Kadiza Sultana may have fled the UK to marry an Isis fighter, but if we don't mourn her death we'll never tackle extremism

By ruthlessly targeting teenagers, Isis seems to understand their vulnerability better than we do

Kadiza Sultana was killed in a suspected Russian airstrike in May (Met Police)

Kadiza Sultana, like the two friends who travelled with her, was 15 when she left the UK. These bright teens from Bethnal Green were radicalised and recruited online, joined Isis in Raqqa and quickly became “jihadi brides” (or, just as fast, jihadi widows).

As news emerges that the schoolgirl, Kadiza Sultana has almost certainly been killed in an airstrike in Syria, so much of the online reaction to this seems to be along the lines of: well, she had it coming and good, now there’s one less of them. Almost as bad as her death is the idea that she got what she deserved.

If the idea that one of these girls is now dead, or the thought of her devastated family doesn’t break your heart in two, then, presumably, neither will the phone conversation Sultana had with her sister, Halima Khanom, months ago. Recorded by ITV news, the call revealed that Sultana was scared, wanted to escape but had “zero” hope that she ever could.

What’s so troubling about some of the reactions to these teenagers is the inability to see them as vulnerable children who were victims of highly effective grooming campaigns. Indeed, the grisly truth is that Isis, in so ruthlessly targeting such teenagers, seems to understand their vulnerability better than we do.

To some extent, this is horribly familiar terrain. Remember, for instance, the grooming case in Rochdale, where teenage girls were sexually exploited by a gang of men. A report into this case found there had been a “shocking” inability to protect the girls involved, by agencies set up to protect children. One of the many disturbing questions around this grooming case is why such terribly abused girls, when they spoke of what was happening to them, were simply not believed. They weren’t even viewed as vulnerable, much less credible.

It’s as though being Muslim is the bit that attracts the blame and hatred, making these teenagers somehow more knowing, more complicit – and less deserving of sympathy. Why should we feel sorry for people who willingly go and join such a grotesquely murderous group? It’s as though fears over such violent atrocities carried out in the name of Islam have blinded us to the fact that British Muslim teenagers are still teenagers, still in need of support and protection.

Campaigners are now expressing the wish that Kadiza Sultana’s killing might help deter others from joining the death cult Isis, which is about the only grain of hope that can be extracted from such a desperately pointless curtailment of a young life. Much of the work of stopping others joining Isis is about developing resilience among those most vulnerable to extremism, providing powerful counter-narratives that inoculate against the potential to be recruited.

These are measures for which counter-extremism workers on the ground have long sought help and resources. But this work is reliant upon wider societies for support. It is made effective through cohesion and a capacity to see extremism as a collective problem, rather than the fault and responsibility of any particular group. For that to happen, we need to see Sultana’s death as an avoidable tragedy in the first place, not as something she brought upon herself. Her life, as a British teenager, was as a part of our society – and so, too, is her cruel death.