of due process.

Suitable except for the fact it's not a British prison, it's an American military torture facility operated outside of American domestic legal jurisdiction.

It certainly makes more sense legally.

jk

I agree that religion causes immense problems. that does not mean however that the core message is not correct

Presumably to keep them separated from society in a secure place where they can do no harm to others.

Ok, that's not an unreasonable desire. Do you want that done in accordance with our law or do you want them to be treated specially?

jk

Well, if you agree on a fair trial and appropriate sentencing for those found guilty, we're not that far apart.

Given the way in which ISIS have conducted themselves over the last few years, it beggars belief that there are some who do not. 

Personally, I have no objection to 'special treatment' or the use of Guantanamo for Begum and her ilk...but the law-is-the-law and it hardly makes any difference if their housed in a maximum security regime here or in Cuba. 

I suspect there may be lots of reasons for that......if it is the case.

Anecdotally.....my son when aged 16 started doing lots of daft/risky things....he recalls lots of it now as trying to impress (girls).

My most risky period of climbing was definitely in my 30's....

The point I am trying to make is that each individual set of circumstances and complex layers of multiple variables, including free will, excitement, desire, lust, hate, anger and so on are what results in someone choosing to do something.

The notion that we can de-radicalise people by some kind of program or protocol is false. We would need to work out with the allegedly radicalised person all of this stuff (assuming their true consent) to mitigate the risk......we do not have the resources. There is evidence that ISIS members are content to partake in our western lifestyle untill something changes or they are told to go and commit terrorist crimes.

From what I've seen a lot of them have criminal records, drug/ alcohol histories etc but are strict converts to their cause and believe the crap they are told with no evidence of doubt. I think these people are potentially very dangerous within society and share a number of characteristics with the psychopathic folk who I often saw within special hospitals....

as I said earlier in the thread I don't know what our approach should be but potentially a further 800 coming back to UK is worrying.

I simply think that hoping they will feel the love and engage in successful de-radicalisation is wishful thinking!

Your orignal post seemed to indicate Jesus and other cult leaders knew better.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/dealing_with_traitors-700598?v=...

Apoligies if I misconstrued it.

They committed vile crimes in Syria (et al). They should be tried, and where appropriately sentenced (and executed where that is the local penalty) as per the laws of those countries.

They should not, as they now want, be brought back to Western Europe just so that they can escape the death penalty (and worse) that they so vilely handed out to 10's of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

I did mean that, but there was no comparison to people down the ages. I think they knew better that the general population then, and also now.

Fred West committed crimes here, was tried, convicted, sentenced, and jailed here as per our laws.

They committed their crimes in Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc.. Let them be tried in the courts there. Then, when (or if) convicted; sentenced, and same carried out as per the laws there, not as per our laws here.

There will always be criminality, and you must agree a suspended sentence is more humane than lopping off a limb?

Drone strikes were a military operation in a war zone, where there was no recourse to the courts, it's not something we'd deploy in Bethall Green.

I never claimed to be morally superior to the rest of humanity. I take the utilitarian view of what's the best way to preserve myself and my family Their beliefs are immaterial unless they're at odds with my survival.

I do, hence my comment about the punishments meted out in the west being better than they once were. But as you say, there will always be criminality.

Fully agree and I have no issue with some oily teenager sat in an air conditioned room in Tampa Bay raining down death and destruction on someone who is beyond our law enforcement agencies. But plenty of people see them as extra-judicial killings and would argue they are barbaric etc. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that we don't actually disagree on this that much! 

Are there really 800?! (Genuine question)

I believe the figure of 800 refers to the numbers of ISIS fighters from all European countries, and not just from the UK.  The largest number are believed to come from France. 

I thought this was quite well evidenced. It's reflected in insurance premiums and crime figures isn't it?

Agreed. It is worrying. But they're our problem - we can't simply chuck British citizens out the country because we consider them dangerous.

You don't know what our approach should be but you are sure that deradicalisation by a program or protocol is false? (An odd statement from a scientific perspective.) 

Thinking that is indeed wishful. Who is proposing this approach? 

It is quite insulting to accuse people of wanting to deal with ISIS agents and collaborators a particular way "because of their beliefs"!

