When in 2019 the UK government stripped Shamima Begum of her citizenship I, like a great many other people, thought it was the right thing for them to do. Four years earlier, aged 15 and a dual national, Begum had travelled to Syria with two schoolfriends where she travelled to the city of Raqqa and joined Islamic State. In the UK at least Begum she became the poster child for a terrorist group.
What happened to Begum after, effective imprisonment in a North Syrian refugee camp and the death of her three children may be described by some as just desserts and by others as nothing short of tragedy. Now, aged 26, Begum is seeking legal redress to return to her country of birth and, irrespective of whether any of us believe that she deserves her fate or not, she has been through far more than many of us could ever bear.
I have long subscribed to the school of thought that says that if you make your bed then you have to lie in it, but as I get older my views have begun to change somewhat. There are always external factors that shape the people that we become, and not all are benevolent, our receptiveness to those factors may well be out of our control and their impacts can take us to deep, dark places.
Becoming radicalised can be a choice but, equally, it can become something any of us could fall victim to. Let me explain using an example of something that has happened to our family over the Christmas period.
My mother is 89 years old and lives with me and my family. She has always been a staunch Christian with a faith learnt from attending Sunday school even if it is not always the most theologically coherent. She believes in God’s love for us even if she couldn’t point to the passage in the Bible where it is explained, and she’s not averse to a touch of faith-based smiting either. I guess that her religion is very much the non-conformist, chapel based one that she was born into although along the way to her great age it has been touched by socialism and Catholicism. In short, my mother has never had an enquiring mind but rather her faith has grown out of the voices of people she has trusted.
Which takes us to this Christmas.
Someone along the way has told my effectively house-bound mother that as she is no longer able to attend mass she can still have an active faith by watching a daily mass on YouTube, she loves it and it no doubt has helped her, it has become an essential way for her to start the day and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
What we weren’t prepared for however is the platform’s algorithm and the recesses of the internet that it can take you to. Somehow, and I can’t entirely understand why or how, when the mass ends AI created videos explaining entirely fictitious events in the church start. The videos purport to tell of Catholic teaching with video of the Pope and dubbed words spoken in a calm and reassuring voice espousing thoroughly incoherent doctrine, their content can either be seen as funny or downright disturbing. We have had the story about how the new Pope has driven in a Land Rover from Rome to Ethiopia where he has read a secret book handwritten by Jesus; we have had another story where this time Pope Leo is going through the accounts of every parish in the church one by one; and we have heard how the College of Cardinals are holding a vote where they will decide whether to execute the new Pontiff because he is following Catholic doctrine too closely. In an upsetting twist we have also had the AI generated video that explained to my mother that all cremation is evil, and she now fears that her recently deceased partner will be forced to spend his eternity in hell.
For our part we have tried to explain to mum that we can’t trust everything we see on the internet, that we need to check reputable sources and understand that, sometimes, content is malevolent. But it is far easier to understand those challenges when you understand them. With the right images, the right words, a soothing voice and an easily persuadable demeanour it has become very clear that some disturbing messages can become deeply held beliefs very easily.
Is my mum likely to go off to Syria? Definitely not, she’s stuck in a chair for a start.
But, if the messaging was right, targeted in an effective way and without her family gatekeeping, would she donate to a proscribed organisation? Almost certainly, yes.
In a couple of weeks, it has become very easy to see how someone can become radicalised. We are there to make sure that it does my mother no harm, but it’s not easy, she genuinely believes the content that she is watching because it is believable and she isn’t receptive to the challenge of reason, but we shall persevere.
Realistically, in an age of AI, we will never stop malevolent content and we will never stop the persuadable being persuaded by it. It is at that time that, I would suggest, we have to show our humanity. We have to show that no one, especially a vulnerable 15-year-old girl, is beyond redemption because whilst radicalisation might not happen to everyone it can in the right circumstances happen to those we hold dear.