Loose Women panel erupts in furious row over new Shamima Begum podcast
LOOSE Women got very heated this lunchtime as its panellists clashed over a new Shamima Begum podcast by the BBC.
Carol McGiffin was incensed that the jihadi bride was being given a mainstream platform to tell her story after she was stripped of her British citizenship for being part of the Islamist death cult.
The panellist grew increasingly frustrated with her co-stars Nadia Sawalha and Charlene White, who were more nuanced in their views.
Nadia said: “I want to know what her life was like.
“Now I went to school with a number of girls, lovely girls, who had very strict Muslim families and we would be at school and they would study. They would go home to their bedroom to study.
“Now somebody I know told me about these ISIS videos which some of these young girls look at.
“ISIS videos are incredibly well produced, with great production values, in the desert, with very good-looking men in robes.
“Some of the girls get drawn into this romantic idea of what they are going into and I think it’s really important we know about it.”
Carol argued: “It’s been ruled by the highest court in the land that she is not worthy of her British citizenship and it’s been taken away from her.
“It is her story, there is no way of checking anything, it is just what she says and she feels.”
The audience then applauded her when she accused Charlene of “making excuses” for Begum.
She fumed: “I am sorry but a decision has been made and she is not allowed to come back, I don’t want to hear what she has got to say. I am not interested.”
And Carol had the backing of viewers who voted overwhelmingly in a Twitter poll – 86 per cent to 14 per cent – against Begum being given the platform.
In the 10-part podcast, Begum speaks about joining the bloodthirsty terror group, who beheaded British captives.
The now 23-year-old Begum lives in a refugee camp after she travelled to Syria from her home in east London, aged 15, with two friends.
The podcast has sparked outrage with one critic accusing the BBC of “wasting” licence payers’ money on giving a platform to someone “who accepts she joined a terror group”.
Another said: “If you join a terror group that has committed atrocities such as mass killings, abductions and beheadings, then you are a terrorist.”
Commentator Wasiq Wasiq also questioned why Begum was given a platform “while the victims of grooming gangs are still trying to be heard and get justice”.
The BBC has said the series – entitled “I’m Not a Monster” – will give a “full account” of Begum’s story and insist her story will not go “unchallenged”.
In the podcast Begum tells investigative journalist Josh Baker about travelling to Syria to join the crazed jihadis, infamous for their brutality.
Begum accepts she joined a terrorist group and admits the public see her “as a danger, as a risk, as a potential risk to them, to their safety, to their way of living”.
But she insists: “I’m not this person that they think I am being perceived as in the media, you know I’m just so much more than ISIS and I’m so much more than everything I’ve been through.
“I’ve always been a more secluded person. That’s why it’s so hard the way my life has turned out being all over the media because I’m not a person that likes a lot of attention on me.”
Begum also talks about being given detailed instructions by ISIS including how to avoid detection during the journey.
A BBC spokesperson said: “This is not a platform for Shamima Begum to give her unchallenged story.
“This is a robust, public interest investigation in which Josh Baker has forensically examined who she really is and what she really did.
“We’d also encourage people to listen to the podcast and make up their own mind.”
Begum is currently in the Al-Roj prison camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she moans is “worse than a prison”.
She is fighting the Home Office’s decision to remove her British citizenship.