You can’t ask me that: Can people change?

March 22, 2019

Shamima Begum was just 15 years old when she ran away from home in Bethnal Green with two school friends to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria. There she married a Dutch jihadi and threw herself into a life of religious fervour and day-to-day brutality. In February, heavily pregnant with her third child, having lost two other children in infancy, Begum gave an interview from a refugee camp, saying she’d like to come back to London. The outcry at her request was immediate and predictable and not helped by Begum’s assertion that the Manchester bombing was fair retaliation for the actions of British and US forces overseas.