RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-No-Britain-not-blame-Jihadi-John.html

By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail

Published: 01:20 GMT, 27 February 2015 | Updated: 10:03 GMT, 27 February 2015

Let’s get one thing straight: we are not all to blame for those dopey birds from East London who have flown to Syria to become jihadi brides.

Frankly, I’m sick to the back teeth of being told that the responsibility for their deranged decision to join up with Islamic State rests with, variously, the police, the security services, passport control and society in general.

If you get your news from the BBC, you will have heard that these are ‘vulnerable’ girls who have been ‘groomed’ on the internet.

The girls who ran off to Syria to become Jihadi brides were not driven there by society, the police, passport control or security services - they decided to go there themselves

This is an attempt to excuse their behaviour and liken them to helpless victims of sexual abuse.

Yet in the next breath we are informed that all three are highly intelligent ‘straight A’ students. So which is it?

Their apologists can’t have it both ways. Either these are clever young women destined for a bright future, or they’re so thick and easily manipulated that they are seduced by ‘romantic’ images of beheadings and infidels being burned alive.

Of course, on a human level we can sympathise with their families. But not to the extent of projecting their guilt and despair on to the rest of us.

All week, we’ve been assured that the parents aren’t responsible for what’s happened, that the school isn’t to blame and, perish the thought, that joining a murderous army of Islamist terrorists in the Middle East has ‘nothing to do with Islam’.

I listened to one alleged ‘expert’ on Radio 4 trying to convince us, presumably with a straight face, that their actions were motivated by British foreign policy and rampant ‘Islamophobia’ at home.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Soppy teenage girls have always done this sort of thing.

A few years ago, they’d probably have run away to join the circus or camp out in some pop star’s front garden. Jihad Johnny and his crew are this year’s Bay City Rollers.

Asim Qureshi, research director of campaign group CAGE, said MI5's bullying had lead to Jihadi John becoming radicalised

But because these gormless girls are Muslims, even the Prime Minister felt it necessary to chip in his three penn’orth, saying: ‘We all have a role to play in stopping people having their minds poisoned by this appalling death cult.’

No, we don’t.

If the authorities should bear any responsibility it is that they are so scared of being accused of racism or ‘Islamophobia’ they allowed these girls to waft unchallenged through the airport en route to Turkey — while security staff searched harmless Howards and Hildas from Hemel Hempstead on their way to Majorca.

It was this kind of institutionalised cowardice which failed for so long to address the scandal of 1,400 genuinely vulnerable girls being groomed for sexual abuse by gangs of Muslim men in Rotherham and elsewhere.

Not that this craven policy of appeasement has done much good, if the latest survey on Muslim attitudes is anything to go by.

More than a quarter sympathise with the terrorists responsible for the Paris massacres and 20 per cent of those living in Britain believe Islam is incompatible with a free society.

In which case, why don’t they move to Syria or Saudi Arabia?

On the plus side, most of those questioned said they feel loyalty to this country and believe Muslims should obey British laws.

Unfortunately, that’s not the impression created by those who noisily demand the imposition of Sharia law here.

Look, I have no doubt the many valued Muslim readers of the Daily Mail are just as tired as we all are of having to put up with self-appointed ‘community spokesmen’, waving a shopping list of demands and parading their rabid intolerance of free speech and other faiths.

They simply want to be allowed to get on with their lives, and raise their families in peace and harmony with their fellow citizens.

What then, must they make of that bunch of headbangers from an outfit called CAGE who turned up on television yesterday singing Jihadi John’s praises? They must despair.

Asim Qureshi, who calls himself CAGE’s research director, described the Isis executioner — unmasked as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen from West London — as ‘extremely kind, extremely gentle and the most humble young person that I ever knew’.

Qureshi says that the Emwazi he knew was a ‘beautiful man’ who ‘would never hurt a single person’. This is the gruesome sadist who for the past few months has been broadcast around the world hacking off the heads of captured prisoners and ‘non-believers’.

What must ordinary, hardworking Muslism feel when they see an hour of prime-time live TV given over to men like these, who praised Jihadi John as a 'beautiful', 'caring' human being

He has been taunting the West on slickly produced videos, holding knives to his captives’ necks.

Let’s not forget that among his victims was the British taxi driver Alan Henning and the British aid worker David Haines.

Emwazi is not only guilty of war crimes, he’s guilty of treason and the cold-blooded murder of his fellow citizens.

How dare the goons from CAGE, which risibly describes itself as a ‘human rights’ group, seek to defend him? What about the human rights of those he slaughtered?

They looked like they’d been rustled up from Central Casting, complete with obligatory shaved heads and comedy beards — especially Ceri Bullivant, who spent two years under a control order designed for terrorist suspects.

Much as I am a passionate believer in free speech, I have to doubt the wisdom of Sky News and the BBC giving these sick cranks the best part of an hour’s live, uninterrupted airtime to spout their vile propaganda.

Qureshi's poisonous lies will fuel the paranoia and persecution complexes of young British Muslims

This was a major publicity coup for radical Islamists. It was like inviting Lord Haw-Haw to Broadcasting House in 1944 to address the nation and letting him describe Hitler as a lovely man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, just as the Final Solution was getting into full swing.

Talk about train crash TV. Someone should have pulled the plug. These nutters shouldn’t have been given free rein to make such inflammatory allegations and speak glowingly of the world’s most wanted man.

Why should the relatives of Alan Henning and David Haines have to turn on the six o’Clock news and be confronted with this offensive garbage?

Needless to say, CAGE tried to blame the security services for Emwazi’s transformation from ‘beautiful man’ to bloodthirsty ritual killer.

They claim MI5 ‘harassed’ Emwazi, helped radicalise him and tried to recruit him.

It’s MI5’s job to harass those they believe are involved in terrorism. It’s also their job to try to get terror suspects to become informants. That’s how they thwart attacks and help keep us safe.

Blaming MI5 for radicalising him and turning him into a stone killer is utterly absurd.

It is part of the terrorists’ armoury, designed to destabilise society and portray psychopaths like Emwazi as the real victims.

Asim Qureshi said: ‘When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as outsiders they will look for belonging elsewhere.’

The danger is that these poisonous lies will fuel the paranoia and persecution complexes of young British Muslims already at risk of being seduced by terrorism.

Just like the three girls who have fled Britain to become jihadi brides, the clear implication is that we are all to blame.

No, we’re not.