The first British jihadist to be killed in the US drone strikes in Syria was Ibrahim Kamara, a 19-year-old lad from Brighton. When it happened, his 35-year-old mother, who still lives in Brighton, was in shock. She described her son as 'just another normal boy who studied and played football'. Now there are pictures on social media of an unzipped body bag showing Ibrahim's face and confirming his death. As a Brighton boy myself it made me sit up and take notice.
Our family always felt slightly on the outside of things. Our brown faces seemed strangely out of place in mono-cultural Sussex in the 1970s. When people asked me where I was from and I said "Brighton" that was never enough. It was always "No, where are you really from?" or, if they had been watching Kevin Costner in Dancing with Wolves, "No, where are your people from?"
It always took a long time to answer this question. My Dad was from Malaysia, but his Dad was from Jaffna in Northern Sri Lanka. Mum was from the foothills of the Himalayas, growing up a small town called Kalimpong, near where her mother was born, but her father was British. That level of geographical nuance was not normally interesting for the kids at school. Strangely, "Paki" was the normal shorthand for someone who was from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India and Brighton.
I went to our local boys secondary school, and although we were all working class, we still found ways to isolate each other: there was the tall boy, the boy with the twitch, the overweight lad and there was me – the Paki. Our school was tough. It was a bit of a jungle with little discipline which brought the worst out of many of the lads. Lots of them experimented with glue, alcohol and drugs, and ended up with no qualifications. We could be feral. Racism was normal – no one had taught these kids any better.
I latched on to non-white role models. Garth Crookes, Daley Thompson and then John Barnes were my childhood sporting heroes. I knew I wasn't black but I was definitely closer to their skin tone than my white friends. I imagined they too had been outsiders in a predominantly white culture.
Perhaps this feeling of being an outsider to British life and culture may have started the journey of another immigrant to the UK, eventually leading him to the place where he was willing to behead James Foley. Sadly that unknown man wasn't the first British-born Jihadist. Four of the 7/7 bombers were British Asians. They too were seemingly ordinary people: a 30-year-old teaching assistant from Leeds, a 22-year-old sport science graduate from Bradford and an 18-year-old second generation Brit of Pakistani extraction.
I can empathise with young Asian men feeling disenfranchised, seeing their parents doing thankless jobs, experiencing racism at a verbal and often physical level. I can understand the attraction of a community or a role model who will challenge them to be heroes. Someone who promises they can be historymakers rather than McDonalds workers, taxi drivers or supermarket cashiers. If someone can give them a vision they consider worth living – and dying – for, it is not difficult to imagine that that vision may even appear worth murdering for.
I am no expert in the psychology, sociology or pathology of radicalisation. But I do understand a little of what it means to be a teenager struggling to make sense of the world. The ranks of ISIS are not simply made up of young men raised in the Middle East and fed with anti-Western propaganda since birth. Within ISIS are men who went to British schools. They would have studied Shakespeare for GCSE and watched Saturday morning TV. They might have supported a Premiership football club. So what turns a young British boy into a terrorist? What leads them to go on a rampage, slaughtering thousands of women and men, boys and girls throughout Syria and Iraq?
When I was told I was a worthless Paki, who should go "black home", I felt bitter and angry. I wonder what would have happened if I had been found by an inspiring imam, rather than an inspiring Christian. Perhaps I could have been radicalised. But I suspect it's a gradual process. You don't go to bed one night dreaming of Arsenal winning the league and wake up a jihadist, any more than German young people fell asleep to stories of Hansel and Gretel and woke up the next day as Hitler youth. It is a gradual deconstruction and reconstruction of an alternative worldview.
I am so grateful that as a young person my imagination was captured by Jesus. Christianity was for me more than just another ideology. My faith was all about a life-transforming, world-changing relationship. When a friend took the radical step of speaking out in the middle of our registration period and explained that he had become a Christian, I was impressed. When other friends, ironically from a group called Campus Crusade, helped me understand an intellectual rational reason for these beliefs, I was convinced. When, strangely enough, it was the Salvation Army that helped me put those beliefs into action in practical service to the poor and needy, I was persuaded. I was conscripted for a revolutionary movement of love, grace and compassion.
The militaristic language of crusades and armies sounds odd today; it's been a while since I have sung Onward Christian Soldiers. But there was something of worth captured in these now-inappropriate names: a Christianity that was more than a hobby, more than life insurance. Instead it borrowed and subverted the language of revolution, for the cause of a movement that demanded more of you than any army could.
Perhaps one of the reasons that disaffected young Asian young men are giving up their lives to spread fear, death and disaster is that we, the Church, have failed to present the good news of the gospel in a clear, persuasive and authentic way. Perhaps our attempts at living for God are shallow and anaemic compared with the commitment required of a jihadist. The total commitment of the ISIS radicals to bringing horror, chaos and suffering should be matched by the Church's commitment to love, mercy and compassion. We, the Church, have failed to reach out in love to Asian men who have nothing to live for but everything to kill for. We need to regain confidence in the gospel that is powerful enough to change anyone.
The New Testament describes a gospel that is is big enough to turn enemies of God into his friends. We know from the book of Acts the story of a young radical fundamentalist who was travelling the world murdering Christians, but by the grace of God was re-radicalised to become a Christian. Saul turned into Paul and John Newton the slave trader turned into John Newton the abolitionist.
There are reports that many of the young men fighting for ISIS have become disillusioned by the in-fighting between different rebel groups and want to come home. Who's to say that these men, once they have been brought to justice for their crimes, couldn't be transformed again? Who's to say that God couldn't transform an ISIS murderer into someone who could bring peace and grace and mercy into the world as an agent of the gospel?
If God can save you and me, he can save anyone – right?
Dr Krish Kandiah is president of London School of Theology and founder of the charity Home for Good.
