Al Jazeera Jihadi John is dead. And the entire civilised world should be glad

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Emwazi was not a one-off. He was just one among hundreds of British Muslims who chose – in the full knowledge of who ISIS are – to join the vilest group on earth. He was also one among thousands of people in the UK who think that the behaviour of groups like ISIS can be excused or ever justified. So the fact that Emwazi’s career has been ended in this way is not just a good thing in itself, it is a good reminder to anyone who would follow his career-path of how it will end.

Anyone with the slightest degree of concern about this should remember that Emwazi’s end, bloody as it was, would have been painless compared to what he put his victims through Douglas Murray

Of course there will be those who will complain about this. They will call it ‘extra-judicial’. They will complain that the Metropolitan police did not have an opportunity to go to Syria, read Mohammed Emwazi his rights and taken him to a court where twelve good and impartial people could decide on the facts presented to them before potentially subjecting him to a custodial sentence. Such claims should be shown the contempt they deserve. And anyone with the slightest degree of concern about this should remember that Emwazi’s end, bloody as it was, would have been painless compared to what he put his victims through.

BBC Jihadi John was not special. He was just one of many deluded British Muslims

When ISIS took their hostages like British aid-workers David Haines and Alan Henning, they kept them locked up for months. Among other brutal mistreatment they subjected them to mock-executions. In part they did this so that when the group decided to decapitate them on camera in one of their media spectacles the hostage did not struggle too much, thinking it might be part of the ritual routine of humiliation. And although Haines, Henning and other ISIS hostages probably did not know exactly which day they were going to die, they would have known that they were going to die.



Their murderer would also have known at least since early this year when his identity became public, that he would be a target of the US and UK. But in the meantime he was not shackled and tied up as a hostage. He was not brutally and ritually humiliated as his victims were. His family and friends will not have to see footage floating around the internet of him on his knees in the last moments of his life or know that the footage of him being slaughtered like an animal is out there for the gratification of Islamists worldwide.

PA David Cameron confirms the assasination attempt in Downing Street

And unlike his hostages and victims Mohammed Emwazi was not innocent. He was a vile and wicked person who wanted to make the world an infinitely worse place.



Nevertheless the reaction to the news will be important. And although we might hope that the only reaction would be a grim satisfaction, there will of course be other reactions too. The campaigners who are implacably opposed to any use of drones might be quiet for a few hours, but then they will get back to work, merrily arguing that drones are the cause of ‘radicalisation’ rather than a rather striking solution for it. Groups like ‘Cage’ – whose leadership were friends with Emwazi and memorably described him as an ‘extremely kind, gentle, beautiful young man’ – will continue to spread their anti-British propaganda. They will continue to try to reverse the narrative and turn the aggressor into the victim by putting out deceitful claims. Already today the BBC news website is reporting the Emwazi story with credit to ‘The London-based campaign group Cage’. The BBC also links to the Cage website, with no health warning attached, where readers can absorb Cage’s claims that Emwazi only stopped being a ‘beautiful young man’ because the wicked UK Security Services made him to a bit crazy with their Islamophobic agenda. What was he do after that except saw off the heads of journalists and aid-workers? The health of a society can be diagnosed not only in whether it permits such people to spread such propaganda but in the degree to which it absorbs such propaganda.

REUTERS Jihadi John's bloody death may discourage others from joining ISIS