He probably meant the joke to be caught by his editor. In a March 16 column titled “Jihadi Bilardi spreading the hate in his own way“, Telegraph columnist Tim Blair writes of the “weedy Melbourne teenager” who recently killed himself in an Iraq suicide bombing. To give a feel for Jake Bilardi’s personality, Blair quotes Bilardi acquaintances from the Hume Islamic Youth Centre. One of them is named Furkan Derya.
Then the columnist–in the middle of a serious piece attempting to explore the origins of Bilardi conversion to suicidal fanaticism–drops in a joke. He can’t help himself it seems. It’s as if he finds the whole subject of jihadism so horrible and absurd, he needs a shot of dismissive levity–a pun–to get himself through. “I furkan derya,” he writes, “to find a better name than Furkan Derya.” The Telegraph editor led it ride.
When sub editors aren’t paying attention, or perhaps they were? This report on #ISIS recruit in Aussie Telegraph pic.twitter.com/R9CG1YppRN
— Phil Mackie (@philmackie) March 15, 2015
