Shamima is Britain’s Shame: and that’s why we have to take her back

She’s one of our most twisted citizens: and she’s our problem

As a Brit, I’m embarrassed and ashamed of Shamima Begum. For a girl to grow up in my own culture, a culture so vocally disgusted by genocide, slavery, and rape to join ISIS isn’t just unpleasant: it’s frightening. I don’t have the words to describe how it feels for someone from my own city to participate in the enslavement and sexual trafficking of the Syrian people. Her indifferent response to her actions is unforgivable. It would be easier for some to write her off, place her identity as a Muslim woman as adjacent to her Britishness, and leave her stateless as someone else’s problem. But however shameful it might be for us to acknowledge: Shamima is British.

Some people will write her actions off as a sociopath, an abnormality born of a bad family, a faulty gene, or some freakish occurrence of nature. What makes anyone a bad person? When someone’s actions are so monstrous, so unforgivable- like, ISIS joining level bad- it’s very tempting to divorce what they did from our own collective likeness. Ted Bundy isn’t a man, he’s a monster. Trump isn’t American, he’s a fraud. Bin Laden isn’t a Muslim, he’s a devil. I get it: it’s horrible confronting the darkest actions of an individual as part of our…