Shamima Begum proves it – you’re expendable if you’re brown and Muslim

When Shamima Begum was groomed, she was a British child sitting in a British bedroom (Picture: PA)

Today, Shamima Begum has lost the appeal against the removal of her citizenship in 2019.

No doubt there will be those who will celebrate this news – not least many of the very government that stripped her British status to begin with and those that portrayed her as a terrorist mastermind rather than a vulnerable, trafficked child.

But for me, as a Muslim woman, this is simply a reminder of our second class status in Britain, the constant dehumanisation and criminalisation that we face, and the way in which our right to stay in our own homeland is always based upon good behaviour rather than birthright.

When Shamima Begum was groomed, she was a British child sitting in a British bedroom. She attended a British school with British friends.

So why is the punishment that she faces to be removed of her Britishness?

And why is it that other Brits might commit the most heinous of crimes – including rape and murder and even terrorism – and the answer is not to render them stateless?

The answer to me is that British Muslims are never truly considered British in the way that our white and non-Muslim counterparts are.

As well as being a Muslim woman, I am also a secondary school teacher who interacts with teenagers everyday, and so Begum’s case unsettles me on another level.

I’m not ashamed to say that when I see Shamima Begum (the person the state would have you believe is a threat to Britain) I just see a vulnerable young woman who was once an even more vulnerable child. 

Teenagers make silly mistakes every day – some massive and some inconsequential.

They are easily swayed, naive and idealistic. And unfortunately, groomers prey on this. 

In February last year, the special immigration appeals commission accepted that it was credible that Begum had been ‘recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation’.

So if we acknowledge this – in fact, if there’s even a shred of evidence to support the notion that she could have been trafficked and exploited in this way – then how can we justify using the iron fist of the law against her? And, above this, to deny her appeals?

This decision essentially means that those of us with any ancestry that isn’t 100% English can see our Britishness taken away (Picture: BBC)

What does it say about our national morality and about the hollowness of so-called British Values if someone who is the product of being groomed as a child can be hounded, ridiculed and demonised by both society and the systems that govern us – and ultimately barred from her family and home?

In 2019, the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked Begum’s citizenship on the grounds of national security. She was 19 at the time and was still technically a citizen of Bangladesh because her parents were born there, despite her being born and raised in Britain. By the time she was 21, her Bangladeshi citizenship would have lapsed unless she took it up formally, but the country disowned her anyway.

So she became stateless.

Begum’s appeal was rejected today because three judges concluded that Javid’s decision in 2019 was not unlawful.

It appears like if you have citizenship of another country – due to grandparents born abroad or a parent with an alternative nationality – then your British status can be removed indefinitely. Even if, like Begum, you have never even visited the country that you have blood ties to, let alone see it as home.

Shamima Begum is stateless because she doesn’t fit the Government’s definitions of a true Brit

This decision essentially means that those of us with any ancestry that isn’t 100% English can see our Britishness taken away, whereas Britons without a link to another country – never face the same threat.

That’s why Shamima Begum’s case smacks of such double-standard and hypocrisy.

If she was a white, British child who had been groomed – even to join a terrorist organisation – would we be speaking of her with language of criminalisation? Of stripped citizenships and statelessness and refugee camps?

Even if a white British child was to face criminal charges upon their return, the state would likely bring them back to Britain because they would be, undeniably, British.

But because Shamima Begum is not white, because she has Bangladeshi heritage and – I would argue – because of her Muslim faith which appears to be the disproportionate target of the nation’s policing, she is left to languish stateless. And her babies – born to a British mother – were left to die without any hope of the NHS to save them.

In short, Shamima Begum is stateless because she doesn’t fit the Government’s definitions of a true Brit.

But as well as being a Muslim woman, I am also a secondary school teacher who interacts with teenagers everyday, and so Begum’s case unsettles me on another level.

I’m not ashamed to say that when I see Shamima Begum (the person the state would have you believe is a threat to Britain) I just see a vulnerable young woman who was once an even more vulnerable child.

Teenagers make silly mistakes every day – some massive and some inconsequential.

They are easily swayed, naive and idealistic. And unfortunately, groomers prey on this.

In February last year, the special immigration appeals commission accepted that it was credible that Begum had been ‘recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation’.

So if we acknowledge this – in fact, if there’s even a shred of evidence to support the notion that she could have been trafficked and exploited in this way – then how can we justify using the iron fist of the law against her? And, above this, to deny her appeals?

What does it say about our national morality and about the hollowness of so-called British Values if someone who is the product of being groomed as a child can be hounded, ridiculed and demonised by both society and the systems that govern us – and ultimately barred from her family and home?

The trouble is that Begum has become an emblem of something bigger than herself. She is now the face of Islam’s perceived threat to these shores; she is a red flag to the bulls of nationalism and islamophobia.

Her citizenship battle has ceased to be a legal problem and has become a political – even moral – one. We live in a climate in which returning her to Britain would be so controversial that it has become unthinkable.

Anti-Muslim sentiment is normalised and mainstream, no longer hidden in the margins.

This week, Tell MAMA – an organisation that records instances of Islamophobia – reported a 335% rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes since October of last year.

But no matter how islamophobes and our increasingly divisive political elite try to spin it, today is no cause for celebration.

It is a stark reminder that if we aren’t a ‘native’ Brit, if we have a foreign name and ethnic origins outside of these isles – and most of all, if we are Muslim – then we will never truly belong.

And the state holds our Britishness in its unjust grasp, ready to take it away from us at any given time.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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