"Should they be allowed to return?"

was the question under discussion yesterday. One of my neighbours had just seen the footage of the ISIS brides and their children trying to return to this country. They apparently have valid passports but they were facing some sort of "documentation" difficulties.

The government does not want the women back. It seems most other people do not want them back either. They do not want the children either. There are claims the women are, or are likely to have been, "radicalised" and that the same applies to the children.

That may or may not be true. I have no idea. There are some things which I do wonder about however and they have not been mentioned. The first of these is whether these women were in "arranged" marriages. Does that matter? Have they been brought up to be submissive? 

It is quite likely they were brought up in households where men make decisions. Their fathers would have expected obedience. Their marriage partners would have been decided for them. 

That brings us to another thing. Once married they would have been expected to obey their husbands. If their husbands chose to go and fight for a caliphate they would have been told that this was the right thing to do. It would also mean that going to join him would have been considered the right thing to do even if they did not want to do it. For all the warnings they may have received they may not have had a choice. Yes, they could try not to go but, like leaving a cult your family still belongs to, it could mean leaving everything and everyone. Is that really a choice?

And what about the children in all this? Children are limited in the decisions they can make at any time. In the really important issues such as where you will live, with whom you will live and how you will live children have no choice. It is decided for them,

Do we need to consider those things before we say, "No, you cannot return"? Do we allow them to return but only under strict conditions? What do we require of them on their return? It might also be that what is right for one woman and her children is not right for another.  How do we determine that?

The government has some difficult decisions ahead of it.