The myth of the White Widow

Over the past year or so, a determined and fanatical Islamist has been waging a deadly and bloody war against the western world. This enemy is capable of moving unnoticed across continents and inflicting savage violence in each of them; inspires young Muslim men to become suicide bombers and die in their thousands. The enemy is particularly horrifying for being a traitor, born in Britain and a woman to boot. The ‘White Widow’, remember her? Samantha Lewthwaite from Aylesbury, usually described by our tabloid press as one of the most evil and powerful women alive.

But is she really evil? Is she really even much of a threat? My contention is that what we’ve witnessed over the past year is the curious demonisation of a misguided young woman who certainly has a morbid track record but who is far from an important or influential enemy of the West. There’s a huge disparity between the hype over Lewthwaite and the reality that should make us wary of believing even so-called ‘insider’ reports about her.

The Daily Star, for instance, published a front-page report claiming that 30-year-old Lewthwaite has become ‘one of the most powerful women’ in the Islamic State network. The foot soldiers call her ‘the special one’, it said, and she has already started training a ‘special team’ of female suicide bombers to be deployed in the Middle East and beyond.

So should we mobilise special forces to hunt this woman down before she strikes again? No. Because we’ve heard this sort of thing about her before. Just over a year ago the ‘White Widow’ was deemed guilty of perpetrating the Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi, when armed gunmen killed 67 people and injured hundreds. Almost as soon as the attack began, word went out that Lewthwaite was one of the killers.