It is because of what they did and the ways they found to do it to end the lives of countless, countless people, their friends, their children, their culture, their history and all of their hopes and aspirations.   Because they waged war on humanity and human culture in the most cruel ways possible and will continue so to do while the organisation, and its agents and collaborators and apologists, continues to exist.

I think a blanket diagnosis of psychopathy falls short of any kind of rigour:

"When the politicians demonise ISIS as evil, hormones flood the brain with danger signals,” says Hriar Cabayan. “We forget how to think scientifically. We need to get inside the heads of ISIS fighters and look at ourselves as they look at us."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531390-700-anatomy-of-terror-what-...

Perhaps you misunderstood the context of my comment. 

This is in the context of a woman who has travelled to a state because she agrees with their ideology, who continues to support it but against whom there is no evidence to support the contention that she engaged in any violence herself, yet it was suggested that the world and the UK would be better if she was in a mass grave than if she was allowed to return and "[live] among us spreading their hate". Therefore it follows that she deserves to die not because of her actions but because of her beliefs and the potential risk she poses.

I'm not really sure why it is actually that insulting but if that is how you feel then so be it. Interestingly the person who the comment was directed towards didn't seem to take it that way (though I am sure they will correct me if they were).

Is she any different from Irma Grese?   I take your point about context?

I don't know much about her other than a quick read through Wikipedia which says that she was convicted of war crimes after a trial. So my gut instinct would be yes. Is there more of a parallel that I am missing? 

In accordance with the law assuming the law covers this sort of situation. If not then Parliament will have to pass a new law.

You're really suggesting incarceration for an unspecified length of time, and without a trial?

I notice; when a 15 year old girl decided to join ISIS people tend to think, "she's made her bed, let her lie in it" and when 15 year olds demonstrate against the plight of our planet, "they are not old enough to know their own minds", not much of a double standard.

Beside anything else, she's legally entitled to return to the UK as a British citizen, are you seriously considering flaunting the law to prove a point.

Let her come home but she's can't simply pick up where she left off.

Besides that, the information she could give us might be invaluable, ISIS haven't been defeated they've simply f*cked off somewhere else.

I really don't want to get into a long protracted argument on this, but it occurs to me that those amongst us who've been lucky enough to live comfortable and protected of lives often find themselves tied in philosophical knots over imaginary moral dilemmas.

Looking at the quote objectively, I didn't need politicians or even Western media outlets, to demonise ISIS for me. They clearly indicated what loathsome arseholes they were when they started sawing the heads off random journalists and aid workers. Over the following years they managed to pile atrocity upon atrocity, burning alive, drowning, stoning, slit throats, thrown from heights, on and on. Their victims were sometimes convicted criminals or enemy combatants, but often enough they were just the wrong colour, religion, sexual orientation or nationality. I still can't get over the horror of a putative state decreeing that it's right and proper to sentence the men of an entire people to death and the women and children to be sold into sexual slavery. Not since the Nazis has the world seen such barbarism dressed up in the trappings of ideology. In some ways ISIS were worse than the Nazis, after all, some residual horror at their own actions compelled the Nazis to try and hide their crimes, rather than broadcast them to the world.

There is no moral dilemma here. I don't need to... "get inside the heads of ISIS fighters and look at ourselves as they look at us" , anymore than I feel the need to climb inside the head of Fred West to see how he looked at his victims. 

No excuses, no understanding and no hand wringing is necessary. ISIS and their supporters were absolutely and completely wrong, both in their intolerant beliefs and their shocking actions.

Out of curiosity, what do you do with her child?

No handwringing required. Failure to understand motivations be they economic, blowback/revenge, ideological, or arrogance premised on the fact that you (not you personally) have sufficient information and understand the problem, means we're doomed to a future of horror upon horror. It's as if you've failed to understand what the article was trying to get at.

Out of interest, would you argue that Jewish people should seek to understand where the Nazis were coming from? Do you think Fred and Rose's victims should have spent their final hours trying to analyse their captors motivations?

That is not what I said; my phrase was  

'....the notion we can de-radicalise....' is false. Which I think is accurate in response to people stating we can 'de-radicalise'....we cannot and this therefore does not provide any mitigation to the risk they present...

