Hoda Muthana: ISIS bride who called for killing of Americans won't be allowed in US
US Supreme Court justices have declined an ISIS bride’s plea to return to the country after she fled it in 2014 and went on to marry three jihadis and asked for the blood of Americans. On Monday, January 10, the justices refused to take Hoda Muthana’s request into consideration without elaborating on it.
The 27-year-old, who is now a mother of a son, was reportedly born in the family of a diplomat from Yemen in October 1994. She was raised in Alabama near Birmingham and also attended University of Alabama; but at the age of 19, she left the US and went to Raqqa in Syria via Turkey and joined the Islamic State. She has now claimed to be sorry for her actions that she took after apparently being radicalized online.
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When Muthana was with ISIS, her US citizenship as well as her passport was revoked by the government, citing that her father was a Yemeni diplomat when she was born. But her family sued at the time. And in 2019, a federal judge stood by the government’s decision saying Muthana was not a US citizen despite being born in the country because there’s no rule that gives diplomats’ kids birthright citizenship. But her family’s lawyers appealed claiming that the woman’s father was not a diplomat anymore when she was born.
Muthana surrendered to US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces when Islamic State fighters started losing their ground in the last of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria and went to refugee camps. Since then she has claimed to be quite remorseful of her decision to join the ISIS before first marrying an Australian jihadist and then a Tunisian man. After the men’s death, she went on to secretly marry a Syrian.
As per reports, while being a jihadi bride, she used social media to spread hatred against non-Muslims and called for terror attacks in the country of her birth. A 2015 tweet from her now-deleted account showed her celebrating the burning of her US passport online. She had also shared posts with comments like “Spill all (the Americans') blood,” and “Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades..go on drive by's + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them.”
However, now she’s worried for the future of her son, Adam, whom she conceived through her second husband. Reportedly, she and her kid are living in the tent-city of al-Hol, also known as al-Hawl, a refugee camp in northern Syria. In 2019, Muthana gave an interview to The Guardian, where she said, “I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God. I was really young and ignorant and I was 19 when I decided to leave.” She had also added: “I believe that America gives second chances. I want to return and I'll never come back to the Middle East. America can take my passport and I wouldn't mind.”
Muthana’s story is quite similar to another ISIS bride called Shamima Begum, 19, who left her home in the UK when she was just 15. Begum along with two classmates Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase left London's Bethnal Green for Syria in February 2015. Now, she also wants to come back to the UK, but the concerned authorities have declined her request. The British government has also taken away her citizenship from her in 2019.
