RedHanded - Episode 209 - Shamima Begum: ISIS & The Bethnal Green 3 - Part 1

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

On Sunday the 22nd of February 2015, three London schoolgirls aged between 15 and 16 boarded a Turkish Airlines plane from Gatwick – they were headed to Syria, to join ISIS. In part one of this two-part series, Suruthi and Hannah explore the rise of ISIS, their recruitment tactics, and the motivations of those who willingly enter a warzone to join a death cult. Sources: redhandedpodcast.com  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Those who join ISIS for religious reasons or any other reasons should prepare to lose their lives or their humanity. Those are the words of Nadia Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize winner

and Yazidi woman who was captured by so-called Islamic State, held captive for three months and sold into sex slavery. Yes, that is right, everybody. It's going to be a very, very rough one this week as we are heading to the Middle East, following the path of British citizens who have left their homes here in the UK to go into the Syrian war zone and join a death cult. So many places that I was reading when I was doing the research for this episode, they're like, who fled the UK? Who fled the UK for Syria? Right, right, right, right. And I was like, excuse you? Fled the UK? What a weird phrase. What a weird terminology to use to explain what these people did. Like, I hated it. And because I had read it so many places, I would almost automatically start writing that, like,

right fled. And I was like, catch myself and change it to who left the UK to go to Syria. Yeah, they're not refugees. They're not political prisoners. No, as much as they would like to have you believe that. So yes, they didn't flee. They left the UK to go to Syria. Now, we'll come back to Nadia and her horrific story and the nightmares that she faced in Iraq in next week's episode. Because yes, this is just such an enormous case that we had to make it a two-parter.

And our story today begins not in Iraq or Syria, but some 2,800 miles away in Bethnal Green, East London. Good pub quizzes in Bethnal Green. The star, Bethnal Green. Good pub quiz. Used to go there when I lived in Poplar. Great fried chicken in Bethnal Green I've had in my time. Yes, very true. Great place. Before I moved to London, I always thought Bethnal Green was the coolest had in my time. Yes, very true. Great place. Before I moved to London, I always thought Bethnal Green was the coolest place in the world. It was like my very early 20s equivalent of 15-year-old Hannah's Topshop on Oxford Street. No, I must have been 19 because I moved to London when I was 19. So before that, the 18, 19-year-old Hannah was obsessed. They thought Bethnal Green was the coolest shit you could ever see in the world.

And that is very much the Bethnal Green vibe. For those of you who aren't maybe familiar with London, maybe familiar with East London particularly, Bethnal Green is like peak gentrification spot. That is it. It was traditionally a very like working class area for white people. Then it became a very Asian working class area with immigration. And then the hipsters move in and it got gentrified to fuck.

And now good luck buying, good luck buying anything. Good luck buying a parking spot. Haunted tube station as well. Oh yes, there you go. It's all going on in Bethnal Green. It is still this day, I would say, not I would say as if it's like a guess, I know it is because I did the research, predominantly Asian area, predominantly Muslim particularly. Over 50% of the population in Bethnal Green actually identify themselves

as being Muslim. We'll come back to that later. But to set the scene, it's kind of like a clash between the old immigrant working class families who still live there and the rampant gentrification that is happening. That sums up Bethnal Green. Yeah, and it's not some sort of like Islamic extremist enclave. No. Like it's a very, very normal place. Yes, absolutely. So in Bethnal Green, during the half-term holidays, on Sunday the 22nd of February 2015, three London schoolgirls, aged between 15 and 16, boarded a Turkish Airlines plane from Gatwick to Istanbul. Khadija Sultana, Amira Abbas and Shamima Begum were on their way to Syria to join ISIS.

If you know anything about this case at all, if you even heard the name Shamima Began before, then you'll know that this story is about as polarising as they come. People feel very strongly one way or the other. And we have both been very back and forth on our personal opinions during the research for this. Shall we save it for the conclusion next week to see if we've been changed and reformed? I think so. Because I change my mind every five minutes,

so I probably need to sleep on it a few times. So hear us out. Wait till the end. Let's go through it all together as a family holding hands before anyone takes to Twitter to raise tweets at us

or each other. Be nice. So the Bethnal Green Girls were by no means the first to leave the UK or even the West to go and join ISIS. It's estimated that around 30,000 people joined from mainly Middle Eastern and Arabic countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia etc. Some came from places like China and Russia to join the so-called caliphate. If you haven't heard that word before, I'm amazed,

but if you haven't, caliphate is like a Muslim leader is called a caliph, so it is the geographical area ruled by that caliph, the caliphate. That's what that means. To the caliphate, around 5,000 people came from the West, mainly Europe, but also from Australia and the USA as well. Over 500 of these Westerners were women and girls. And the youngest who came on her own was just 13 years old. And it really is very much more skewed towards the UK and Europe in terms of who went from the West. Interestingly, France and Germany top the tables in terms of number of people that left

their countries to go to Syria. So interesting. Yeah, absolutely. It may well just be because France does have the most number of Muslims of any European country, like population wise. Yeah, that's true. And as we'll also go on to see, the people leaving the UK to go and join ISIS were not all born and raised Muslims. The zealousness of a convert is a phrase that will jump out at you many a time during the next two weeks. Yeah, I'm not surprised about the high numbers from France. Firstly, because the Muslim population in France is way bigger than anyone thinks it is. And secondly, France, obviously being a secular nation, has ruffled some Islamic feathers.

So there is a documentary, which I'm sure we will discuss multiple times over the next two weeks. Sky made it and it, what's it called? Return, Life After ISIS? It's called The Return. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So The Return, Life After ISIS.

You can watch it on like Now TV or whatever. Really eye-opening and obviously- Well worth your time. Well worth your time. Obviously it's like Now TV or whatever. Really eye-opening and obviously... Well worth your time. Well worth your time. Obviously it's marketed to a Western audience so they are pinpointing these Western girls that they interview. But you will be amazed at like how quote-unquote normal they seem. Definitely go watch it.

It is a fascinating insight into especially the current situation on the ground in places like Syria and Iraq. So coming back to people leaving the West or other countries to go and join the so-called caliphate, why were they going? Well, some people absolutely went to fight, but some also went because they wanted to live in the so-called caliphate, under Sharia law. Just quickly, before we move on. I went to university. Before it gets too dark, I'm going to make one joke.

Excellent. When I was at uni, I was at uni with someone who's half Bosnian. And his mum wouldn't let him shave his head because she said that he looked like Mujahideen. Brilliant. Brilliant. And he did. And he did. And he did. I was going to say, possibly accurate.

