Shamima Begum, ‘grooming’ and responsibility

Last week it was revealed (or rather, re-reported, as this matter had been known for some time) that the man who helped Shamima Begum and her two friends over the Turkish-Syrian border to join ISIS after they ran away from their east London home in 2015 was a double agent, working both for ISIS and Canadian intelligence in the hope of securing asylum in Canada (he is currently in prison in Turkey). This new interest in the case arises from a book by the Sunday Times reporter on security issues, Richard Kerbaj. This prompted a fresh outcry from activists who formed the conclusion that Shamima Begum had been ‘groomed’ by western intelligence which then smuggled her out of the country into the hands of ISIS and then deprived her of citizenship (her two friends died). This discussion went down the route of how “people of colour aren’t allowed a childhood” and Shamima’s story was summed up as “she was groomed and raped by adults”. This is a simplistic and over-emotional analysis and overlooks the complexities of the law regarding personal responsibility; it appeals to a perception that a 15-year-old is no less a child than a 10-year-old.

In fact, the age of criminal responsibility in English law is 10. When someone commits a premeditated serious crime, they are held personally responsible, sometimes to a lesser degree than an adult would be but sometimes not much less. Were it not for this, the killers of James Bulger could never have been prosecuted and we would never have heard of Jon Venables’ repeated run-ins with the law and recalls to prison. As with mental illness, there is a difference between being wholly relieved of responsibility for one’s actions and being partially relieved, a distinction often misunderstood and often intentionally blurred, and in this case the relief is very much partial. Islamic law — this matters, as Shamima is a Muslim (as am I) — is more lenient on this matter; personal responsibility sets in at puberty, specifically menarche as long as it is not precocious, which for most girls is around 13 or 14.

The age of sexual consent in English law as it stands is 16; there is an understanding that the law will not prosecute breaches of this law involving people close in age (e.g. 15 and 17), but if one party is 12 or younger, the offence is rape, automatically (there is no defence involving a girl “looking older”). There is no such offence as “statutory rape” in the UK; this is an American legal term. So, it is not true that Shamima’s marriage in Syria or its consummation constituted rape, in as much as it matters because English law does not apply in Syria and did not apply in ISIS territory. At the time, the minimum age for marriage in England with parents’ consent was 16 (this year it was increased to 18). She knew this when she set off from the UK. She also knew that she would be 16 fairly soon and 18 a couple of years after that. This is not like where someone is tricked into travelling there on the pretense of a holiday.

The word ‘grooming’ keeps being trotted out to refer to the way she was targeted by ISIS recruiters. Grooming generally means conditioning someone to accept an abusive situation or to become involved in crime or prostitution; this often takes the form of pretending to be someone’s friend or boyfriend, or using words that make them feel special in the case of a teacher abusing their position. It involves a certain amount of deception. Targeting someone with propaganda and talking to them on an online chat forum that they can leave any time does not bear much resemblance to what has traditionally been called grooming. The term has become a means of discrediting someone’s own view of their own situation, or making them out to be a victim when they were in fact a willing participant. Shamima may have been naive, but she chose to listen to propaganda, to go behind her parents’ back, to travel thousands of miles to join an organisation that was known for war crimes, for rape, for mass murder. At pretty much any stage of this journey until she crossed into Syria she could have turned back. This involved a substantial level of premeditation on her part; it was not a momentary, spontaneous decision.

When I stated this view on Twitter, someone replied that when young people join neo-Nazi organisations then leave, they are allowed to teach others and be treated as heroes. The main difference is that most of those involved have done little more than join an organisation, attend rallies and maybe get into fights here and there. It’s also true that white supremacists who have been caught with weapons have got more lenient sentences than Muslims involved in similar things, but it’s also a fact that Muslim terrorists have carried out attacks against innocent civilians that have killed people (so far, there has been only one lethal neo-Nazi terrorist attack on British soil, and the attacker was jailed for life). When the Nazis actually ruled a country and were our enemy, those who displayed sympathy with them here, such as the Mosleys, were interned and those who served them from Germany by such deeds as issuing propaganda on their behalf, if they had British connections, were hanged. Shamima Begum chose to travel to ISIS territory and actively serve the ‘state’ there, and unlike a few others did not attempt to flee. She may not have been personally involved in massacres, though there have been reports that she participated in “morality policing” for them (similar bodies exist in Saudi Arabia, which as it’s not an enemy of the UK gets little publicity, but where such bodies have appeared in Islamic states such as Afghanistan, this is what they are modelled on), but made the decision to travel there and live there.

I disagree with the decision to strip Shamima Begum of her citizenship. The Tories have reduced British citizenship to a glorified visa which can be revoked without meaningful process of law. She had lived all her life in the UK and despite having Bangladeshi heritage had never lived there; the UK government seems to think it can dump its problematic citizens on the third-world countries of their parents’ or grandparents’ origin despite those countries bearing no responsibility for what became of the children of those who emigrated. Quite possibly, if tried on return, she could be sentenced to no more than time already served in that camp. But let’s stop pretending that she was an innocent victim, or that she has been unjustly targeted because of her race, or over a tenuous link to a “joint enterprise”. She is facing the consequences of choosing to join what everyone knew was a criminal entity, to act in the service of terrorists and war criminals.