Yes, in the context that we should research what it is that leads otherwise normal humans to behave barbarically and to hate; think of something like the Milgram Experiment. 

Your being unnecessarily emotive with your question around West's victims "in their final hours". It is a cheap shot and unworthy of you. The bigger picture answer is yes, psychopaths and sociopaths are worth studying. We might be able to cure them, prevent a condition worsening, or profile and capture offenders much quicker, for example.

It would be if that is what I said but again you are misrepresenting......

People watch the news.....it is incorrect and insulting to assume that politicians do this to us. Everyone on here is likely to have seen the brutal imagery of decapitations, sadistic murder, drownings in cages filmed and publicised. 

We cannot get in to the heads of Islamic fighters.....what do you think we can actually do from a psychological perspective??? This is a myth.......I've sent most of my career as a clinical psychologist specialising in trauma.....we don't lift skulls up and look inside heads!!

Understanding isn't the same as agreeing. It's probably a good idea for everyone to understand how and why Nazism came about, so's to better make efforts to prevent it ever happening again. 

The matter of Nazis, ISIS etc being 'understandable', and basically average people, is troubling because it means anyone might potentially find such notions attractive, under the right conditions, rather than easily being dismissed as the perversion of an atypical few

What makes you say we can’t deradicalise, and why are we spending money on this if it’s true?  

Yes it was.

Exactly the bit i contended with.

You said that... 

The Jewish people have been subjected to thousands of years of pogroms and persecution. To suggest that any onus is on them to understand why has the whiff of victim blaming. We don't need to spend any time trying to understand ISIS or the Nazis, we've already had their justifications, straight from the horse's mouth. They went to a lot of time and effort laying out their ideologies and motivations. Fine, I'll take them at their word.

 All we need to do is utterly reject them and all they stand for. Anything else is a pointless intellectual exercise. You can't debate or bargain with murderous extremists, the best you can do is defeat them militarily.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Only as an academic exercise and only when dealing with individuals, not organisations. The big danger in extending terms like 'empathy and understanding' to the likes of ISIS, is that it goes some way to validating and legitimising an ideology that deserves nothing more than total condemnation.

I've never mentioned Jews - or Nazis. I went out of my way to underline that i think we should understand behaviour/biology - to understand  "what it is that leads otherwise normal humans to behave barbarically and to hate; think of something like the Milgram Experiment."

Milgrams experiment explicitly looked at obedience to authority figures. This is the antithesis of victim blaming. 

You should probably read that New Scientist link. They go in to exactly why military action is no solution.

Empathy is not sympathy. I'm not advocating a hug-a-hoody. It's important to understand motivations. Going by what we see on TV seems to miss nuance, particularly when it comes to membership of ISIS - that article offers insights from researchers on the ground - far more effective than us UKCers at home. How you think understanding these motivations "goes some way to validating and legitimising an ideology that deserves nothing more than total condemnation" is a leap of logic only you can explain. For my own part, i condemn ISISs actions totally.

It always makes me laugh when any trope along the lines of 'violence never solved anything' surfaces. There are countless faiths, regimes, ideologies and peoples that have been totally expunged from memory or exist today only as myths, folk tales or inside history books, purely as a result of military action.

I know I've mentioned imperfect victims before, but this Begum case is an excellent portrayal of the behaviour of a groomed victim.

One to bear in mind next time the headlines are all outraged about police failing victims of child sexual exploitation.

https://twitter.com/godblesstoto/status/1097538143564300289

Though in lighter news, I see her Wikipedia page has been updated to remove reference to her being a contestant on 2019's "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here".

How hours have you expended on compassionate understanding of "Rightwits" and "Gammons"?

Interesting take on "solution".

Bit "final" for me.

You disagree with the point, or you don't have a point, just a cheap shot?

Including this tweet? 

Obligatory:  youtube.com/watch?v=JyhfHQ_7Skg&

Sure it would be nice to understand how we came to be where we are now, but there’s only one way “getting inside the heads” of ISIS fighters is definitely going to end their violent behaviour.  

