Khadijah Dare

Khadijah Dare, born Grace Dare c. 1991, is a British-Nigerian woman who traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2013. She appeared on Channel 4 with her husband that year. In January 2016, her four-year-old son, Isa, appeared in an ISIL propaganda video called "A Message to David Cameron" where five people were killed. In February that year, Isa appeared in a second video, where he pressed a detonator and blew up a car with three people inside it. The propaganda videos attracted considerable attention, and both David Cameron and Boris Johnson commented on them.

Background Dare was born Grace Dare to a Pentecostal Christian family of Nigerian descent. Her family was religious and she was a devout Christian growing up. She attended church three times a week and frequently prayed and read the Bible. She grew up in Lewisham, London and attended Sydenham School. Her friends recalled her as a popular student but one whose behaviour was disruptive.

After getting her GCSEs she enrolled in Lewisham College to study psychology and media. Dare later said she experienced discrimination in the UK after she started wearing the niqab. They met at the Lewisham Islamic Centre.

In London, she was attending the same mosque as Siddartha Dhar. They subsequently divorced. When her mother dropped them off at the airport, she thought they were going for a short trip to Egypt or Turkey. She praised the murder of James Foley and tweeted, "Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!" She had a photo of Isa holding an AK-47 as her Twitter profile picture. After Dare’s tweet about Foley’s murder, the Lewisham Islamic Centre put out a statement saying Dare had attended the mosque but that her “grossly crude and insensitive comments” had nothing to do with the mosque or its staff and do not reflect its teachings.

She, Isa and Abbas, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Bakr, appeared on Channel 4 in the summer of 2013, a few months into their marriage, and talked about their lives. The footage was shot by Bilal Abdul Kareem at the couple's home outside of Aleppo. At the time, Abbas was fighting with the jihadi militia Katiba al Muhajireen, earning roughly $150 a month. Boris Johnson also commented on the video, saying Isa "can't possibly know or understand what he's saying or what he is being made to say. This is child abuse, there is no question at all. This child is a victim of child abuse and he is, as I understand it, a British national. I think we have a duty of care."

In February, Isa appeared in a second propaganda video with an unidentified ISIL fighter and three men, who identified themselves as Syrians who had spied for British intelligence. The video showed Isa pressing the detonator and blowing up a car, apparently the same car as in the previous video, with the three men inside it. At the end, Isa shouted, "Allahu Akbar!"

ISIL lost the last of its territory in 2019 at the Battle of Baghuz-Farqwani. Dare's fate, and that of her children Isa and Abdur Rahman, is unknown or unrecorded.