It baffles me that Begum has been picked on. She did a stupid interview of course. But hundreds have returned from Syria, some rehabilitated, some prosecuted, she would be heavily interrogated, of course. It seems a wacky idea to me that she would return with a new baby, and do some terrorist act. She would never see the child again.
I don't pretend to know what is going through Begum's mind or what her motivations are. What I do know is that according to Muslim traditions, Prophet Mohamed's sons died in infancy so children dying in infancy is a burden that practising Muslims try to accept they have to bear with patience and faith if it happens to them.
I also know that according to Muslim traditions, if a Muslim is going through suffering and they can't find anything to feel gratitude to Allah for, a Muslim is encouraged to take the view that Islam teaches that any suffering in this world is compensated by Allah erasing some of your sins on the Day of Judgement, and therefore a Muslim could at least feel gratitude for that mercy. These are the kind of beliefs that Begum has signed up for - she said she became religious and that she accepted the hardships of leaving Britain in order to live in an ISIS environment as part of her expression of her religious belief. She wanted to live among people, who presumably prioritised the blessings they would get in the next world over the hardships of this world - that is the basics of Muslim belief.
So while I think we should feel compassion for her hardship, it should not be ignored that hardship is a blessing in the belief system that resonates with her enough to have made her run away from a loving family to a failed state to marry an ISIS fighter and then say the things she is currently saying in interviews. I think she sees hardship as a blessing, so there is a silver lining to her current cloud.
And based on her view of beheaded fighters, I wouldn't be surprised if she sees compassion as a weakness and something she despises about British culture, and perversely she might actually respect the strength of resolve it took for the government to strip her of British citizenship, because that strength of resolve and disciplinary measures is what drew her to an ISIS caliphate. You might be trying to save someone who deep down doesn't want to be saved yet - like an addict she might need to hit rock bottom first to get a fresh perspective, and her interviews thus far don't give me the impression of someone who has hit rock bottom yet.