I didn't say we cant deradicalise.....however I suspect we can't. My contention, which Shani has missed, is the 'notion' that we can bring terrorists home and deradicalise them! This is the false belief that I am referring to.

However, if you look for actual evidence about whether we can deradicalise.... there is virtually none. There is no clear agreed model to understand what radicalisation is, prior to trying to do something to mitigate the risk from it. There appears some evidence that supporting someone's disengagement with terrorist groups can be helpful..... for some.

If we could change a persons values, thoughts, belief and so on ( which I think is inferred within the concept of deradicalisation) we'd have been doing it with murderers, rapists, paedophiles already.

My worry is that the 'notion' of deradicalisation becomes part of a solution without any reliable or valid evidence....

She's not exactly on-message or doing much to indicate a change of heart.  Latest quotes:

In an interview with the BBC's Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville on Monday, Ms Begum said: "I don't actually agree with everything they've [ISIS] done.

"I actually do support some British values and I am willing to go back to the UK and settle back again and rehabilitate and that stuff."

She told the BBC while it was "wrong" innocent people died in the 2017 Manchester attack, it was "kind of retaliation" for attacks on IS.

While she told the BBC she would have let her late son become an IS fighter, she wants her new baby "to be British" and for her to return to the UK with him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47276572 

History also shows that the indoctrination can live long - like the networks of old Nazis.

I suspect, not to make light of this, that some form of "Odisisa File" would be long kept open on all these agents.

Nope. All these points have been addressed, elsewhere in this thread.

I'm strongly in favour of subjecting her to UK law - and by that I mean treated as a criminal, tried and incarcerated if found guilty. That said, I'd prefer it if she was tried in accordance with the laws of the caliphate...as she would want. 

As regards to flaunting of the law, I don't have much of a problem with it in certain circumstances and I think that the threat posed by ISIS is just such as circumstance.

The only historical comparison I can think of is the treatment 'we' dished out to the Nazi's.

We had no problem hunting down and executing or imprisoning the them after the war, and it's difficult to see why we shouldn't apply this model to ISIS. 

I don't remember may people complaining about the extra-judicial activities of the Israeli security services in hunting-down and assassinating Nazi's-in-hiding regardless of the laws they broke or the grizzly methods they used to locate and dispatch their prey.

We can only hope that the Yazidi's who survived their own holocaust at the hands of ISIS are able to develop a similar capability to that of the Mossad international snatch squads...the clandestine, extra judicial assassination of those responsible for the systematic rape and murder of their people would be a satisfactory ending to an awful story.

If you don't try to understand Isis how will you come up with a strategy to stop them springing up again like isis did after the military defeat of the sunni insurgency?

We seem to have a pretty good understanding of ISIS.  The US/UK have been in the midst of them since their birth and have been on the ground battling them for the better part of two decades.  The amount of money and human capital spent analysing them is monumental.  This is a long way from "axis-of-evil, you're with us or against us, mission accomplished" territory.  We've done a good job of annihilating them, doing so with local allies, and are under no illusion that the ideology will remain regardless, like latent TB lurking in the region. 

At the same time these are people who have shown no mercy and have a belief system that accords no room for argument.  The usual rules that would have applied when dealing with the Taliban or Shia insurgents do not apply here.  It's like comparing Waffen SS to the Wehrmacht.  Who in their right mind would surrender to ISIS?

Given that ISIS's core belief is that they are carrying out a mandate from God, beyond wiping out their ability to wage war, what are you hoping to achieve? 

ISIL has detailed its goals in its Dabiq magazine, saying it will continue to seize land and take over the entire Earth.According to German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent ten days embedded with ISIL in Mosul, the view he kept hearing was that ISIL wants to "conquer the world", and that all who do not believe in the group's interpretation of the Quran will be killed. Todenhöfer was struck by the ISIL fighters' belief that "all religions who agree with democracy have to die",[131] and by their "incredible enthusiasm" – including enthusiasm for killing "hundreds of millions" of people.

What do you think? They sound like the sort of people you could do some kind of deal or compromise with, if only you could get a handle on where they're coming from?

That's realistic.

Enthusiasm for killing hundreds of millions of people?!