And it's also worth pointing out that it isn't just individuals who ran off to Syria. I think that is one of the most common misunderstandings. People think it's just individual people running off there because they want to, like, you know, murder people. There's definitely those people, but there's also a lot of people who took their entire families with them to a war zone because to them being in that environment being under sharia law being under the so-called caliphate being a part

of that holy war quote unquote was the most important thing and it was worth exposing their children to the wanton destruction and violence and just craziness that was going on in the ground as you would expect in a fucking war zone. And we'll delve more into people's varying motivations a bit later on in this episode as to specifically why they went and joined. But what's important to note is that for ISIS, foreigners, especially Westerners, leaving everything behind to go and join their cause was an enormous win. Because if you think about it, Westerners, particularly white Westerners, particularly also, even if they're not white, Westerners who were born and brought up in Western countries, leaving behind everything they had to go to Syria to join ISIS.

I mean, it not only validated them, but it also raised ISIS's global profile and appeal hugely. They could point to these Westerners, particularly girls, as we're going to discuss in this episode, and say, look, of course we're right. These right these girls these women these people are willing to give up all of the comforts you say they have in the west to come fight here look how much that validates us look how much that legitimizes us and it's a very powerful feeling to feel like you're on the right side of history like any protest you go on for anything you are bolstered by the fact that there

are thousands of other people there with you and you're like well they can't all be wrong absolutely industry, like any protest you go on for anything, you are bolstered by the fact that there are thousands of other people there with you. And you're like, well, they can't all be wrong. Absolutely. Especially when they're telling you it is the so-called caliphate and it is backed, ordained by God himself. Like you can't lose. So it doesn't matter if there's a war zone, you can't lose because God is backing this. That is a part of the belief system. So 800 of these foreign fighters who we talked about leaving to go to Syria came from right here in the UK. But it would be the three from Bethnal Green and Shamima Begum in particular who would become the poster girls for ISIS. Now this is probably due to a number of reasons like how young they were, the fact that they were British, that they were girls.

And I also think because they weren't kind of individuals on the fringes of society, you know, they weren't the kind of people that when news came out that they had run off to Syria, the neighbors weren't like, oh, yeah, did you see that guy? Of course he was going to go to Syria. These girls were popular. They were straight A students and they led incredibly normal lives. And I also think it probably got a lot of exposure, the Bethnal Green Three running off, because the Shalia Abdo attack had happened just a month before they left. So it was obviously front of everybody's mind. Yeah, that'll do it. The police also convinced the parents that the best way to tackle the situation

when the girls disappeared was to publish their photos everywhere. So the police said that that might stop Amira, Shamima and Khadija being able to get into Syria from Turkey, the logic being that they'll get stopped at a border because someone will recognise them. But it didn't stop them. Actually, all it did was raise the profile of their journey even more and gave ISIS the kind of PR that it could only have dreamt of.

We're not just saying that splashing the girls' faces all over the news was a bad thing to do because it didn't work. There were other, far more strange mistakes made. And one of these mistakes was how the school, so Bethnal Green Academy, where all three of the Bethnal Green girls went, and the London Metropolitan Police, handled the disappearance of another young girl. In December 2014, so just three months before the Bethnal Green three left, another student from the same school, named Shamina Begum, who is no relation to Shamima,

also ran off to Syria to join ISIS. And interestingly, this is just three months before the girls went. The school and the police didn't reveal this publicly when the Bethnal Green 3 first vanished. You'd think that that would be quite an important piece of information that links those two things quite considerably. And I guess, like, obviously they didn't want to do it because they didn't want to highlight the fact that this had happened before. But this is where the plot goes from thickening to solidifying.

Because the girl who left, Sharmina Begum, was best friends with Khadija Sultana, one of the Bethnal Green Three. And the police had known this. And in fact, the police had strongly suspected that the Bethnal Green girls knew more than they were letting on about Sharmina's departure three months before. Stuff like this, it's in everyone's interest, like the school, the council, the police, it's in everyone's interest that it's a one-off because it's less likely that they're going to be forced to confront the fact that they have created an environment in which this can happen. Absolutely. And it happens to four girls in the same school. So obviously there is something.

This is a huge problem. And I do empathize with the school. You know, I'm not here to throw them under the bus. They had plenty of that at the time, I can tell you, because actually when this happened, I was working producing education conferences. Particularly, I was in charge of safeguarding events and kids getting radicalized and then running off from middle school is a massive fucking safeguarding issue that schools need to deal with. And this was top of everybody's mind. This was a huge concern.

When I left that company, I think it would have been about 2016. One of the major events that I was producing was anti-radicalization events that we were running for schools because they were so worried about this. Also, the other thing to note is that Bethnal Green Academy is an Ofsted Outstanding school. And if you don't know what that means, here in the UK, we have independent inspectorate who go into schools, inspect them and then rank them from outstanding to special measures. A school that is rated outstanding desperately does not want to lose that status by outing themselves as having kids running off to Syria. The reason I empathize with the school, although they didn't reveal this, was that these girls, as far as we can tell, were not being radicalized in the school itself. They were being radicalized online, but then they were kind of radicalizing each other because they're forming their own network inside the school. But the fact

that they didn't say what had happened to Shamina publicly, it is a bad move. It's a bad move. It was really painful to watch, actually, because when we were working at that education company, we used to have like parliament TV on all the time, just like running in the background. And we all watched the head teacher, the head of safeguarding, the governors, etc. from the school being dragged in front of an education select committee to answer questions as to why this was allowed to happen.

It was shocking. It was. There's no denying that. I don't think I can think of a situation that would make my bum clench more than having to stand in the Commons against the education committee when girls have run off to ISIS. Jesus. Mate. And there's a off to ISIS. Jesus. Mate. And there's a lot of that in this episode. It's horrendous. Well, I'll have a very toned bomb along the end then.

So actually, after Sharmina, that's the first girl who went, not Shamima, different. Sharmina, Shamima, it's difficult, it's tricky. But you're all very intelligent, so I know you're going to keep up. So when Sharmina went missing, the police had questioned the Bethnal Green Three,

and they even went to formally interview them at the station. Since they were minors, a letter was sent home asking their parents' permission. But they didn't post the letters to the girls' homes addressed to their parents. No, no, they sent them home with the girls themselves. Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? What are you doing? It's just evidence of like, not these girls. Of course they're going to go right home to their parents and hand it over. They're not at all like Sharmeena, the other girl who just ran off to Syria. Yeah, from the same school. So obviously those letters never made it to their intended destination. If the parents had known where Sharmina had gone,

it's likely they would have kept a closer eye on their own daughters. And of course, the investigators had been right. The girls had known that Sharmina was leaving for Syria, and it appears that she kept in touch with Amira, Shamima and Khadija once she was in Raqqa. ISIS is big into girl-on-girl radicalisers, and it seems pretty obvious that Sharmina played a part in convincing the Bethnal Green Three to take the plunge. And one of the biggest challenges for people to wrap their heads around with cases like this, I think, is the why. Why would these girls go?

