Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story
Fri, 14 Feb 2025
Shamima Begum fled London to go join a terrorist group. She eventually had her UK citizenship revoked. This is her story
Who is Shamima Begum and why did she leave London?
So this girl is pregnant and she's in a war zone and she's running for her life and there's gunfire and the sounds of bombs all around her and all she wants to do is get home safely. So the girl, let's call her Sham. She's 15, she lives at home with her parents in London and she's a good student. But for some reason, Sham feels like she isn't loved.
But then one day she gets a message from a friend overseas and friend is like, it's too bad you live in the UK because it's paradise here in Syria in ISIS territory. And Sham, she's heard about ISIS before. She's heard a lot of bad things.
But after weeks of chatting back and forth with her friend, Sham is now convinced she can find the love that her life is missing if she moves to Syria and into ISIS territory. And soon enough, Sham decides that's what she's gonna do. And she convinces two of her London friends to go with her. These two girls, Amira and Khadiza.
So Sham packs her bags and she tells her parents that she's going to go study and that they'll be back in a few hours. And then she, Amira, and Khadiza sneak away to the airport and they take a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. And there they meet up with a smuggler at a bus station. The smuggler is a guy who specializes into getting people into ISIS territory.
So he takes them and he guides them through a smuggling route. which goes about 700 miles across Turkey and into Syria. Meanwhile, back in England, Sham's parents notice she's missing. And then word gets out that three teenage girls left London to go join ISIS. So this becomes a huge media story.
International hunt for three young girls believed to be on their way to join ISIS.
But no one can find them because Sham, Amira and Khadiza are now in Syria and they are officially off the grid. Now, at this point in ISIS territory, Sham would likely be forced to wear a full burqa. But for the purpose of storytelling, I'm not going to put her in that because then you won't recognize her in the pictures.
So anyway, as soon as the girls get to ISIS territory, they're immediately expected to start a new domesticated life. And after only being there for 10 days, 15-year-old Sham is married off to an ISIS fighter, a 23-year-old man who we'll just call husband. And Sham is taught to be obedient to husband and to do whatever he asks.
And surprisingly, Sham and her new terrorist husband get along well enough. Sometimes he even grants her permission to go out and see her friends. So that's nice of him. But after only 10 days together, husband comes home one day and he's like, I have to go to prison because he's being accused by ISIS of being a spy. So Isis takes him away and they put him in prison and they torture him.
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