Perhaps if we get them to sit on bean-bags and talk about their feeling we can de-radicalise them and re-integrate them as trustworthy and productive members of our liberal and tolerant society. 

I mean, what can't be fixed with a good chin-wag and a steaming mug of PG!

Once they're dispersed back into the population annihilation isn't a realistic option as it would foment sectarian war. What's the best approach for Iraq?

God knows. The whole things a horrible mess. Mr Blair thinks it's an improvement, so that's something I suppose.

Edit: I wouldn't worry too much about sectarian conflict though, I'm pretty sure ISIS are quite keen on that regardless.

Someone who did a good job negotiating Brexit could easily manage this, like David Davis?

Or Theresa?

No, I thought TB had gone to ground lately, particularly after the Iraq debacle

Perhaps a chorus of "We didn't light the Fire ... " is appropriate while it all burns around us

'State of this comment.

Just a cheap shot really, apologies.

I don't disagree with military action being necessary against IS, but your wording suggests that the destruction of faiths, regimes, etc, is positive. I'm sure you didn't mean it in that way, so I'll not drift the thread further.

Which does seem to suggest that violence doesn't solve anything. It just begets more violence. You seem to be suggesting that it is good to expunge peoples from history. I doubt you are but that is the impression given.

There are times when violence must be met with violence, but violence as a solution is a poor thing

Hm this from Crest Research:

CVE has yet to develop a strong evidence base, making it difficult to determine which interventions are effective. In addition, because the factors which drive violent extremism are complex and wide-ranging, the boundaries of CVE are often unclear.

https://crestresearch.ac.uk/news/deradicalisation-and-counter-violent-extre...

The point I take away is that factors are complex and without an understanding of those you are bound to fail.

Of course that doesn't mean that you can't change a persons values, beliefs etc. otherwise Stockholm syndrome wouldn't be a thing, and radicalisation wouldn't be possible in the first place. You would be saying that a murderer was born a murderer. So I would say that deradicalisation is possible we just don't understand all the factors involved.

From a practical point if a citizen returned who had fought against the state then they are a traitor and should be treated accordingly for the security of the nation.

That's just wrong. The fact that the UK has recently involved itself in wars with rules of engagement and objectives that make a definitive conclusion all but impossible, doesn't mean violence automatically begets more violence. In the vast majority of cases throughout history, wars have concluded political, ideological and territorial issues and that's been an end of it. The Germans weren't fighting some doomed guerrilla action in 1946, the Americans aren't still taking pot shots at the Vietnamese and the Argentinians aren't still making the occasional bomb run on Port Stanely.

If that's the impression you got then re-read it. There was no value judgement in the post, it was just a statement of fact.

Only an idiot or a psychopath would disagree.

Edit: typo.

New law cannot be applied retrospectively (though if existing law is found deficient that should be addressed).

jk

"Islamic State group: Could it rebound from caliphate defeat?"

By Frank Gardner

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47286277

"Islamic State 2.0

So could this happen again? Yes, and no.

It is highly unlikely that a physical "caliphate" of any size would be allowed to be reconstituted. Yet many of the factors that fuelled IS's early success are still there.

Iraq is awash with sectarian Shia militias, some funded, trained and armed by Iran. There are disturbing reports of Sunni villagers being dragged from their homes and - in some cases - falsely accused of supporting IS.

In some places, Shia revenge squads stalk the streets at night with impunity.

Iraq desperately needs a national reconciliation process and inclusive government if it is to avoid a regenerated IS 2.0. Yet there is little sign of this happening in practice."

If nothing changes history will be repeated.  Usually. And approximately.

You do realise we had the death penalty in the UK then don't you. So this was done within the law at the time.

What the Israaeli's did is a different matter, but that wasn't the UK was it?

If you have laws and the state consciously breaks those laws, then where does that leave you?

Suppose the state decided you'd done something wrong, and simply locked you up, with no trial and no right of appeal. That would be OK?

I absolutely agree with everything that's written here. There is no easy way to defeat an insurgency. One route is genocide (think American plains Indians in the 19th century), nobody sane would consider this a viable option. Another route was taken in Northern Ireland where the peace process was based partially on political compromise, but mainly due to the various armed groups becoming so riddled with informers as to be barely functional.

