ISIS soldiers in convoy in confiscated trucks in Iraq. Photo: Twitter / nayelshafei.

Here’s a letter (Jihadis are waging war on Arab countries, June 17th) published in the Guardian in response to a report about Talha Asmal – who at age 17 became Britain’s youngest suicide bomber when he blew himself up north of Baghdad with a car bomb while fighting for ISIS.

Reports of Talha Asmal becoming Britain’s youngest “suicide bomber” have focused on the 17-year-old himself and on the impact on his family (Shock, grief and dismay in Dewsbury over its own boy bomber, 16 June). If the family themselves had expressed concern beyond their own tragedy, then this has not been reported. Only a friend of Talha’s parents, Shahid Malik, uttered words of sympathy for those killed by the bomber and for their families.

If the former Labour minister’s words are not just rhetoric, he must condemn the action for what it was: an attack against the countries of Iraq and Syria and their respective peoples. It is hypocritical for some to bemoan the recruitment of their youth into vile “jihadi” groups, while simultaneously supporting Saudi and Nato-led wars and covert interventions aimed at undermining and dismembering Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, among others.

The growing number of young Britons who are being recruited to commit atrocities in Syria and Iraq should be a wake-up call for British Muslims to rise against sectarian politics that only serves Islamophobia and the nefarious actions of the US and Israel.
Dr Kamil Mahdi
Exeter University 
Sami Ramadani
London Metropolitan University

Though with most anti-Zionist conspiracy theories it’s typically at least clear what crazy accusation is being leveled, the agitprop in the letter by Messrs. Mahdi and Ramadani is so vague as to be nearly unintelligible. How does it even conceivably serve Israeli interests when Muslim Britons become jihadists and kill Arabs and Muslims in Syria and Iraq?

Of course, the other question is why Guardian editors saw fit to publish such a bizarre accusation in the first place.

Adam Levick is the managing editor of UK Media Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).