From left: Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase passing through security at an airport in England en route to join ISIS.
On February 17, 2015, three young British women made a journey that shocked the world. They snuck away from their families and flew to Turkey, on the first leg of a journey to Syria to join ISIS. They were just 15 and 16.
Since then, their families and communities have been struggling to figure out why.
Amira Abase, Shamima Begum and Kadiza Sultana were from the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Bethnal Green in east London. The New York Times has now published an investigation into their departure.
“I think what we’re talking about is a lot of identity issues here,” says Mona el-Naggar, who produced a video to accompany the story. She spent several weeks in the community and found a strong conservative Islamic element in the community. “[These] young people are raised with a strong sense of religious identity, and that can sometimes feel like it’s at odds with the bigger Western world that they’re in.”
The Times reports:
“Perhaps that is why everyone failed to respond to the many signs that foreshadowed their dark turn. The families, who noticed the girls’ behavior changing, attributed it to teenage whims; school staff members, who saw their homework deteriorate, failed to inform the parents or intervene; the police, who spoke to the girls twice about their friend who had traveled to Syria, also never notified the parents.”
“They were smart, popular girls from a world in which teenage rebellion is expressed through a radical religiosity that questions everything around them. In this world, the counterculture is conservative. Islam is punk rock. The head scarf is liberating.”