A series of leaked letters, written by some of the 376 young French jihadis fighting in Syria to their parents back in France, has been published by Le Figaro. Most express deep disillusion with the experience of fighting for Isis and other Islamist militant groups, and many beg their parents for advice on how to return home. Others complain that they are not so much warriors as dogsbodies. “I’ve basically done nothing except hand out clothes and food,” writes one jihadi, keen to return home from Aleppo. “I also help clean weapons and transport dead bodies from the front. Winter has arrived here. It has begun to get really hard.” Another complains: “I’m fed up. They make me do the washing up.” And a third moans that “my iPod doesn’t work any more. I have to come back.”
There was a king called Stanislas 1st. He is quoted as saying that “Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood”. These young hotheads are now understanding it very sufficiently. Perhaps we should send more people out to Syria so that disillusionment will become more general? The Thirty Years War lasted, well, Thirty Years. This one may be over in a shorter time. Let’s hope so.
Its deeply disturbing that so many young Muslims, the vast majority of whom are decent people, are attracted to fighting for ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups. I think we ought to ask ourselves why this is happening. I think we also need to take a second look as to how well integrated the Muslim community is in Britain. A few weeks ago, I went to Shadwell, a majority-Bangladeshi enclave of East London. It seemed like a totally different country. A largely socially conservative community is always going to find it hard to integrate into one of the most liberal and secular societies in the world, but we should at least try.
My sense is that, although there have been a number of moslem girls who have joined ISIS, the problem has been mainly with young men. Women of Pakistani origin have seized the opportunity to be educated and modern. When I ran a company, the women who conducted the annual audit were all Pakistani women, trainee or qualified accountants. It is the young men who seem to cling to the old, antiquated ways, and because they reject Western ways, including education, are unemployed and dissaffected. What we need to do is to have a huge programme of education for them, No moslem schools. Maybe Outward Bound, field sports, national service, where they are doing something for someone else – I don’t know. But if we don’t adopt some persuasive propaganda to woo them from thoughts of virgins after death, we will have no Britain left