I can't see any viable, short term solution to ISIS.

Put them on the next plane out of here.. 

Douglsa Murray batted this one out of the park rather nicely when he said something like, "They say you can't bomb an idea.  Well, Nazism was an idea, and I think we bombed that very well".

Surely a somewhat flawed argument, given the rise of neo-Nazi parties and groups across Europe and the USA? The idea that Nazism is dead is misguidedly and naively complacent. 

Although to be fair Thrudge didn't say it was dead - only "bombed". Still, I get your point

And puppies.  Don't forget puppies for them to pet.  Colouring books would be good, too.  And gentle mood lighting.  Remember, love and compassion conquers all.  If those journalists and aid workers had tried it, I'll bet they wouldn't have had their heads cut off.

More seriously.... I think the notion that we don't understand ISIS is a foolish one.  They have endlessly explained themselves.  Refusing to accept those explanations is in itself a refusal to understand.  As are self-flaggelatory cries of "it's all our fault".

I don't think he was arguing that we'd killed it, rather that it was soundly defeated.  And it wasn't just defeated, what little of it that remains is widely viewed with abhorrence.  

Assuming she's locked up, it stays with her in jail until old enough (standard procedure I believe).

If she's executed, then an orphanage.

Of course there's always the father, or his family - Holland ??

International Military Tribunal - Perhaps the solution here too?

Not UK internal law

And important to note that victim countries (apart from the US) were sitting.

The German military was soundly defeated, but that is very different to the suggestion that the idea was defeated. The abhorrence felt by all right-thinking people towards Nazism is largely due to the atrocities of the Jewish death camps rather than any positive actions on the parts of the Allies. 

Sure, because of course there are absolutely no nazis anywhere in the world today.

The idea of strong-state intolerant ethno-nationalism and 'ethnic cleansing' as the solution to ethnic/religious/cultural diversity has gone nowhere, indeed the idea and it proponents currently seem resurgent.

jk

I wish I could click the "like" button 10 times for that!

 The ISIS ideology is entirely clear.  They set it out explicitly in their Dabiq magazine  ("Why we hate you and why we fight you": http://www.oswego.edu/~delancey/314_DIR/WhyWeHateYou.pdf )

But people flat-out refuse to believe it, mostly because they flat-out refuse to believe that a religion can be a bad thing. 

So if she's exectued in Syria, as your OP, which country does the child go to and who pays?

As long as it's nowt to do with us then, even though she's a British citizen, it's someone else's issue to deal with?

I don't think many people are saying we don't understand their ideology.

What we might get from her is how they operate, hope they entice people from seemingly "normal"backgrounds to join them, how they evade capture, how they move people around, any number of things we don't know now.

Intelligence on the structure of the group and what people within it actually believe, with this sort of information, it might be possible to prevent further support, and the group will eventually fail.

Therefore there was no point in taking military action against Nazi Germany? If we'd sat down and talked about it, revulsion would have made the Nazi regime and extermination camps go away?

But we do know that!  It was all done in the open!  We know exactly the sort of messages that enticed people to join them. 

The central message is this: "Do you take your religion seriously?  Or are you an infidel? Because if you do, ours is the true and pure version of the religion, and here are the scriptural quotes to prove it. And if you don't accept this then you're rejecting true religion, you're an infidel. Are you?"

Is it surprising that that message is attractive to some fraction of teenagers and young adults brought up in the Islamic faith? 

Don't forget the "Normal" background of one of her other two friends, when her father attended a 2012 extremist rally hosted by Anjem Choudry and was attended by Lee Rigbys killer where he is filmed burning an American Flag. Its easy to now try and present the cosy family image with a football teddy bear but what get said behind closed doors would be interesting to know? Are these girls radicalised from a position of normalised UK social integration or merely tipped over the edge from an already heavily swayed belief system imposed by parents ?

The fact that the only national socialist political parties in existence are vanishingly small and composed entirely of inadequate weirdos with absolutely no chance of political power, would tend to indicate that Nazi ideology has indeed been soundly defeated.

