The news that Australia has charged a woman returning from Syria with joining Islamic State is a stark reminder that the long tentacles of the caliphate do not release their grip so easily. Meanwhile, the UK Home Office is reviewing laws to prevent similar returnees from slipping through the net. How quaint that we still pretend these are isolated incidents rather than symptoms of a deeper civilisational sickness.
Consider the timeline. A decade ago, we were told that ISIS was a transient aberration, a product of sectarian strife and failed states. Yet here we are, still debating what to do with those who threw in their lot with medieval murderers. The woman in question left Australia to marry an ISIS fighter and now faces charges. The legal particulars are straightforward: terrorism offences, membership of a proscribed organisation. But the subtext is far more troubling. She is a symbol of the West's inability to account for its own failures of integration, its own moral relativism, its own decadence.
Let us not pretend this is a fringe problem. The UK Home Office is scrambling to update laws because the existing framework is inadequate. Why? Because the legal system was designed for a world where radicalisation was a rare pathology, not a predictable consequence of cultural erosion. We have spent decades dismantling the very institutions that once forged a shared identity: national pride, religious literacy, civic education. In their place we offered a vacuous multiculturalism that left many adrift, searching for meaning in the arms of fanatics.
The parallels with the late Roman Empire are almost too obvious. As the borders grew porous and the central authority weakened, Rome saw a proliferation of cults and foreign ideologies that promised salvation. The authorities reacted with a mixture of repression and accommodation, never quite understanding that the problem was not external but internal. We are living through a similar moment. The Islamic State is defeated territorially, but its ideology thrives because it fills a vacuum that we created.
What is to be done? The Home Office's review is a start but it is too little, too late. We need a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond criminal law. We must revive the idea of a common culture that commands loyalty. This does not mean xenophobia or the abandonment of liberal values. It means taking seriously the responsibility of the state to forge citizens who understand why their civilisation is worth defending.
The Australian woman will be punished, as she should be. But punishment alone does not solve the problem. Until we address the root causes, there will be more returnees, more trials, more hand-wringing. The West is sleepwalking into a future where the distinction between citizen and enemy becomes ever more blurred. Perhaps it is time to wake up.
