Will Heaven

This column was originally published in The Catholic Herald

How does the son of a renowned NHS consultant, given the best education money can buy, end up imprisoned, aged 20, after planning to suicide bomb a crowded shopping centre? Isa Ibrahim was sentenced to 10 years in jail last week. He was in the advanced stages of preparing mass murder, having built a DIY bomb vest in his Bristol flat. It was a surreal experience seeing his malevolent stare on the evening news, because I had known him at school. He was a couple of years below me at Downside.

According to his own defence counsel, Ibrahim was “a prat” rather than a terrorist. That was certainly true when I knew him. It was before his conversion to Islam, and before he changed his name from Andrew Michael Philip. I have vivid memories of Andrew being a very difficult boy. He was an attention-seeker, and much more self-destructive than your average “class clown”. He liked to irritate and insult other pupils. But he never bothered being rude to me; instead, he used to goad and insult members of the 1st XV they were more likely to thump him, you see.

The teachers at Downside were patient with Andrew. Yet his attitude was difficult to deal with, even for them. “Go to the detention room, you¹re an absolute ass!”, I remember hearing during an English class. It was the sound of the most softly spoken teacher at the school, shouting next-door. Seconds later Andrew loped past my classroom, seemingly indifferent to the trouble he was in.

Despite the fact that Andrew had a small, loyal group of friends by the time he left Downside, I’m certain he wasn’t popular. Not with the nicer boys in his year (Downside went co-ed in 2005), not with the older pupils. Not with younger pupils or, for that matter, any of the monks. But he was still just a prat. And there are always prats at any school. Andrew could also occasionally act kindly. I remember watching him touch-type in the school computer room. The speed at which he was typing was extremely impressive for someone of his age, so I congratulated him. Immediately, he offered to type up any of my handwritten essays.

So how did he become a terrorist? Well, because the prat in Andrew ­ rather than the kindness ­ prevailed. After Downside, he began to take drugs. First cannabis, then ecstasy, then magic mushrooms and eventually harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. He became addicted.

It was at that point that Andrew’s life spiralled. He converted to Islam, despite both his parents being Christians. He was ejected from his flat for not paying the rent, and declared himself homeless. He was reduced to selling the Big Issue in Bristol, reportedly using the money to fund his expensive drug habit.

But part of Andrew wanted to be clean, and in control of his own life. He was angry probably with himself, among other things and wanted to change. Radical Islam, which he discovered on the internet in extremist
videos, harnessed this anger. Like countless broken young men, he found in it a sense of inclusion in an imagined community of outcasts.

It is also a worth bearing in mind that a suicide bomber is, by definition, suicidal. Ibrahim probably hated himself for what he had become and because he had let his family down. Radical Islam taught him that his own self-destruction was a noble cause, that mass murder would once and for all make him clean. It’s a tragedy that, broken as he was, he fell for it.

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