'The consequences of your actions': political apology and the mommy myth as discursive punishment in the Shamima Begum case

Shamima Begum – one of three schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join ISIS in 2015 – has been the subject of many intersectional analyses that have highlighted the gendered, racist, and Orientalist frames that are deployed in relation to her story. What has been unravelled, so far, is the positioning of Begum within a narrative that functions to strip her of political agency. Building on this literature, I seek to take this examination of Begum’s case further and argue that this gendered treatment also functions to punish Shamima.

This article traces two specific discourses through which this punishment is operationalised. Firstly, the insistence on a political apology from Begum for the crimes of the so-called Islamic State, positions her as a proxy for the terrorist organisation. These apologies, which are doomed to fail, leave Begum as culpable for the atrocities of ISIS. Secondly, alongside the demand for apology, I argue that a discourse of the mommy myth is weaponised to further seal Begum’s punishment. Thus, this article shows that even though her political agency is erased, Begum is still firmly placed as a threat via this legitimation of punishment, the strength of which has, ultimately, rendered her stateless.