Shamima Begum was made a scapegoat – we would welcome her back, say Bethnal Green residents

Ask many Britons and they will say that Shamima Begum forfeited her right to British citizenship when she secretly fled to Syria aged 15 to join Islamic State – but her home town wants her back.

From the mosques to the middle-class gastro pubs in Bethnal Green, a gentrified corner of London’s east end, many residents are unanimous in their belief that she deserves to return home.

“She would be welcomed back,” says Bisher, a volunteer at the Baitul Aman mosque, which is the closest to Begum’s family home, where a nearby street has 15 Palestinian flags fluttering in the wind on every other lamppost.

“She was young, she made mistakes, she was all repented and wants society to accept her again... I think it’s only fair that she’s given a second chance. She has been punished enough.”

Begum, who is now 24, fled her family with two friends to live under the terror group in 2015, and on Friday lost her attempt in the Court of Appeal to have her British citizenship restored. Polls suggested that up to eight in 10 Britons supported the decision to revoke it in 2019.

Bisher says: “I think the Government wants to make an example of people without taking into consideration their age... how they were influenced, her background, why she was influenced, what was lacking in her life.”

It was a similar story at one of Bethnal Green’s independent coffee shops where Heather Casson, 23, and Darcey Houston, 24, felt a wider racist agenda was at play.

“It’s disgusting how she was treated, no young girl naturally would be put through that, and if it was someone who was white it would have been a completely different story,” says Ms Houston. “I think it really reinforces and shows that we’re not welcoming people.”

Ms Casson adds: “It indicates that the public just didn’t see her as British even though she was born and raised here. Because of her religion and race she was never going to be seen as British.”

Tower Hamlets is home to the most Muslims of any local authority, at 40 per cent of the population. It is also a Labour heartland. Many agree that while they want her back, Begum still made a serious mistake.

‘I don’t have any sympathy’

Jim Ahmed, a 60-year-old boxing coach arriving at the mosque, insists that “she was old enough to know between right and wrong”.

“Why would you want to go to fight against a country that gave her citizenship? She had everything then these a---holes, Isis, come in and p--- on her brain and she’s gone over there to what, to what, to learn how to blow us [up], innocent people?” he says.

“I don’t have any sympathy for her,” he says, but she “deserves a second chance” if she repents.

None of Begum’s family in Bethnal Green would talk on Friday when The Telegraph approached them.

A neighbour, a recently retired nurse Glenda Adams, 78, had just returned from her Christian church where the local divide was clear. “The English really don’t want her back” she said.

“But maybe she’s changed, do people change? Send her back if she’s not.”