Shamima Begum: Jeremy Corbyn understands you
Do we really care what Shamima Begum thinks of us? If you sign up to the view that Begum is a victim of grooming, a victim of sexual exploitation as one nodding head opined on Sky telly yesterday, a victim of the UK’s lax security in allowing 15-year-old to leave the country, as she was when she left London for Syria, a victim… you buy into the message that nothing she says is an expression of her own thoughts, they’re words planted in her throat by nefarious types who rape children, enslave women, decapitate men and throw homosexuals from tall buildings.
But if you believe in free will, consider it questionable that Begum was a passive web-surfer looking for pop vids who was mind-altered and “brainwashed” when she saw a preacher extolling jihad, you’ll afford her the dignity of self. What she says is what she means. So when she talks about the murders of 22 people and the injuries sustained by 800 more when a fellow ISIS fan bombed an Arianna Grande concert in Manchester, you know she’s saying what she thinks. “How dare she?” asks the Sun, which claims she says the attack was justified. “How could she?” asks the Express. Answer: she’s a self-declared jihadi. Murdering infidels is what they do.
“Even though I was only 15 years old, I could make my own decisions,” says Begum. “But I will admit, it’s my fault right now. I just want forgiveness from the UK. Everything I’ve been through, I didn’t expect I would go through that.”
But she continues to talk. And she doesn’t come over as being all that bright:
“Isis Briton compares Manchester bombing to western airstrikes. I do feel that is wrong. Innocent people did get killed. It’s one thing to kill a soldier, it’s fine, it’s self-defence. But to kill people like women and children, just like the women and children in Baghuz who are being killed right now unjustly by the bombings. It’s a two-way thing really…
“This is kind of retaliation. Their justification was that it was retaliation so I thought that is a fair justification. That was unfair on them … They weren’t fighting anyone. They weren’t causing any harm. But neither was I and neither [were the] other women who are being killed right now back in Baghuz.”
It’s muddled thinking. And it’s not a lot unlike the sort of thing you hear from Jeremy Corbyn’s fans for whom moral equivalence is a moveable target. Like Corbyn, Begum was there but not participating.
Joanna Williams touched on the same in a story about Labour’s problem with Jews and the Party’s attitude to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which after much hand-ringing and self-serving bullshit it adopted in full:
The idea that the Labour Party champions free speech beggars belief. Amid the protests and counterprotests surrounding the NEC meeting, activists – including those previously expelled from the party over claims of anti-Semitism – chanted ‘IHRA no, BDS yes’. The mental gymnastics involved in rejecting a definition of anti-Semitism in order to defend free speech in the very same breath as backing a campaign that curtails academic freedom and free cultural exchange are astonishing. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aims to stop singers, sports stars and actors performing in Israel and explicitly calls for the censorship of Israeli scholars and scientists abroad. In putting a political and geographical proviso on free speech, BDS activists negate the entire principle.
It’s not me, it’s them, says Begum. They made me do it but I also went of my own free will. Verstehen sie? So forgive me. Look only to yourselves. Because in this age of narcissism, it’s all abut you.
Posted: 19th, February 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
