Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Five Podcast Two

Sometimes parents can rescue their children. But even these initially joyous events can become tragic. A Tunisian military physician went to Turkey to retrieve his son, who had joined and then left the Caliphate. Earlier, the son had been a lighthearted medical student. “He used to spend time with my daughters, laughing and joking, but that stopped,” said a cousin. But he became withdrawn and hateful toward nonreligious Muslims. He joined the Caliphate and left for Iraq but soon changed his mind and asked his father, a general in the Tunisian military, to get him out. The father’s connections and persistence paid off, and the general went to Turkey to bring his son home. As the general was transiting the airport in Istanbul on June 28, 2016, he was killed in the Caliphate-directed terrorist attacks there. The general was buried with full military honors in his Tunisian home. The local newspaper noted, “ISIS attracts a son . . . and kills a father.”               Siblings and friends of Western foreign fighters are surprised, too. They cannot explain the sadism they see in their sons, daughters, or former friends. Maxime Hauchard, twenty-two, from a village in Normandy in northern France, was filmed decapitating a Syrian prisoner. Those who knew him in France could not understand why he would hurt anyone. A former neighbor speculated that Maxime must have been drugged.             In Australia, one couple agonized over their daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchild. Australians Karen and Peter Nettleton’s daughter converted to Islam and, with her husband, took their five children to the Caliphate. The Nettletons’ heartrending case is presented below.   Profile Fifteen: The Despair of Grandparents       “I accept that some will be critical of my daughter, who followed her heart and has paid an enormous price. Mr. Abbott, I beg you, please help bring my child and grandchildren home.” Karen Nettleton to the then Prime Minister Abbott               Australian grandmother Karen Nettleton struggles to make sense of what went wrong with her daughter, Tara. What caused it? How did it happen? A next-door neighbor described Tara as polite and attractive, not very different from other girls in the neighborhood. One day, the neighbor noticed Tara wearing Islamic attire. He told her, “You are too pretty to wear those things.” After that, Tara never spoke to him again.               Tara met a Muslim while she was still a teenager and had his baby at seventeen. They were high school sweethearts. Her heartthrob was Khaled Sharrouf, a man with a troubled past, drifting in and out of petty crime and abusing drugs. He was mentally ill, first diagnosed with depression and later with schizophrenia. The son of Lebanese parents, raised in a dysfunctional family, Sharrouf served time for stockpiling weapons. Before his release, he was put on medication, and in early 2009, physicians noted his “remarkable recovery.” Later, both Tara and Khaled embraced fundamentalist Islam and left for the Caliphate to build a life. And they, along with their children, became famous.   “That’s My Boy!!!”             Karen Nettleton still cannot comprehend her daughter’s descent into sadism or her delight in global publicity. Partnering with her husband, Tara enslaved, raped, and beat women. They made this a family affair. One of their sons, a seven-year-old, held a severed head for a photo. Bursting with pride, Khaled shouted, “That’s my boy!” That caught the world’s attention when it was posted on Facebook.             At thirty-one, Tara succumbed to complications from appendicitis. Her husband, Khaled, may be dead or alive; Western authorities are not sure. The eldest daughter, Zaynab, who had a child of her own, was killed by a drone.             According to reports, four of Tara and Khaled’s five children and one granddaughter are still alive, likely in Raqqa, and Karen is desperate to rescue them. She fears the girls will be forced into sex slavery or begging. “I am devastated because I wasn’t able to be at my daughter’s side. I’m not able to be there for my grandkids and great-grandchild, who are suffering traumatic events outside their control.”   Level Three—Family Were Active Dissuaders   “It’s better not to live than to be the mother of a terrorist. You realize what a monster you gave birth to.” Shakhla Bochkaryova               The third level of family involvement is family members who intervened to stop radicalization. One mother, Shakhla Bochkaryova, chained her twenty-year-old daughter, Fatima, to the apartment’s radiator to keep her from fleeing to Siberia and becoming the fourth wife of a Jihadi. Like other similarly distraught mothers, Shakhla witnessed the irreversible transformation of a fashion-conscious, head-turning young woman into a Caliphate-bound, hate-spewing Jihadi, yet she was powerless to leash her daughter. The mother said plaintively, “I looked at her, and I could no longer see my child. She was simply a shell of my daughter, no soul, no thoughts, no heart.” From Raqqa, Fatima cursed her mother, calling her an infidel murderer and threatening to kill her when the Caliphate conquers Europe.