Shamima Begum, the British Isis bride now stateless in Syria, is once again colonising the airwaves. Her latest attempt at rehabilitation is captured in a BBC podcast series titled I’m not a Monster. The first broadcast took place yesterday, where journalist Josh Baker promised a no-holds barred examination over coming weeks into what motivated a teenager from Bethnal Green to throw her lot in with a gang of theological fascists.
Those who are expecting the Disneyfication of her story may well be disappointed. In a previous series, Baker forensically examined and challenged the assertions of another – much more unlikely – Isis convert, the US Indiana soccer mom Samantha Sally. Sally, who was jailed in the US in 2020 for financing terrorism, took her children with her to Syria, ending up with her terrorist husband in the Caliphate stronghold of Raqqa. Baker spent much of that series carefully exposing the inconsistencies in her story built around a narrative that she was hapless, helpless and exploited.
