The Collapse of the Caliphate
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“The Caliphate is ready to fall”, tweeted President Trump. The so-called Islamic State’s territory is all but recaptured. If only that were the end of the matter. We can take away their land, but not their warped and dangerous ideas. And there’s the small matter of what to do with the 800 European-born ISIS fighters who have been captured in Syria. The US president has threated to release them if Britain and other European countries don’t take them back. If the British jihadis are traitors to their country, as many see them, have they forfeited their right to citizenship? Or by following due process would we as a country make an important point about the superiority of our values compared to ISIS? What about our moral duty towards those who went to Syria but didn’t even fight? What about our duty to their innocent children? For some, Shamima Begum, schoolgirl runaway and now mother, is a victim of extremist brainwashing. For others she was knowingly complicit in irredeemably evil acts of violence. Punishments aside, where does an individual’s moral agency come into this debate? It could be argued that the whole of Western society must take some of the blame for the demons that have been unleashed by what many believe are mistaken foreign policy interventions and the marginalisation of minorities. Or do we need to stop viewing serious organised criminals as the vulnerable victims of indoctrination and start being much more ruthless with those who reject our hard-won British values?
Producer: Dan Tierney
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.6 | Good evening. It was perhaps not the best name to choose for your baby. |
| 0:08.4 | If you're a jihadi bride asking for sympathy and a welcome back to a society you've until now been keen to destroy. |
| 0:14.8 | Jara is the name Shemima Begum Chows, which can be translated as one who wounds after Abu Ubaida Ibn al-Jara, |
| 0:24.1 | one of Islam's warrior founding figures. |
| 0:27.4 | The decision yesterday, by the Home Secretary of Muslim himself, of course, to strip her of British citizenship, |
| 0:32.7 | has sharpened the moral dilemma of what to do about those who left this country to join the self-styled Islamic |
| 0:37.5 | state. President Trump has called on European countries to take back the 800 or so captured |
| 0:43.3 | fighters who are their nationals. Should we, given the obvious threat they pose, and what should |
| 0:48.8 | we do with them if we did? Despite the ubiquity of the horrors the movement perpetrated, |
| 0:53.6 | it's proved difficult to make a case against them in the courts. |
| 0:56.5 | "'And how do you rehabilitate those who wanted to kill you |
| 0:59.4 | "'and destroy everything you stand for? |
| 1:01.7 | "'And what about the women like Shemima Begum? |
| 1:04.3 | "'Is she, are they, to be regarded as brainwashed victims, |
| 1:08.0 | "'or clear-eyed, committed, and remorseless followers of a death cult? |
| 1:12.3 | And hardest of all, what about the children? |
| 1:15.2 | Do we let the jihadis return? |
| 1:17.0 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:18.1 | The panel, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Inter-Religious Studies at Edinburgh University. |
| 1:23.0 | Claire Fox from the Academy of Ideas, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist and the Priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser. |
| 1:29.2 | Anne McElvoy, how difficult is this issue for you? |
... |
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