There are still people who believe the Earth is flat, that is in no way an indication that the theory holds any currency. The only thing it proves is that we'll always have to suffer the occasional lunatic or oddball. Modern day Nazis entirely fit into this category.

I suppose we might get that from her. But I don't want to - I'd get it from somewhere more reliable

Poor Shamima. I wish I could feel sorry for her. But I don't. I feel sorry for the victims of her organization around the world

What I'm wondering is - how do three 15-year olds get through Gatwick unaccompanied? Seems a tad young to me? Weren't they children, what, we let children fly alone now?

THE TIMES said she'll have a very very hard time even getting out of Syria without a passport, and that almost her only option is to go to Damascus, where the Syrian authorities will chuck her in jail. Oh what a shame that would be

Those ideas don't define national socialism, they are merely an element and as ideas, pre-date the nazis by thousands of years. Have a look in the old testament, it's full of the same crap.

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Where on Earth did I make any such suggestion? 

Which sort of proves his point somewhat, we're hardly likely to be able to bomb that ethos out of existence.

I disagree. One only has to look at the rise of the AfD in Germany to see that the ideology has not gone away and has sufficient support to gain seats in the German parliament. Similarly, Jobbik, in Hungary has elected members in the Hungarian parliament, and there are far-right elements in positions of influence in Austria.

Nitpicking as to whether they are national socialist parties is, to my mind, to be dangerously complacent with regard to the harm that can be done to peaceful society by such movements. 

Like where?

You never did something stupid when you we 15 and regretted it?

To be honest I don't like the idea of her coming back, but I don't like the idea of leaving her for someone else to deal with. Especially, since our laws say she has the right to return. I'm not in favour of changing the law to suit something we're not keen on.

Maybe she'll be able to tell us and maybe we can prevent it happening again. Which was my point. Except you seem to think we can get this information from a more reliable source, I'd say the person who went through it might have the best information.

I think you're confused about the difference between murderous nationalism and national socialism.

I don't think I am

 You were arguing that nazis ideology wasn't completely defeated by force of arms, it was. 

You now say I'm wrong because right wing parties still exist. That's a little like saying the Khmer Rouge's ideology wasn't defeated..'cos Labour Party'.

How extremist groups entice people by grooming using social media has been extensively researched, hence the use of Prevent in the UK Counter Terrorism Strategy. It's essentially established PR and marketing techniques, not some fiendish and diabolical mind manipulation that no-one can understand.

Begum will have little more than low grade rumour and snippets of information that may well be useful in identifying the odd individual, and with the demise of the caliphate what little she does know will be out of date. I don't think she's going to reveal the location of the secret underwater volcano base that the leaders of Daesh plan their attacks from, it's not a structured organisation as such.

No ideas are ever fully removed, and that's probably fair.  Awareness of their existence and flaws is probably sufficient.  So I doubt anyone believes the doctrine of ISIS will be eradicated as it is, in many ways, just an extension of human nature, like Ghengis Khan and Nazism.  But you can certainly smash it into the furthermost recesses of the earth and render it ineffective at inflicting its desires on others though.   

Maybe.  But I think my grandparents dislike of Germans or Japanese was based on the war experience more than concentration camps.  Concentration camps have jsut become the symbol we use to define Nazism's worst aspects (hence why I find claims of widespread anti-semitism difficult to imagine)

There's maybe an excessive conflation with ISIS and the earlier days of the Iraq War that prompts this. 

I can quite understand individual Iraqis taking up arms and being bitter to the point or murderousness when we invaded Iraq.  We'd do the same even if we were being invaded by what we might feel was a superior and more enlightened culture.  I even get that this morphed into something more bloody and sectarian.  

But ISIS took this to a whole new level.  To the point that even Al Qaida apparently viewed their methods as unsavoury.  This is concentration camps v duelling contests, taking oppression to a new extreme.  

At a certain point things stop being someone else's fault and become the responsibility of the person wielding the knife.

I flew to the states alone at 11, so wasn’t a problem 20yrs ago.

What?!?! You don't think there's widespread anti-Semitism?

It might not be as big a problem as in Germany 1942, but I'm pretty certain it's alive and kicking and pretty widespread.

