Amira Abase was one of the three girls from Bethnal Green who left the UK’s capital to join ISIS way back in February. While two of the girls are believed to be married to jihadists (we don’t know which ones), Abase is definitely trying to recruit other young girls so they can go and do ‘hijrah’ to ISIS. While ‘hijrah’ means a pilgrimage to Mecca, the ‘hijrah’ to ISIS is a lot more sinister, as it doesn’t mean going to pray to Allah, it means going to help out in the violent establishment of a Sharia state.
The Mail On Sunday sent a reporter into the dark and precarious world of the internet, where they posed as a 16-year-old girl (using loads of yoofspeak and deliberate misspelling), to get Abaseto talk to them. As well as saying the ISIS-endorsed attacks on sunbathing British tourists in Tunisia were ‘loool’, and that it’s ok to kill innocent tourists because ‘research like read about it’, she spoke of how much she misses…shopping.
The supposed potential ISIS recruit told her ‘Sis’ Amira ‘its v hot today, Its boiling. I wanna go to Westfield but its too hot. Too thirsty [this is the reporter’s way of getting across that Amira is talking to a Muslim who is fasting for Ramadan.]
Abase then replied: ‘r u tryna make jelous bruuh. Used to take the 25 [bus] there.’
We’re not sure if Abase has got a thing for buses – after all, she spent about 18 hours on one to take her from Istanbul to Gazientep (a town close to the Syria border) on her way to do jihad – or if she just really misses Westfield, where young east Londoners meet up to do Western things like shop and shop and slouch about and mooch around and shop, doing teenagey things like buying the sorts of clothes Sharia law would flog women for wearing.
After a bit more conversation, Abase explained that you don’t miss the UK too much: ‘U miss it but u get over it because u leave everything for the sake of Allah and Allah replaces all that with something better.’
She also gave the girl instructions on how to join ISIS, telling her ‘U wont get stopped’ at the airport, and that the best place to get a ticket to Istanbul (for the onward journey to Gaziantep) is in ‘Briclane’, as in, yes, the same Brick Lane that you might go out on of an evening, or might live somewhere near, or might have dragged yourself around to look at market stalls one Sunday afternoon. The same Brick Lane Pixie Lott goes to for vintage clothes.
Yeah, excuse us while we go shudder in a corner.
Like this? You might also be interested in:
Jihadist Fighters For ISIS Are Using Social Media Just Like We Do
Ask An Adult: Why On Earth Would A Girl Run Away To Join ISIS?
CCTV Footage Shows The Three Teenage ISIS Runaways Last Spotted En Route To The Syrian Border
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.