Monday, February 23, 2015

Comment Piece in The Telegraph Urges Us to Stop Feeling Sorry for UK Schoolgirls Who Ran Off to Marry ISIS Fighters

Emma Barnett says they are not "victims" :
While I accept they have fallen prey to Isil’s digital propaganda machine, these teen girls aren’t stupid. Far from it. In fact they are all grade-A students at the Bethnal Green Academy in Tower Hamlets. We are told by their worried friends and family that they are thoughtful and intelligent people.  
Bizarrely many of the estimated 550 Western women who have chosen to make this journey to join Isil are simlarly well-educated and well-informed. Aqsa Mahmood, 20, is a case in point. Glasgow-born and privately educated – she is now married to an Isil fighter in Syria and is mother to his children. She calls for her fellow Muslims in the West to copy murders like that of Fusilier Lee Rigby. Nice.
So much for that "violent extremism"-is-a-function-of-poverty narrative.

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