By Asif Ullah Khan
Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission recently rejected the appeal of the ISIS child bride, Shamima Begum, against the stripping of her citizenship by the then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid.
Shamima was 15 when she left for Syria with her two other friends in 2015. Shamima married a Dutch ISIS fighter, just 10 days after her arrival. However, her husband was killed in the allied bombing and later her three children too died in different circumstances. Secretary Javid revoked her British citizenship after she was discovered at Al-Hawl refugee camp in Northern Syria in February 2019 by war correspondent Anthony Loyd. Although Shamima regretted her decision and asked for the forgiveness of the British people, the Home Office and MI5 were of the view that she posed a threat to British society in 2019 and is still a risk.
This decision has rendered Shamima, who is of Bangladeshi heritage, stateless as she does not have Bangladesh citizenship.
Sitting in one of the Kurdish-led authorities-controlled detention camps, Shamima must not be aware that her ordeal resembles characters of Home Fire, an award-winning novel by British-Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie. Home Fire, adapted from Sophocles’ play Antigone, tells the struggle of two British Muslim families with Pakistani roots following the rise of the Islamic State and the conflict between what it means to be ‘British’ and what it means to be a Muslim living in contemporary Britain.
Some of the characters in Home Fire have striking resemblances to people who are instrumental in leaving Begum helpless in a refugee camp. In Home Fire, the Pasha family is faced with a similar predicament. The only son of the family, Parvaiz, followed the footsteps of his father by joining ISIS in Syria where his father was killed. Like Shamima, Parvaiz regretted his decision and wanted to return home but British Home Secretary Karamat Lone, who has built his political career on his rejection of his Muslim background, revoked his citizenship.
Of course, Javid is not like Karamat Lone as he is very proud of his Pakistani lineage but legal luminaries and human rights activists are of the firm view that Javid’s decision to strip Shamima of citizenship was done in haste without looking at the official documentation. Secondly, it rendered her stateless, which is an international crime. The Home Office’s assertion that she has Bangladeshi citizenship has proved to be a myth as she never had one and never visited the country of her parents. In Home Fire, Parvaiz dies in Syria and Karamat does not allow his body to be repatriated to Britain for burial and is sent to Pakistan.
The question here is not of art imitating life or life imitating art. The real question is will Shamima be buried like Parvaiz in the Kurdish-controlled enclave? Interestingly, the Shamima case has bought three Conservative politicians of Asian heritage — Javid, former Home Secretary Priti Patel and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — into the spotlight. While Patel supports the decision not to allow Shamima to return home, PM Sunak is silent on the issue.
One does not know whether Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who coined the “cricket test” to prove loyalty among South Asian immigrants, must be smiling or turning in his grave as these three Asians have sacrificed at the altar of the British test of loyalty a girl who committed a mistake at the age of 15.