Posted on 10/11/2014 10:30:38 AM PDT by grundle
Today in predictable news:
The teenage girls who abandoned their families in Austria to become jihadis for ISIS feel they’ve made a terrible mistake by joining the barbaric lifestyle and they want to come home.
Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, are believed to be married, pregnant and living in the Islamic State-controlled city of Raqqa in northern Syria, Central European News reports.
Evidently, the move didn’t work out as the pair had hoped:
The change of heart is a much different tune than the note they left behind for their parents when they fled back in April, which read: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah — and we will die for him.”
Kesinovic and Selimovic grew up in Vienna, where they became accustomed to talking to whomever they wanted, saying whatever they pleased and wearing whatever clothes they liked. They did not have to live a life being controlled by people telling them what they can and cannot do.
I can’t quite blame the girls here. If they were 30, this would be a different story: In that case, they should be expected to deal with the consequences of their actions. But they’re not. They’re teenagers — too young to drink, to buy cigarettes, to own property, to join the military, and to vote. We have an age of majority for a good reason.
As I have noted before, totalitarianism is sadly attractive to the bored and the disaffected, and, as anybody who has either been a teenager or spent time around one knows, there are few people more bored and disaffected than they. At its root, this story is merely an extremely dramatic version of the age-old running-away-from-home-to-be-with-my-older-boyfriend tale. Except, that is, that the boyfriend doesn’t just have a motorcycle and an attitude, he has a rocket launcher and a death wish.
Sadly, it seems possible that the girls will not be able to return. Per the New York Post:
“The main problem is about people coming back to Austria,” said Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck. “Once they leave, it is almost impossible.”
This is tricky, certainly. Still, I was a little irritated by the implication in a preceding line:
Now Austrian media are reporting that Kesinovic and Selimovic have said enough is enough and want to return to their families, according to CEN.
They have contacted their loved ones and told them they are sick of living with the Islamic State jihadis, but they also said they don’t feel they can flee from their unwanted new life because too many people now associate them with ISIS.
Austria has its problems. But the challenge the girls face is not so much that their fellow countrymen will judge them harshly if they return as that they have both thrown in their lots with a cabal of psychotic killers who would happily execute them in broad daylight if they so much as inquired as to how they could get out of Raqqah. I daresay that, if they were to get back to Vienna, they’d get some odd looks on the street. Fair enough. But, however judgmental their fellow countrymen might be, they would be unlikely to execute them for apostasy. Really, anybody who is laboring under the impression that the biggest potential drawback to shacking up with ISIS is that they might lose their golf club membership if it doesn’t work out doesn’t grasp who they are dealing with here. Which, of course, is precisely how the pair got themselves into this situation in the first instance.
The poster was making a joke, a very clever, albeit subtle one, at that!
That was mean. LoL
They left Austria to get away from the kangaroos...kicked by a kangaroo one time too often.
There were lots of Yugoslav immigrants in Austria even when Tito was alive. I was in Vienna in 1979 and remember seeing an anti-Yugoslav graffito in a Catholic church (the Votivkirche) to the effect of "go home, scum, you aren't wanted here." That would probably have been directed at Croatian or Slovene guest-workers rather than Muslims (who wouldn't be likely to visit a church). I figured it had to do with German anti-Slav attitudes or just general anti-foreigner sentiments.
Kangaroos in Austria? Austria is in Europe...I didn’t think kangaroos lived in Austria?
Seriously....don’t you mean Australia?
I told my boys from a very young age, there are somethings that an “I’m’ sorry” won’t fix so they should think before they did stupid things.
All kids do stupid things, but some you can’t take back. Too bad for these young women, but they did a stupid thing they will have to live with forever.
Maybe other parents of teenagers can use their story as an example of stupid things you can’t take back.
Austrians say that foreigners get their country mixed up with Australia. There aren’t any kangaroos in Austria, unless there are some in the Vienna zoo.
Close. I think there are plenty of examples of Christians ,Jews, Muslims dying for their religions.
When it comes to killing for their religions sake, Muslims are the problem.-Tom
I'm with you. Possible that these girls will turn out to be better people than those adults here making their barbaric comments, if the girls can escape from their unfortunate self-imposed predicament.
These girls joined a murderous cult whose stated goal is to kill all non-believers. It is a cult that has brutally killed scores of innocent men, women, and children and prisoners of war. The girls knew this and were compelled to join that movement, probably inspired by grizzly videos on YouTube.
They are no different than the young women who joined Charles Manson’s cult. They joined a conspiracy to murder innocent people. As I recall, Manson’s women received the death penalty, and to this day are serving life sentences.
I for one would never feel comfortable living next to jihadis who left their home and country to murder innocent people. Would you?
Yep....it was sort of funny.
Interesting concept, but Latin is still not enough....Spanish is based on Latin but so is Italian as well, but i doubt the conversations would be complete without a little help.
Every age and generation needs a few volunteers to show and tell the rest why something is a bad idea, just in case there was any doubt.
Wow, these two girls have raised that bar and given the rest of us an example of some rare, truly inspired over-achieving "Stupid Girl" as only young teenagers are capable of.
May their story go viral so there won't be any more like them...for a while.
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