Khadijah Dare

Khadijah Dare, born Grace Dare c. 1991, is a British-Nigerian woman who traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2013. She appeared on Channel 4 with her husband that year. In January 2016, her four-year-old son, Isa, appeared in an ISIL propaganda video called "A Message to David Cameron" where five people were killed. In February that year, Isa appeared in a second video, where he pressed a detonator and blew up a car with three people inside it. The propaganda videos attracted considerable attention, and both David Cameron and Boris Johnson commented on them.

Dare was born Grace Dare to a Pentecostal Christian family of Nigerian descent.^[1][2] Her family was religious and she was a devout Christian growing up.^[3] She grew up in Lewisham, London and attended Sydenham School. Her friends recalled her as a popular student but one whose behaviour was disruptive.^[2] She would later say her family was poor by British standards, but that her life had been comfortable.^[4][5]

After getting her GCSEs she enrolled in Lewisham College to study psychology and media.^[2] Just before turning 18, she converted to Islam.^[3] She took the name Khadijah Dare, and began to wear the niqab.^[2] People who knew her said she took her Muslim faith very seriously and practiced it consistently.^[6] Dare later said she experienced discrimination in the UK after she started wearing the niqab.^[5]

While still a teenager, Dare married Deniz Yoncaci, who was described as a "passive character".^[2][7][8] An anonymous source told The Independent that Dare thought she was possessed by jinn and had "exorcism treatments" done. Her friends were concerned about her mental health and said she would leave her baby, Isa, in random places in the mosque.^[7] Her father said he made three calls to the police about her behaviour and warned the police they should watch her because "she's behaving in a very funny way."^[9][10][11]

In London, she was attending the same mosque as Siddartha Dhar.^[7] She divorced Yoncaci because he refused to go fight in the Syrian civil war. By the time of Isa's birth in May 2011, the couple was separated.^[12] In 2013, when she was 22, Dare married her second husband, Swedish-Iraqi jihadist Abdul Ghameed Abbas, online, then traveled to Syria with Isa to join him.^[13] When her mother dropped them off at the airport, she thought they were going for a short trip to Egypt or Turkey.^[8] Yoncaci had also not known that Dare would be taking their son to Syria, and when he found out, he tried to go there to retrieve Isa, but his family convinced him not to, saying it was too dangerous.^[12]

After her arrival in Syria, Dare was active on Twitter and Facebook as an ISIL propagandist under the name "Muhajirah fi Sham", which means 'immigrant in Syria'. She urged other Muslims to join ISIL, saying "hurry up and join da caravan to where the laws of Allah".^[14] She praised the murder of James Foley and tweeted, "Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!" She had a photo of Isa holding an AK-47 as her Twitter profile picture.^[15]

She, Isa and Abbas, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Bakr, appeared on Channel 4 in the summer of 2013, a few months into their marriage, and talked about their lives. At the time, Abbas was fighting with the jihadi militia Katiba al Muhajireen, earning roughly $150 a month.^[4] The footage was shot by Bilal Abdul Kareem.^[16] In the interview, Dare, who called herself "Maryam", shot a Kalashnikov and a revolver for the camera and said she was not a frontline fighter and the weapons were for self-defence. She said, "I couldn’t find anyone in the UK who was, you know, willing to just sacrifice their life in this world for the life in the hereafter... Allah ruled that I came here to marry Abu Bakr."^[5] She said she had no intention of ever returning to the UK.^[4] Abbas said Dare was pregnant and he hoped he would be able to meet the baby before he died.^[13]

When the Channel 4 footage was broadcast, people from Lewisham recognised that "Maryam" was Dare.^[6] Abbas was killed in an airstrike in Iraq in December that year.^[13] Dare gave birth to their son, Abdur Rahman.^[10] She kept in touch with her parents back home and her mother told her to return to London, but Dare said she was afraid of going to prison.^[8]

In January 2016, ISIL released a new propaganda video which showed the execution-style killing of five people said to be spies working for the British government. A masked gunman, speculated to be Siddartha Dhar, called David Cameron an "imbecile" and "slave of the White House". He said ISIL would "one day invade your land, where we will rule by the Shariah." The video included a brief clip of a young boy, dressed in military fatigues and a bandana with an ISIL logo, saying, "We will kill the kuffar over there," while pointing at a car in the distance with what appeared to be prisoners trapped inside it. Cameron described the video as "desperate stuff" from ISIL, which he said was "losing territory".^[1][17][9]

After the video was posted online, Dare's father in England identified the child in it, dubbed 'Jihadi Junior' in the press, as his four-year-old grandson Isa.^[10] He appealed to Dare to come home with his grandchildren and "face the music".^[9] He said, "They are pure evil for doing this to that child — pure evil. I burst into tears when I saw it was him." He said he'd spoken to Isa on the phone and Isa had asked him to come to Syria and get him.^[18] Boris Johnson also commented on the video, saying Isa "can't possibly know or understand what he's saying or what he is being made to say. This is child abuse, there is no question at all. This child is a victim of child abuse and he is, as I understand it, a British national. I think we have a duty of care."^[19]

In February, Isa appeared in a second propaganda video with an unidentified ISIL fighter and three men, who identified themselves as Syrians who had spied for British intelligence. The video showed Isa pressing the detonator and blowing up a car, apparently the same car as in the previous video, with the three men inside it. At the end, Isa shouted, "Allahu Akbar!"^[18] In June, it was reported that Dare had smuggled herself and her son into Sweden because he needed an operation.^[20]

ISIL lost the last of its territory in 2019 at the Battle of Baghuz-Farqwani. Dare's fate, and that of her children, is unknown or unrecorded.

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