What attracted them to Syria? Well, let's talk about it. Firstly, we need to talk about ISIS itself. Not who they are or what they want exactly, because we'll be visiting that fun topic a little bit later. But rather, how ISIS recruit and operate. ISIS was a big departure from the likes of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who, as dangerous as they are, and yes, we have a big, big update on what's been going on in Afghanistan

since American and NATO troops pulled out earlier this month in next week's episode. But yes, as dangerous as they are, Al-Qaeda and Taliban, originally they very much had a kind of bunch of grizzled old bearded men sat in caves brand about them. But ISIS, on the other hand, well, and this is something I discovered this week. ISIS have media operatives. Isn't that a remarkable job title to exist within a terrorist organization? And they actually say that these media operatives are martyrs. They are achieving martyrdom through their work. That's how seriously they take this role within ISIS.

Well, it works. It does work indeed. ISIS also have slickly produced Hollywood action movie style video propaganda. And ISIS even has its own online magazine called Debik, which is regularly updated and very, very well maintained. You know, when we've had like a foray into the world of white supremacy and gone into some very very horrible websites that are badly produced and horribly spelt and lots of weird fonts and all that none of that here none of that here we're talking top-notch digital marketing it's. And these marketing channels very much paint ISIS and the land that they control like a quote-unquote Islamic Disneyland. That is a quote taken from people

who ran off to Syria. And the voiceovers of these videos promise that the so-called caliphate is like heaven on earth. In the videos, it's like lots of smiling children, lots of like fathers cradling their babies, lots of like kids playing. It is that. Exactly. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, at their sort of peak of power, had controlled regions of the Middle East,

but they had never formed a caliphate with geographical power. But on the other hand, at their peak in 2014, the black flag of ISIS flew over an area larger than the United Kingdom with over 8 million citizens. This sense of stability and successful nation building that ISIS oozed gave some people, especially in the West, the confidence to pack their bags and go out there. You can't stress how much having geographical power, having land and citizens gives you credibility. This isn't just people sat around in caves like plotting an attack in the West. These people were building a caliphate. attack in the West. These people were building a caliphate. That was the point of why they were there. This is very, very important to remember. And previous groups like al-Qaeda operated as a spread out network of like autonomous cells

and individuals. ISIS, by contrast, absolutely used its territory to legitimize itself. And they run a top-down bureaucratic structure to rule over these lands. These lands that ISIS controlled at their peak, they were split into provinces that were ruled by different people. They had like a full-on bureaucratic state structure to this terrorist organization, to this death cult. And that's how they ran it so efficiently, for want of a better word. And they were efficient. You know, there were things that they did, you know, infrastructure wise very well. Like, for example, I mean, the now disgraced New York Times podcast, Caliphate. I don't even know if you can still download it. But it's still worth

listening to because I think it explains ISIS very well. And it gives you like a sort of flavor of what Mosul was like under ISIS rule. And they interview like people who live there and they're like well at least under ISIS the like the bins got taken. Oh yeah in large parts of countries like Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan thanks to rampant government corruption and lawlessness many people at first actually saw terror groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as saviors to some extent. They came in, rooted out corruption and even brought in courts and things to handle things like legal disputes. So yeah, in some places for some time, these groups were oddly a stabilizing force. But of course, these groups obviously operate with their own

agendas, focused on things like a brutal form of Sharia law, oppressing women and girls, and revenge killings on anyone who dares to speak out or challenge them. And we'll also discuss when we come to talk about the rise of ISIS, that there's also a lot of ongoing warfare in the Middle East between Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and why some people did want ISIS to take over is an interesting part of this story. But we'll come to that in a moment. But this legitimisation via structure and bureaucracy

isn't all ISIS use. They juxtapose their holy happy fun times with graphic and brutal videos of ISIS fighters beheading journalists and humanitarian workers like James Foley, Stephen Sotloff, David Haynes, Herb Gordal, Alan Henning, Peter Kazig, Hirana Yakawa and Kenji Goto to name just a few. And those are all name check names like everyone in the Western media knows who those people are. And this is the interesting thing.

The people who went out to Syria weren't lied to about the violence and the brutality being committed. It was part of the marketing. It was part of the gig, part of the appeal. Because ISIS is a death cult, they literally believe that the world is going to end like every other cult ever. And the brutality they use is no accident. It's as much a part of their plan to spread terror as any physical attack. Exactly. And the use of beheading videos and other graphic images in their propaganda shows us that ISIS weren't trying to hide this side of themselves from potential recruits or even the wider world. The brutal killings of journalists and aid workers was meant to send out a message of an eye for an eye. ISIS's whole

bag was to highlight and use the violence committed against Muslims by the West through things like drone strikes and years of never-ending war to stoke rage, radicalize and lure people out to Syria. And so for some, absolutely we can say that the brutality of ISIS was a part of the attraction. It's like a black and white mentality of they killed us, now let's kill them. And it worked. Absolutely it worked. So just remember, because this is really important, the people who went to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State didn't just go to live in a longed-for caliphate. And they weren't all tricked by happy shots of like this Islamic Disneyland. Most went with their eyes wide open about the violence being perpetrated. And they thought it was justified and righteous.

When we're talking about men who went, that's not that surprising. Male fighters being drawn to a holy war is absolutely nothing new. Look at the Crusades, hit, hit, Christians. Like, it's happened forever. Forever and always. Absolutely. We'll go a bit into the history of kind of how ISIS came to be, and you'll see that this history of foreign fighters going to the Middle East to fight this quote-unquote holy war, the Mujahideen, this is

not something new. This has been around for decades, that idea, that philosophy. But ISIS, another way in which it differentiated itself from the likes of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, is that they had a clear marketing strategy right from the start to go after the women too. In their publications, social media posts and videos, because yes, ISIS has social media, a lot of it, women feature so heavily. This is such a big difference. In other terror groups, you never would have seen a picture of a woman involved in any of their like propaganda. ISIS put women front and center. And particularly, they love foreign women. And the reason for this is because ISIS is as much about like an ideological war as it is a military one. And in the battle of ideas, if you can point like we said to Western

girls leaving their lives to come join the caliphate, that's about as solid a stamp of approval as you can get. And the route that ISIS radicalizers use to lure these girls, ironically, is feminism, or a twisted version of it. There is such a great article that came from the New York Times called Jihad and Girl Power. And in this article, they explain this dynamic so well. I actually think this article was written by Rukmini Kalamachi, and I know that there have been some question marks around some of the sourcing, but the points that she makes in this article, I think are valid and are worth discussing. I still love you, Rukmini. So all three of the girls, the Bethnal Green Three, Amira, Shamima and Khadija, were all straight A students. They took part in everything and their pictures were plastered all over the school

as examples of top tier students. They were popular and confident and younger students looked up to them as role models to aspire to. These girls weren't weirdos lacking in confidence. Quite the opposite. They grew up in a part of London that is largely, in part, pretty conservative. The majority of Bethnal Green's residents are of Bangladeshi heritage, quite a lot of East London, that's just the vibe.

