Daily Times

The White Widow is dead. Ding Dong.

Thus ring out the barely muted celebrations among Britain’s mainstream media.

Sally Jones was the Muslim convert who went to Syria to join ISIS. Taking with her Jojo, her then nine-year-old son, also believed to have been killed in the targeted US drone strike back in June of this year, and which has only now come to light.

That most of the British media still largely refers to Jones as the White Widow is troubling on several counts. For far from being a moniker thought up by an imaginative tabloid press – it appears to be a nod to the ISIS-given honorific, Umm Hussain Britaniyah. Which begs the question as to whether or not the British press in ‘legitimising’ her terrorist identity simply serves to legitimise the terrorist?

Yet by choosing its language carefully or carelessly, whichever the case may be, the British media subtly or, even unwittingly, picks its side in the global war of confrontation. That Jones’ race, her whiteness, is the chosen marker for her identity suggests that certain quarters of the country’s compliant media wish to push home the point they can’t quite get their heads around the fact that someone like her would run with the likes of people like ‘them’. Indeed, Dipesh Gadher, writing in the Times of London this week refers to Jones as “no ordinary British Muslim who had gone overseas for jihad. Remarkably, it was a white mother of two from Kent who at one time was the singer and guitarist in an all-girl punk rock band”. Given that the world has come to terms with Osama Bin Laden’s previous embrace of what he would later term the West’s decadence, Gadher’s shock is apparently due to Jones’ whiteness. As if the dialectics of a colonised mind still cannot comprehend the calculated terrorism of the white man or woman.

The press has no business showing images of an underage child preparing to execute prisoners. And when these are accompanied by statements pointing to how he was brainwashed into committing such acts of barbarity — the not-so-subtle subtext suggests that Jojo was a legitimate target of a US drone strike

Yet Gadher is not alone in subscribing to this form of sensationalism. At least he had had one-on-one online conversations with Jones, and in his piece, recalls the glaring contradictions of her virtual persona. The same cannot be said of the majority of the British media. Which, whether it intends to or not, appears to be indirectly justifying the presumed death of the 12-year-old Jojo. But even here, the press seems unable to decide how it wishes to remember him. ISIS gave him the Muslim name, Hamza Hussain. Thus far, they prefer his English pet name, as if to reclaim him as one of their own.

Except that they still show images of an underage child, without his mother, preparing to execute ISIS-held prisoners, thereby effectively sanctioning terrorist propaganda. And when such pictures are accompanied by statements from loved ones or terror experts pointing to how he was brainwashed into committing such acts of barbarity — the not-so-subtle subtext suggests that Jojo was a legitimate target of the US drone. Is there any way that a child of nine who finds himself at an ISIS training camp for the next three years can be said not to have been brainwashed? Under any normal circumstances could a child of this age be said to be responsible for his actions? The answer is, of course not. Yet by relentlessly focusing on this — the authorities and the compliant media alike suggest that he was beyond salvation and therefore his death was the best result all round. Regardless of what the Geneva Conventions may say.

That a 12-year-old boy was likely targeted by the world’s most sophisticated fighting machine, and with the full complicity of the British government, is unacceptable. As is the fact that this same child is now robbed of dignity in death. The priority of the British media should bet this: not allowing Prime Minister Theresa May to get away with offering no comment. The media’s task is to keep a check on power and that means demanding answers to questions surrounding the deployment of American drones to target British nationals. The use of which remains mired in legal black holes, especially given that Donald Trump relaxed the rules on remote-controlled warfare earlier this year. Moreover, the move is said to have been aimed at countering trigger-unhappiness at the prospect of so-called collateral damage. Yet the US and the UK both knew that Jojo was under the recognised age of being a child soldier, whatever that may mean.

Thus instead of trying to vilify Jeremy Corbyn over his preference for putting on trial terrorists such as Jones — these are the queries that the British media ought to be putting before May and her cohorts. But yet again, the serious business of transparency is left to humanitarian organisations such as Amnesty International. This simply will not do.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, October 17^th 2017.