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Radio 4,2 mins

Canon Angela Tilby - 01/03/2023

Thought for the Day

Available for over a year

Good morning. The name that produces horror, judgment and sympathy in different people. Shamima Behgum, the 15 year old from Bethnal Green Academy who travelled to Syria to join Islamic state and is now in a refugee camp in Northern Syria. Her status has been the subject of much controversy. Three years ago the Home Secretary ruled that she should never be allowed to return here and last week this ruling was judged lawful, though there is still scope for appeal. Much of our response to Shamima Behgum is instinctive and emotional. That sullen look, so distanced and detached. Her woodenness in interview – nothing here to like. For some of us she has become an image of irredeemable evil. Her flight to what she hoped would be paradise was a sign of a warped soul, and she represents an abiding danger. Many believe that the harshness of the camp is what she truly deserves and that we are well rid of her and her like. Think what she might do if she were ever to come back to Britain. On the other hand, she was fifteen. And for many young women, fifteen is a terrible age. Open to so many influences and yet regarded as responsible, lured by social media and yet relatively inexperienced, above the age of criminal responsibility and yet drawn by the Manichaean drama of powerful ideologies. I don’t remember much about being 15, but I do remember it as a time of turbulence. I took the step into a personal Christian faith which has changed my life. But I was also worried, anxious and sometimes dramatically depressed every day – because every decision at the time seemed irrevocable, loaded with enormous significance. So my instinct is to feel for her, to want her to have a chance. And yet. Her case may well be decided not on our sentiments but on pragmatic grounds. Most other countries are repatriating those in refugee camps who have been involved in Islamic State. On Monday there was a warning from the judge who is the independent reviewer of our terrorism legislation, that the UK could end up damaged if it fails to take responsibility for her and for other British-born inmates of the camps. She still stares at us, though now she wears an open-necked shirt and dark glasses on top of her head. It is as though she is challenging us to judge her one way or another, which we are all doing as we pile in with our views. But perhaps we should turn away from her to consider our own responses. Is the instinct to mercy naïve, is the urge to condemnation unjust? In the case of this enigmatic young woman, we learn much more about the condition of our own hearts than about her.

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