And in this environment, there's no denying that although these girls were massive overachievers and highly talented students, as they came from conservative Muslim families, these girls would have been far more controlled than their male relatives or male friends would have been. And it isn't just with these three girls. Girls from basically all backgrounds outperform boys at school. Muslim girls are no different. They do far better than their male counterparts academically, yet their options and their freedoms are significantly more limited. Khadija's older sister had an arranged marriage when she was 17.

So it's just a year older than Khadija was when she runs off. And she'd seen this. She'd seen this happen. ISIS understands that this must be frustrating and uses its female radicalizers to tap into this anger. The girls are promised that in the caliphate, they can play a vital role in something bigger than themselves. With ISIS, their lives can have meaning and purpose. And even more importantly than that,

they will be encouraged to use their talents to the absolute max. Isn't that fascinating as a reason why this works with these girls? I read that and I was like, that makes so much sense. Of course it does. It makes so much sense. It doesn't matter that actually they're just there to be baby machines and they only find out when they get there. You've got to get them on the plane first and that's how to do it.

Absolutely. And it is the irony of telling these girls, you're being restricted at home. Come here. Come here. And under ISIS, you will be free to do whatever. You will be free to have a meaningful life where you can contribute and you won't be restricted.

But the irony is, of course, as soon as they get there, they have no freedoms unless they marry an ISIS fighter. Of course, as we'll go on to see, they are heavily restricted under Sharia law in terms of what they can wear, where they can go. They're not allowed to just wander the streets around by themselves. They're heavily restricted. No, do engineering degrees. Exactly. But this is the tool that ISIS uses to trick these girls into coming over. And again, why do they want them? They want Western girls because of what it signifies to the rest of the world. That's why ISIS make them a priority.

Because ISIS, above anything else and anybody else, they understand marketing. And they're very, very good at it. So the Bethnal Green Three were reported to have been indoctrinated by the Al-Kansar Brigade, which is an all-female religious and morality militia unit, or Hizbagh, which enforces Sharia law in ISIS territory. I had read about these women a while back and how, while they're of course male morality police who roam the streets, that these women are the ones who are really in control in terms of keeping other women in ISIS territory under control. And these women are absolutely fucking terrifying.

I don't know why, but it's more scary to me. Absolutely, it's more scary. It's absolutely more scary to me. A hundred percent. I don't know. It's so horrific. These women, you can see video footage of them if you Google Alcanzar Brigade. They're wearing full niqab, they're fully covered, they're wandering around like over their shoulder, they'll have like a giant gun, like a giant fucking assault weapon. And they just wander around keeping watch of the other women. And survivors who were in ISIS, either, you know, against their will or willingly, have said that they were actually more scared of these women than they

were of the male fighters, because these women would beat them for the smallest reason. And apparently, the Al-Kanzar Brigade's favorite torture tool because yes they loved a bit of torture if a woman was say not wearing her headscarf properly there were survivor stories where they were saying they were walking the street and their scarf or their niqab would just slip and you would be able to see a bit of their face and if they were spotted they would get whipped they would get lashed they would get tortured for that. This is like medieval shit that's going down. And the favorite torture tool of this particular militia group was known as the biter. And you probably don't need the following description I'm going to give you to

conjure up in your mind what this particular tool does, but let me tell you anyway. The biter is like a pair of metal prongs designed to tear away chunks of flesh as punishment for women who violated ISIS's strict dress codes. It's barbaric. Yeah, I mean, that's the only word. That's the only word. And I think, you know, often, and we do it ourselves, sort of term it as medieval. That's a very modern torture device they've got there do you know I mean so it is is like a it's an updated revamped version but I can't put my finger on it on why it

is so terrifying that it's women doing this as well but it is like I can't explain it it's women doing this as well, but it is. Like, I can't explain it. It's sort of internalized, well, internalized misogyny, is that even the right word? Internalized something. The women doing it absolutely internalize misogyny. Why any woman would want to be a part of a religious group or any group that oppresses women like this, deems them, you know, as second-class citizens, feels like, you know, they need to behave in this way.

It is a bizarre mentality, and maybe the reason we're so scared of women doing it more than men is this idea of there is now no ally. There is nobody. You can't even depend on other women to keep you safe. Maybe it's because it's more expected that a man would resort to violence and that on some level you're never really safe with them or whatever. But other women doing it is now no one is safe. Yeah. You know what? That that's exactly what it is that's exactly what it is it's like this internal like expectation that men will mistreat you and then when women start doing it as well you really are on your own yeah that you've well done you cracked it there we go guys i don't even need the biter to be involved in this for us to know why and how we're so terrified of this situation but it is that. But it is,

that is what it is. I would definitely leave links below to this group. Take a look at them. It's some proper nightmare fuel. So coming back to the Bethnal Green Three, the member of this Al-Kanzar unit that police in the UK believe actually radicalized the girls is a Glaswegian woman named Ashk Mahmud. And Ashk had run off to Syria at the age of 19 back in November 2013. And she is now infamous in ISIS circles. And she usually operates as a radicalizer via Twitter under the name Umm Lath, which translates to Mother of the Lion. This woman is terrifying. She's absolutely terrifying. She sounds it. And the thing is, when you Google pictures of her, she's just like this pretty young woman.

Like, you would see her on the street and you'd be like, oh, that's, you know, she's a beautiful young woman. Like, you wouldn't think anything of her. She's so, like, unassuming. And then she's on Twitter, like, mother of the line, radicalizing girls left, right, and center. It's, again, that kind of juxtaposition of, like, what we think or who we think is dangerous and scary versus how scary and dangerous these women are. And another really interesting part of this story

is how Ashk seems to have coerced and radicalized Shamima. Many of their conversations on Twitter were focused around atrocities being committed against Muslims by non-Muslims the world over. And how Shamima needed to come to Syria to stand with her Muslim brothers and sisters. They were her real family. They would support her and love her. Shamima says in the documentary that we mentioned earlier in the episode that she didn't really have a great relationship with her parents, especially her mum. She said that she never really felt like she could talk to them. And so here was now this person offering her a new family and giving her all of

this attention. And Ashk Mahmood was also underpinning it with the emotional driver of pictures and videos of women and children being destroyed in things like Western drone strikes. Interestingly, Shamima and the other girls, although all from Muslim families, hadn't been that religious before and nor had their families. In fact, one of the main points that Ashk Mahmood liked to go on about was telling Shamima that her parents were bad Muslims because they didn't pray

