Cabbages & Kings: Why not send all jihadis to Syria?

“Sometimes parts can stand in for the whole
Think of the universal Shivlingam
When I think for whom the bells toll
I don’t think of Hemingway or Donne or death
I think of the quasi-hunchbacks who ring ‘em”
From The Boogoo Fables
by Bachchoo

British law has finally caught up with hate preacher Anjem Choudary. He has been jailed for five and a half years and he will, say the prison authorities, be kept in virtual isolation so as not to pervert other prisoners — murderers, rapists, child-molesters, fraudsters or thieves — with his radical Islamist doctrine. Anjem, a lawyer, who didn’t trade in the law but lived off the British taxpayer for the last 10 years by receiving welfare benefits, was jailed for supporting the Death Cult (DC) which calls itself ISIS and materially assisting British citizens to journey to Syria and join what he calls the jihad. Anjem will now, for the next few years, still be living off the British taxpayer in one of Her Majesty’s punitive facilities at a much higher rate per week than when he and his family were living off welfare benefits. His family will, of course, as is only just, continue to draw social security and mortgage payments — as they and everyone in Britain is entitled to when they are out of work. The last minister for these payments, Ian Duncan Smith, renamed them “job-seekers allowance”.

Anjem himself, with his unerring sense of humour, mischief and loyalty to his cause, renamed it “jihad-seekers allowance”. Now he is receiving what may be called jail-seekers allowance. However, keeping Anjem in a secure prison for five-and-a-half years will cost the British taxpayer upwards of a quarter of a million pounds. Is this money well spent? I think the British government has got itself into a paradoxical twist here. It spends a few million pounds a year on various projects called, prevent, prepone and pretend (Okay, I made the last two names up!) dedicated to bringing those influenced by Islamist propaganda or those in contact with Internet advocates of the death cult, back to sanity. The people who run the prevent courses report a varied and mostly disappointing degree of success. These efforts and schemes are seen by several experts in the field of “de-radicalisation” as too little too late. Is there not a case for releasing Anjem from prison, equipping him with loudspeaker systems and soap-boxes, giving him free access to the Internet and Twitter and letting him do what he does avidly?

He will advocate immediate travel to Syria to join the DC. Several radicalised jihadis will step forward and volunteer. Does Britain really want to keep them from their life’s mission and thwart their attempts to join the war in West Asia and seek martyrdom and the promised number of virgins or, in the case of women, 72 studs or if they prefer some fancy handbags and maybe designer shoes and niqabs? If the ambitions of these radicalised people are stifled, might they not turn bitter and try a bit of their interpretation of jihad right here by beheading cartoonists or old ladies or letting off machine-guns in a mall? Quite likely, you might think. How much more logical, and finally beneficial to the country, to use the half million being spent on Anjem and his idiot accomplice who was jailed with him for as long for the same offence, to buy the jihadis one-way tickets to Syria? Considering that it may be difficult to land in one or other Syrian city, I have enquired into the cost of one-way flights to Turkey and adjoining countries. A one-way ticket can cost as little as £50 if you choose the right day.

At that rate, Britain can buy 10,000 would-be jihadis a flight to join the DC from the money they are wastefully spending on Anjem and his stooge. If one scraps one of the prevent-type identify-the-groomee schemes and puts the money into freer one-way travel to the DC, the country could be rid of perhaps several tens of thousands more. This is not to say, and here’s my firm denial of any such thought, that there are 50,000 potential British jihadis waiting to get to Syria and martyrdom. So far, a total of a thousand and a few more have been identified as Brits fighting for the DC or making babies for one of their cultists. The numbers don’t matter. The principle remains the same. Let Anjem, on an electronic leash perhaps, out of jail, where his proven talent for recruiting would-be terrorists to leave the country can rid us of this unwanted infection in the body politic. If the departees are, as Anjem was, on jihad-seekers allowance, the savings on their welfare handouts will within a week pay for the free ticket the state gives them. The state can even chuck in a final fish-and-chips meal as a sort of last British supper.

Ah, you ask, what if they want to return and create havoc in Luton or Tower Hamlets? Under international law, the country whose passport they hold has to let them in. One of the ways of preventing their return is to get Anjem and his DC associates to start a “burn your passport” movement in Syria and get the home office to destroy all trace of their citizenship. Anjem and a small squad of persuaders could even be deployed at airports to convince the disillusioned or terror-trained, revengeful returnees that the “death cult caliphate” is the only way to achieving paradise and that blowing themselves up in a suicide bombing in Oxford Street is not as clear a primrose path. I am confident Anjem can do this as I have read online the rants — I mean philosophical expositions — of his associated Islamist murder-advocates. They actually classify what awaits you in paradise according to the type of jihad you’ve practised and the nature and method of your martyrdom.