If "Nazi ideology" is defined as extreme right wing and intolerance of people who do not fit into an "ideal" then it has not gone away at all. The current versions worldwide may at present be less extreme and more mainstream, but don't forget that Hitler was voted into power. The particular trappings of Nazism (e.g. swastikas etc) may be irrelevant now but that way of thinking is as strong as ever and all it needs are the right conditions (social upheaval etc) and it will be back just as strong.

"bombing" it simply killed a few of the contemporary adherents. it did nothing to address the underlying causes.

No, the military was defeated. The ideology was not. It persists. 

It takes a special kind of idiocy to draw that kind of relationship between the Khmer Rouge and the Labour Party. Right wing parties such as the AfD, Jobbik, and Golden Dawn in Greece are not just a bit right wing. Their members take inspiration from Nazi ideology.  

No. It's not excess conflation to say the the Iraq War facilitated the formation of ISIS as that's when and how ISIS formed.

"How a US prison camp helped create ISIS"

https://nypost.com/2015/05/30/how-the-us-created-the-camp-where-isis-was-bo...

"One of the Islamic State’s senior commanders reveals exclusive details of the terror group’s origins inside an Iraqi prison – right under the noses of their American jailers."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story

Well sure, if you want to widen Nazi ideology to encompass everybody on the right with nasty intolerant ideas, but WW2 wasn't about defeating right wing ideology. It was about defeating the nazis.

Edit: to put it into terms more pertinent to this thread, it's similar to you saying that ISIS's ideology can't be said to have been defeated by military force, as long as the Saudis are still executing apostates and homosexuals. 

Your post said

"The fact that the only national socialist political parties in existence are vanishingly small and composed entirely of inadequate weirdos with absolutely no chance of political power, would tend to indicate that Nazi ideology has indeed been soundly defeated."

hence me pointing out that the ideology had gone nowhere. in fact, I suspect my local UKIP councillor is simply biding his time!

Her level of stupid (she's said she'd have been happy for her offspring to become ISIS fighters) is next level though and its probably only her utility as a breeder which kept her from becoming an explosive vest wearer in the name of Islam. 

This isn't drinking too much and puking on your parents sofa.  It's a calculated ideology that, despite her attempts to portray otherwise, she seems barely capable of giving the impression she's turned her back on.

There's a good chance we will struggle to pin anything illegal on her.  She could very well be roaming the streets on her return and while no doubt under surveillance and substantial control, it doesn't send a particularly helpful message to the wider Islamic community about the ease with which extremist views can be safely adopted.

Syria - it's a native of that country (or Holland, I'm sure I heard on the news last night that the father is Dutch - and alive - plus in ISIS's eyes a child, particularly a male, is the property of the father, not the mother).

And as for paying for their misbegotten little bundle of joy - why not ask ISIS. They appear to have enough money to buy guns and bullets. I certainly don't see why the British taxpayer should pay for it - we're going to have fewer and fewer paying tax the way things are going - try asking people in Swindon about that this morning !

As her husband is apparently Dutch, she would have, by your argument, the right not only to live here, but also to assume her husband's nationality, and hence have free movement across the EU, and particularly across Schengen.

Considering that after the end of March, 60 odd million Britons won't have that privilege I'd rather not have her being treated better than said 60 odd million !

But the ideology has gone somewhere, the outer reaches of the lunatic fringe.

The Key elements of national socialism included discarding democracy, initiating a command economy, nationalising industry, re-militarising and categorising Jewish people as second class citizens as a prelude to murdering them all. Can you point to any parties that adhere to even half of those policies?

No, antisemitism is widespread in the Islamic world and seems to flourish in central and eastern Europe.  But in the countries that define WWII and Nazism less on experiences of invasion and bombing and more on Jewish genocide, anti-semitism is about as wide-spread as the kind of racism that allows black people to be dismissed as "niggers".  It's just not a mainstream or substantial issue.  If you want to point to anti-semitism of the sort that ticks unconscious-bias boxes then yes, we might all be anti-semitic.  But you're going to have a hard time finding people who think gassing Jews is a useful plan of action, or that Jews represent any kind of problem at all.