five times a day. Ashk would tell Shamima that they weren't even really Muslim and that if she stayed with them, they would drag her down too. And I think that this is very ironic when you learn that bit of information, especially considering the backlash that these families felt in the aftermath of the girls running off. Because there were, of course, many accusations that they had perhaps been involved in or at least created an environment at home which had led to the girls being radicalised. There's a Vice documentary that we'll link below and it seems pretty obvious in that footage

that the parents were pretty clueless. Like most parents, especially immigrant parents, they just seem to have been focused on their children's education. Amira's mum in the Vice documentary just goes on about a GCSE revision class as she cries about how her baby girl is still afraid of the dark. I don't really think any of them saw this coming. And given that they themselves had left war-torn nations in the hope of finding a better life for themselves and their children, I don't think that

they would have encouraged their girls to go to Syria or get themselves caught up in any sort of extremist behavior. And that's an interesting point because like, you know, we'll get into next week about, you know, just how appalling the conditions are in Syria and how dangerous that is, you know, when there's no sanitation and like, you know, infrastructure really does save lives. It's impossible to exist without it in sort of groups of people. And I think that when you're a kid and you've grown up in London, it's probably difficult to understand that when stuff like the bin men don't appear and there's no clean water, that life is very difficult. Whereas their parents, especially their parents who fled civil war in Ethiopia, would know exactly how lucky they are

to have everything working. Absolutely. And I think that's an important point as to why I don't think that these families, not just because of their reactions in these documentaries and not just like watching their dads like whole teddy bears and cry in front of news cameras begging their daughters to come home. bring your children to safety in the UK only to then radicalize them. I'm not saying that never happens. Of course it does happen. Of course, some children are brought up in homes with extremist beliefs and that enables them to become radicalized. Of course that happens. But like we saw, one of the ways in which Shamima was radicalized was being told that her family were not Muslim enough. They were being told they don't even pray properly. They don't care about Islam. They don't care about Allah. Like you should come here and be with us like that was the routine for some of these girls to be radicalized so again like you said it's ironic that people of course went after the families when these girls disappeared now I don't want to sound like we're just defending these families completely because

before people completely lose their minds yes I do know that there is video footage of Amira's dad protesting a film depicting the Prophet Muhammad's life. This protest, I think it took place in London, or it might have been in the Midlands, actually, I'm not sure. It's a pretty big rally, and there are some extremists there at this protest, like the notorious preacher Anjam Chowdhury. But we've all been at this protest, like the notorious preacher Anjam Chowdhury. But we've all been at protests before, where there have been other groups of people that we don't necessarily condone their beliefs. You can't control necessarily who's going to be there. And is it going to be an exactly

perfectly aligned situation for you why you are there? Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. Like nobody, obviously, you probably will go with like a group of mates or whatever. But like, you have no idea when you go to a protest, A, how many people are going to be there and B, who is going to be there? You don't know what's going to happen. There's no way of knowing that. And also some people might be like, well, what's Amira's dad, Mr. Abbas, even doing protesting a film depicting the Prophet Muhammad's life? Like, isn't that too extreme, like a belief system to have? Well, I i mean i'm not here to comment on that like people are obviously allowed to believe what they want to believe and also the point is that we live in a country where he is free to protest whatever the fuck he wants peacefully he is allowed to

protest whatever the hell he wants he's allowed to believe whatever the hell he wants so to me him being at this rally isn't really a smoking gun. Amir's dad has never been linked to terrorism or to the likes of people like Anjam Chowdhury. Mr Abbas himself says that he loves Britain in the Vice documentary because he's happy to live in a nation where he can express his views without fear of death or imprisonment. This is the point. These families, like Amir's dad, he came from Ethiopia

where if he had protested he would have been thrown in jail or killed he is allowed in this nation to protest whatever the fuck he likes and he's happy about that and I just think the pain that he goes through trying to get Amira back to the UK I just don't think he was involved in her being a jihadist runaway because when we were saying before about the school being dragged up in front of an education select committee, well, these parents were dragged up in front of multiple hearings, in front of MPs. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to watch, because I could never imagine doing that to my parents. I could never imagine running away,

leaving them to have to deal with that. But again, it speaks to the immaturity of these girls. They didn't even think about the consequences of what would happen back home. So of course people can get radicalized at home. I don't really think it's a part of the case here. And most modern cases of radicalization do tend to happen online, which is obviously a much harder place to police than kids getting like fucking radicalized down the local park or whatever and yeah like we said also these girls were radicalized in some ways by being told that their families weren't muslim enough and like we said some of these girls had started to become more and more pious or more and more religious in the weeks leading up

to their disappearance khadija apparently even started telling her parents and older siblings off for acting un-Islamic. So this argument of they were radicalised at home, I just don't really think it holds any water because they're at home telling their families off for not being like quote-unquote Muslim enough. Yeah, I agree. And the three girls also started to change the way they posted on social media.

Amira stopped posting about Chelsea Football Club, her previous obsession, and instead started to pose questions like whether plucking her eyebrows and piercing her nose were haram. And haram, of course, means like banned for Muslims. And all three girls also started to constantly share images and videos of atrocities committed against Muslim children in the Middle East and places like Myanmar. We watched a YouTube documentary where a former ISIS radicalizer spoke about the techniques that were used. And here's how they do it. They make contact, introduce more and more extreme ideas through the use of slick propaganda videos. And once they felt like their target was ready to bite,

they would even offer to pay for their flights to Syria. And that makes perfect sense because, of course, these three girls did not have the money to make it to Raqqa themselves. It would have cost about £3,000, money they certainly did not have, their teenagers. And there's also absolutely no evidence that their family gave them this money. This former radicaliser also said that they would instruct their targets not to change any of their behaviour in the run-up to the D-Day. They were supposed to keep going to school every day, turn in all of their work on time, not let their grades slip.

They shouldn't isolate themselves. And they must keep talking to their friends and their family. But what's a bit odd is the Bethnal Green Three didn't manage any of those things. All three girls let their grades slip, and all three became noticeably more isolated. But none of that was reported by the school. And yes, of course, some of that behaviour change can of course be chalked up to like teenage angst. They were 15 and 16 after all. And also some of course, some of that behavior change can, of course, be chalked up to like teenage angst. They were 15 and 16 after all. And also some of the things they were posting, like the war atrocities committed in the Middle East and Myanmar,

posting those on social media is also not necessarily a red flag. Those atrocities are occurring and those injustices are, of course, hard to stomach if you see them. Like that isn't in and of itself a shocking thing. I think it's the change in behavior. It's the radical change in behavior that nobody noticed and nobody followed up on. Because again, if you know anything about child safeguarding, in schools in particular, the key thing that teachers are trained to look out for are sharp changes in behavior, because that's what indicates that something isn't a-okay. And of course the reason that the radicalizers taught their targets not to do any of the above

like isolate yourself and let your grades slip is because they're clear warning signs and they knew that. However there was no communication between the school, the police and the parents and so all these signs just fell through the cracks. The girls seemed to have had everyone fooled. The night before they left for Syria, Khadija even had a sleepover with her niece, where they danced around in their pyjamas and filmed themselves. That night, she crept into her mum's room, slept next to her. And the following day, Khadija grabbed her backpack, kissed her family goodbye, and said she was off to the library.

