"They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." Ephesians 4:18
Grace Dare, the British jihadi bride whose four-year-old son recently appeared in a disturbing ISIS propaganda video, was once a devout Christian who enjoyed reading the Bible and attending church, her father has revealed.
In a recent interview with The Sun, Sunday Dare, father of 25-year-old Grace, who now goes by the name Khadijah, said: "She was religious. She would read her Bible and pray all the time...If she read her Bible she would ask me about the stories. She wouldn't really read anything else. I thought it was unusual she wouldn't read anything else."
As a girl, Grace -- who was named after the hymn "Amazing Grace"-- loved to attend church, sometimes going three times a week.
"She was always smiling and singing at church, sat in the pews with all the grown-ups," her father recalled. "She would go with me, mum Victoria and brother Nathaniel as a family. We would dress up in our Sunday best."
He added, "After me, she was the most religious in the family."
As reported by the Gospel Herald, Grace grew up in Lewisham, England, which is just south of London, where she attended Catholic schools for most of her childhood. She is thought to have been radicalized when she became a teenager while spending time online.
Grace then divorced her husband because he would not convert to Islam, and took her young son, Isa, to Syria in 2012. She later married Swedish Islamic State militant Abu Bakr, who is since believed to have been killed.
TheDaily Mail notes that on social media, Grace has said that she hopes to be the first British woman to kill an ISIS hostage.
A source connected with the young woman's first husband "thought she was possessed by evil spirits" or jinns, and was having "exorcism treatments," Breitbart reports.
The source also said that Grace had little maternal love for Isa and would leave him anywhere, "like on the floor of the mosque without a blanket," even when the boy was an infant.
In a sickening turn of events, Isa appeared in a 10-minute ISIS propaganda video released by the militant group last week titled "A Message to David Cameron."
The disturbing video showed five hostages being killed and Isa, now dubbed "Jihadi Junior", stating, "We will kill the kuffars [non-believers] over there".
Speaking to the BBC, Grace's Christian mother Victoria, who saw her grandson in the ISIS video for the first time, stated: "This is not what God gave me."
She added, 'I am not taking it as my grandson in that situation. I can't deal with this situation, so I am not looking at this as if it is my grandson."
Grace's father also expressed his shock and horror on seeing Isa in the video.
"That is my grandson - I would know him anywhere," he said. "I couldn't believe it when I saw the pictures. I felt sick. They are pure evil for doing this to that little child - pure evil. I burst into tears when I saw it was him."
"I spoke to him on the phone and he just said, 'Granddad, come and get me.' I am devastated they have used my grandson like that - they are using him as a pawn," he said.