It would be hours before her family would notice that almost all of Khadija's clothes were missing. She had been slowly sneaking clothes and other essentials out of the house for weeks, so that she would never be seen with a huge suitcase that she couldn't explain. And this, again, speaks to the level of, like, pre-planning that these girls took

part in. They've been sneaking stuff out the house for ages and like scribbling it away somewhere so they could just go at a moment's notice. They also on purpose didn't dress in sort of like a Muslim fashion. They're not wearing hijab. They're wearing parkas because they knew that they were more likely to get through security if no one sort of suspected them as being Muslim. And so the next time and last time her family saw Khadija, after she went to the library that day, was on grainy CCTV footage showing her at Istanbul airport, about to board a bus to Syria and to the so-called Islamic State.

But what is it that ISIS wants? And actually, what is ISIS in the first place? Well, it's your lucky day because we're going to explain it to you in one of our signature red-handed rundowns of a complicated and massively complex issue in about 10 bullet points. Sometimes less, but who's keeping count? So let's start with a quote from Graham Wood, who's an American writer. The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. I could not have found a better sentence that sums up everything you need to understand about ISIS than that particular quote. They have sincerely and incredibly considered religious beliefs.

And they genuinely believe that there is an apocalypse coming and that they play a key part in that. And the reason that we're laboring this point so heavily is because I think in the West, we often have a kind of well-meaning attempt to say that ISIS has nothing to do with religion or Islam. But I think the problem here is that it stops us from being able to understand what ISIS's ideology really is and therefore how to defeat them. Like, fundamentally, we have misunderstood ISIS in the way that we planned military action against them, and how

we have strategized against them, because we didn't understand, we didn't want to understand why they were doing it. And there is a big difference in what their belief system is compared to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And if you don't understand your enemy, how could you hope to defeat them? It's like a fundamental flaw in the strategy. Now what's important here is that we absolutely differentiate between ordinary Muslims and groups like ISIS. As we all know, there are extremists in every religion. And in fact, it is Muslims who have suffered disproportionately at the hands of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. While, of course, we here in the West have endured horrific terror attacks, the people of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and also the Kurdish and Yazidi people

have suffered unimaginably as their nations have been decimated by these groups. But we cannot say that ISIS has nothing to do with religion. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't compute because it's not accurate. Because they're telling us they do. And also, they're not just telling us like in a way that we need to read between the lines to understand. They are telling us again and again,

in videos, in blogs, in magazines, and in pamphlets, that they all themselves produce through their media operatives and then release to the world for us to read. And another key mistake that we in the West make is, I think, the idea that we view all jihadists as the same. Take al-Qaeda and bin Laden, for example. Bin Laden was a well-educated man who had clear political goals that would benefit him and his organization in this life, in the real world here and now today. ISIS are a bunch of medieval religious extremists. Because what they want is to quite literally return to a civilization that mimics that of the 7th century,

which is when the Prophet Muhammad was kicking about. And then they want to bring about the apocalypse because life here and now doesn't matter. They want to get to the next bit. They want to ring in the apocalypse as soon as humanly possible so they can be rewarded in the next life, which is the one that matters. Exactly. Like Al-Qaeda and bin Laden, he had clear political goals. Like he would say, we are doing these terror attacks in the West because we want you to leave the Middle East.

We want foreign fighters out of the Middle East. We want to take back control so that we can rule, we can do X, Y, and Z. These attacks are done to get the West to back off. The reason that ISIS does what it does when it does terror attacks and beheadings and these kind of things, they just want to kill as many people as possible so that they can get the apocalypse to start. Yeah, because they're purifying the world by killing huge numbers of people. So executions by beheading, stoning and crucifixion are pretty regular occurrence in the quote-unquote caliphate. And the way that ISIS justify these killings, which also include huge numbers of Muslim victims, is by a little definition trick that they've pulled. Because

what ISIS did is they widened the definition of what an apostate is to being literally anyone they deemed to have sinned. And they use scripture, which says that apostates, so in the original meaning of the word being people who leave their religion, can be killed, to now kill anyone they want and claim that it is justified. Yeah, so like your scarf slipping off your head, anything like that. Exactly. Exactly. ISIS follow a very, very literal interpretation of the Quran, and they cite scripture to back up all the heinous things they do, like Saru just said, apostates can be killed. And while, of course, it is the case that these lines are cherry-picked,

and some of the statements are very vague and open to vast interpretation. The problem is that those lines that condone violence do exist, just like they do in the Bible and have been used by Christians to kill and enslave people before anyone gets on their religious high horse. And I would really recommend the Al Jazeera head-to-head episode with an author named Irshad Manji. I have my problems with Mehdi Hassan, but I really enjoyed this particular. I enjoyed the series head-to-head, but I did get a sense from the comments on the YouTube video that this is posted on that people are very angry that Irshad says that she is a Muslim who loves Allah, but thinks that the Quran

is an imperfect book. And this is the part that people are very angry about because Irshad explains that we have to acknowledge and face up to dangerous and contradictory passages within religious texts because many Muslim scholars who refute ISIS, rightly so, of course we want to fucking refute ISIS, but the way they do it is by quoting scripture that contradicts isis's calls for violence but isis will just reply by finding cherry-picked lines that condone the violence so this is the problem there are contradictory passages in all religious texts because these books were written millennia ago by people that lived in different fucking existences different eras also just by different people, full stop.

Like, it's not all... I mean, obviously, if you believe it's the word of God, then fine, but, like, it is physically penned by different people over hundreds of years. So there's going to be a difference of opinion. And this is the issue, is that if people can find lines that validate their actions, be those actions peaceful or be they violent, there's a fundamental issue of contradiction and as with anything people

will approach and interpret texts like this through the lens of their own experiences and world views so absolutely i'm not a religious person so i would absolutely agree that most things are imperfect including holy books but I understand that for religious people to admit that or to accept or acknowledge that a holy book like the Quran or the Bible is an imperfect text because if you literally believe it is the word of God I understand that problem but ISIS are using the same text to validate what they're doing. Okay, stage two. Now we know what they want. Who created the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? Because in case you didn't know, that is what ISIS stands for. Well, it started in 1979, all the way back then, when Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

In response, young men from all over the Middle East travelled there to fight back. Two of these men were Osama bin Laden from Saudi Arabia and Abu Masab al-Zakari from Iraq. After a decade, the Soviets finally left and bin Laden set up, famously, al-Qaeda. And then we skip ahead, al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. Al-Zakari isn't quite as successful, quote unquote.

He just sort of hides out for a bit. After 9-11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein, a Sunni leader. Let's define the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Fundamentally, they agree on most things. However, what they do not agree on is who should have succeeded the prophet Muhammad. So about 85% of the Muslims in the world identify as Sunni Muslims. The remaining 15-ish percent are Shia.

And the difference is when Muhammad died, he died airless. He did not have a son that he could pass his leadership to in an obvious way. He also didn't name who he wanted to take over from him. And this is where this schism happens. The Sunni Muslims believed that the sort of prophet baton should be handed to someone who was chosen as a leader in a democratic fashion, someone that everyone agreed could carry on the torch. The Shia Muslims thought that it

should be Muhammad's closest male relative that was a cousin. He did go on to be caliph sort of four caliphs later, but initially that was not what was happening. That's where that split happened. And it is a fierce rivalry that goes back to like the 14th century, even before. And people feel very strongly about it. It incites passions. So that is the difference. And actually, it's a very important point to make because one of the things as well is that

I think often we do want to, especially being liberals in the West, do want to blame everything on the West and military intervention for the reasons that the Middle East is, you know, that people are having civil wars in the Middle East. Yes, of course, our intervention wasn't always great, but sometimes absolutely. Boots on the ground was absolutely needed. ISIS was a death cult, is a death cult. They haven't disappeared. They're still there. I think we haven't always

handled it the best and we absolutely didn't win any fucking thing in Afghanistan. But the point is that people in the Middle East, Muslims, Sunni, Shia, they were more than capable of starting civil wars between themselves because of their own belief system. It wasn't all just because of the West. So Saddam Hussein, a Sunni leader, so he is from the majority of Muslim people in the world are Sunni. And after Hussein was removed, the minority Shias took over in Iraq and began oppressing the Sunnis, just like Saddam Hussein had oppressed them for being Shia. And the Iraqi military was disbanded, just to add insult to injury.

The important thing to say is obviously Saddam Hussein, not a nice guy, but Iraq at the time that Saddam Hussein ruled it was a secular country. After the fall of Saddam Hussein or after, was a secular country. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, or after the West toppled him, we made it the birthplace of the most violent extremist group that we could have possibly imagined. So you've got to look at the irony of it as well. I can't remember whether it's my brother or my sister, but one of them had an Iraqi chemistry teacher at school.

Obviously, they were both at school while the war in Iraq sort of like unfolding. So this teacher is obviously talking about it a lot. And I think he said to either my brother or sister, I can't remember which one. He was like, you know, obviously like there are indefensible things about Saddam Hussein, but all I know is that when he was in power, my family had running water and now shit runs in the streets. So while all this was going down, Zakaoui, who had fled to Iraq, started an insurgency that would go on to become what we know today as ISIS. Basically, here's the deal. Zakaoui, who's hiding out in Iraq, sees the West come in, topples Saddam Hussein, do all of their, you know, nation building business that we like to do. And it's very reminiscent of what happened with the Soviets. You had people look at this and be like, oh, we need to fight back. This feels

like an invasion. And the former Iraqi military, who were disbanded by the West, they're bored, they've got no money, they've got no jobs, and they're now being oppressed by the Shia, decide to join up with Zakaoui. So now you have trained military professionals joining Zakaoui's insurgency. And you again had people flooding in from all over the world ready to fight and join Zakaoui. And Sunni Zakaoui started a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias of Iraq. And by 2004, he was running the show. Until, that is, the US killed him in an airstrike.

And likewise, after getting blasted by the US, al-Qaeda were also seriously weakened. In 2011, now thinking that everything was hunky-dory, the US left. That same year, the Arab Springs began in Syria. Assad was basically like, I don't want to step down. So he cracked down hard, causing, ding, ding, ding, you guessed it, correct, civil war. He started to worry that foreign powers would back the rebels instead of him. So he did the next logical move anyone would have done and released a bunch of jihadists from Syrian jails. Why did he do that? Well, actually, it's pretty clever. He

sneakily created a situation which would stop foreigner governments backing the rebels. It's pretty ingenious. It is. I mean, it's despicable, but it's, if being a tyrant is your game, that's how you play it. And this particular tyrannical move did two things that worked in Assad's favor. It radicalized the rebels and it distracted the West. Yeah, because up until this point, the people fighting in the insurgency are doing it because, you know, this fight between Sunnis and Shias. Now you've just released a bunch of jihadists into that insurgency. Of course, now they're all fucking radicalized.

Now they think, like, death is a holy pursuit. How do you fight people? And this is the fundamental thing, again, with why the West struggled to beat ISIS, apart from by just blowing the shit out of everything. Because we didn't understand that they are literally a death cult. How do you fight a group of people who think dying is perfectly fine because they're going to paradise? You can't. You can't defeat them in a traditional way. So meanwhile, in Iraq, a man named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rose to power, starting ISIS.

Because remember, by this point, Zakawi's dead. So Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi takes over the insurgency group that Zakaoui had started, that had been joined by the Iraqi former army, etc. He also used Assad's tyrannical playbook by freeing a bunch of jihadist prisoners from Iraqi jails. And of course, Baghdadi used this insurgency to take control of Iraq. So then you have ISIS on one hand, Al-Qaeda on the other hand, and they go to war. And at this point, it feels worth discussing some of the differences between Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Again, treating these groups as monolithic terrorists is a huge mistake.

And look, they're fighting each other. And this is because these groups differ fundamentally on many issues. Their warmongering isn't just about simple rivalries and power grabs. And there's a great article that we found by Daniel Byman and Jennifer Williams from the Centre for Middle East Policy that really explains this topic very, very clearly. But essentially what it is, is that Al-Qaeda and ISIS vary on most things, from who they see as their main enemy, what tactics to use in attacking that enemy, and which social issues and other concerns to prioritize. Now, as I touched upon before, Al-Qaeda have very strong political goals, and they see America very much so as their number one enemy. And while Al-Qaeda,

like ISIS, considers Shia Muslims to be apostates, and therefore, you know, sub-human, al-Qaeda sees randomly murdering Shias as counterproductive to their cause. They think it's far too extreme, and they basically see it as, frankly, a distraction from their real goal, destroying America. Generally speaking, al-Qaeda don't really care about the differences between Sunnis and Shias. To them, jihadists murdering Shias is just Muslims killing other Muslims. It doesn't add anything to their movement. It doesn't get them what they really want. The Islamic State, however, are not that concerned with America. Their main target is the apostate regimes within the Arab world. And ISIS's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

prioritized purifying the Islamic community by attacking Shia and other religious minorities, such as, of course, the Yazidi and the wider Kurdish community. So this is the key thing, is that ISIS are very much focused on the regional enemies, whereas al-Qaeda are very much focused on the international enemy. And on top of all of these differences, al-Qaeda are also far more strategic or smart, I would say, in their behaviour. Al-Qaeda, for example, during much of their fighting in the Middle East, have been relatively restrained when it comes to attacking civilians. It's not their main goal, unlike ISIS, who bloody love it. And also unlike journalist beheading, aid worker beheading ISIS, Al-Qaeda, while they definitely

took Western captives hostage, would usually just use them for leverage and then eventually release them. And also, finally, Al-Qaeda and ISIS take different routes to radicalize and recruit. Al-Qaeda churns out masses of propaganda and the aim of their propaganda is basically to try and convince Muslims everywhere that jihad is their obligation, that they have to do it. It's a duty. ISIS, or the so-called Islamic State, however, has gone for a territory equals power mentality instead. They are focused fully on building, consolidating, and expanding an Islamic State, so a geographical region of power. Al-Qaeda never really showed that sort of interest. Attaining

any sort of geographical land or anything like that was only ever really to create a safe space for their fighters. But as we know, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban got safe spaces in neighboring countries like Pakistan anyway. So as you can see, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are very different in many ways, leading to much of the fighting between the two groups. So now that we all understand that, coming back to the war between al-Qaeda and ISIS in our timeline of doom. In 2014, when the two went head-to-head, ISIS won, because they were just far stronger.

And they actually stormed Iraq and took Mosul and Baghdad with ease. And the Iraqi military, or what was left of it, just laid down their arms and let ISIS in. And at first, I think the people welcomed ISIS into Iraq because, like we said, Iraq is overwhelmingly Sunni. ISIS is Sunni. And remember, after Saddam Hussein fell, the Shia population took control of Iraq. So in some way, some of the people, the majority population, they were like, maybe we do want ISIS to take control because they're Sunni and we'll stop being oppressed. This is some of the rationale behind how they took these huge, huge cities so easily.

But ISIS got a bit too big for their boots, and they started attacking the Kurds, enslaving the Yazidi, and then murdering journalists. And actually, the beheading of James Foley is what lit the spark for the US to strike back. And it was after these airstrikes from the West that ISIS started to retaliate with a terror campaign abroad. Military intervention from the West eventually did come and beat ISIS back. And now they have substantially lost power and lost territory. But I am aware, as I say this, that within a couple of years, this episode and what I'm saying right now could be horribly outdated. And we're going to come back to the future of ISIS in next week's episode. So remember everything we just told you. It'll be important next week.

But for now, let's get back to the parents of the Bethnal Green girls. The families wanted to get the UK government and the Metropolitan Police to treat the girls as victims, not as terrorists. Because going to a war zone isn't a criminal offence or an act of terrorism in and of itself. Surprisingly, it was decided that the girls, should they return to England, would not be jailed. But getting the girls back would not be so easy. No one had any way of contacting them. The girls were going to have to make the first move. And soon, they did. The girls messaged their sisters on social media to tell them that they were safe in Raqqa. And then, within weeks, news reached home that Amira,

Shamima, and Khadija had all married jihadist fighters who had come to Syria from all around the world. When single women and girls arrive in ISIS territory and they are seen as the type to make good jihadi brides, they are typically kept in a compound. As unmarried women, they aren't allowed to simply get a house or a flat and start their lives. Oh no. These compounds or hostels are crammed with women and they can feel like prisons. And the girls know that the only way for them to get out and get their own place is to get married. Because really ISIS's main goal is that these women come out there, marry their fighters and have children. So a bargaining chip they can hold over their heads is you can't really start your life here until you pick a man or until a man picks you to marry.

And also these women aren't necessarily just being forced into it because for some of these women getting married and having children they also see this as their duty in the furtherance of the caliphate. Often the women who come from the west to join ISIS were actually given a choice of who they could marry. The Yazidi women that ISIS capture as sex slaves weren't quite so lucky, as we'll find out next week. So Shamima Begum actually married a man named Yago Rajic. I think that's how you say it. Apologies to all the Dutch speakers because he was a 24-year-old Dutch convert to Islam. And Shamima married him just 10 days after arriving in Raqqa. And remember, she's only 15 at this point. This guy is quite a lot older than her. And then 16-year-old Amira

Abbas married an 18-year-old Australian jihadist named Abdullah Amir. Amir was a former butcher and also a convert, who interestingly has appeared in several ISIS recruitment videos and was nicknamed the Ginger Jihadi, thanks to his red hair. And finally, Khadija married a man named Junaid Hussain, an American ISIS fighter of Somali descent. Amira, Khadija and both their husbands were killed in airstrikes within a couple of years of arriving in Raqqa. But Shamima survived. And it is Shamima's story that we will be going into next week, along with the horrors endured by the Yazidi people. So yeah, it's a bit of a heavy one, but I think it was really interesting

and there's more fascinating stuff to come next week. Prepare yourself. There's honestly so much to Shamima's story. So please come back next week and make sure you steel yourself for it because it's a lot to think about is what it is and I am certainly still thinking about it I was pretty staunch before but now I'm I don't know anymore absolutely and you know the danger of doing this as a two-part is a lot of people are going to yell

about their opinions this week before we've heard next week's so just let's just wait and see shall we but gotta wait a week for that. So before then, if you haven't yet got your hands on a lovely copy of the Red Handed book, you might want to consider doing that. If you are yet to purchase tickets for the Red Handed tour that is happening in the UK this October slash November, if there are still tickets available, there'll be links in the episode description. Head on over and grab yourself some.

And if you'd like to become a Patreon come do that it's really fun we've got under the duvet immediately after this episode and here are some lovely people who signed up back in november so thank you so much to beatrice lucid2k ashley falstick melissa jackson karen Ashley Falstick, Melissa Jackson, Karen Martinez, Caitlin Morris, Meg, Cece Alex, Arlene Harbison, Erin Nielsen, Sammy Cox, Fran Lee, Erin Richmond, Catherine Dupere, Ellie Gold, Anna Heath, Charlotte Greek, Amelia Crook, Georgia Guest, Siobhan, Kelly-Anne Easton, Brianna Smith, Hannah Anstinson, Danielle Goster, Hannah Hussain, Sara Esawi, Jalyn Green, Ashlyn Tierra Flannery, Anne Adam-Jumman, Holly Vondra, Aisling Quinn, Karen Blanche, Erna Christine Elias-Dotter, Kay Diane Thompson,

Tori Cummins, Neelima Pinnapareddy, Thank you for the phonetic spelling of your name. Sounds Africana to me. Might be Dutch. Don't know. Good attempts all round, everybody. But yeah, that's it for this week. We will see you very soon. Goodbye.

See you next time. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off,

fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.