person journey
Alan Henning: The Taxi Driver Who Went to Help and Was Killed for It
Confirmed2 chapters
Alan Henning was not a journalist or professional aid worker — he was a taxi driver who used his own money and time to deliver aid to Syrian refugees. He was captured by ISIS on his second Syria trip. Muslims who knew him personally pleaded for his life, calling him a true friend of their community. ISIS killed him anyway.
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Chapter 01custom01 / 02
From Eccles to Syria: A Taxi Driver's Humanitarian Mission
Alan Henning was born on May 27, 1967, in Eccles, Salford, Greater Manchester. He worked as a taxi driver and had no background in international humanitarian work or journalism. He was a family man — married to Barbara, with two children.
What drew him to Syria was the same thing that draws millions of ordinary people to donate to disaster relief: the images of suffering, the instinct to help, and access to a community organizing a response. His local mosque and Muslim community in Eccles were organizing aid convoys to Syria, and he joined them.
He made his first trip to Syria in late 2012 or early 2013 with the Rochdale Aid4Syria group — a grassroots charity that organized convoys to deliver food, medicine, and supplies to Syrian civilians. He drove aid vehicles across the Turkish border into Syria.
He decided to go again. In December 2013, he traveled on a second humanitarian convoy. At the Syrian border, the convoy was stopped. ISIS took control of the border crossing. Henning was separated from the group and taken captive. The rest of the convoy was eventually allowed to leave.
Muslim community leaders and members of the Rochdale Aid4Syria group — people who had traveled with Henning, prayed with him, broken fast with him — began a campaign for his release. They recorded messages in Arabic, appealing directly to ISIS and to al-Baghdadi, explaining that Henning was a friend of Muslims who had come to help Muslim civilians. Senior British Muslim figures, including members of Parliament, joined the appeals.
What drew him to Syria was the same thing that draws millions of ordinary people to donate to disaster relief: the images of suffering, the instinct to help, and access to a community organizing a response. His local mosque and Muslim community in Eccles were organizing aid convoys to Syria, and he joined them.
He made his first trip to Syria in late 2012 or early 2013 with the Rochdale Aid4Syria group — a grassroots charity that organized convoys to deliver food, medicine, and supplies to Syrian civilians. He drove aid vehicles across the Turkish border into Syria.
He decided to go again. In December 2013, he traveled on a second humanitarian convoy. At the Syrian border, the convoy was stopped. ISIS took control of the border crossing. Henning was separated from the group and taken captive. The rest of the convoy was eventually allowed to leave.
Muslim community leaders and members of the Rochdale Aid4Syria group — people who had traveled with Henning, prayed with him, broken fast with him — began a campaign for his release. They recorded messages in Arabic, appealing directly to ISIS and to al-Baghdadi, explaining that Henning was a friend of Muslims who had come to help Muslim civilians. Senior British Muslim figures, including members of Parliament, joined the appeals.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
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Chapter 02custom02 / 02
October 3, 2014: ISIS Ignored Every Appeal
Throughout his captivity, Alan Henning's family and the Muslim community that knew him maintained a public campaign for his release. His wife Barbara made public appeals. Muslim scholars issued religious rulings stating that his killing would be religiously prohibited — that he was a non-combatant humanitarian worker who had come to help.
Cage (formerly CagePrisoners), a Muslim civil liberties organization, worked with the family. British imams recorded video messages in Arabic appealing to ISIS. The campaign was notable because it came from the Muslim community — ISIS's own claimed constituency — and because Henning had genuine, documented relationships with British Muslims who could attest to his character and his humanitarian motivation.
None of it made any difference.
On October 3, 2014, ISIS released a video showing Henning's execution — the fourth Western hostage killed that year. He appeared briefly on screen, made a statement that had clearly been dictated, and was beheaded. The video threatened the execution of another hostage — Peter Kassig, an American aid worker.
British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the killing. Henning's family expressed their devastation.
His case had made something clear that the other Western hostage killings had not: ISIS was not operating by any recognizable religious or moral code. They had killed a man who had the explicit support and blessing of the Muslim community he was trying to help, whose killing was condemned by Islamic scholars on religious grounds, whose captors' own stated constituency had publicly asked for his life to be spared.
It didn't matter. The killings were not about religion. They were about power, theater, and the escalating game of provocation that ISIS was playing with Western governments.
Cage (formerly CagePrisoners), a Muslim civil liberties organization, worked with the family. British imams recorded video messages in Arabic appealing to ISIS. The campaign was notable because it came from the Muslim community — ISIS's own claimed constituency — and because Henning had genuine, documented relationships with British Muslims who could attest to his character and his humanitarian motivation.
None of it made any difference.
On October 3, 2014, ISIS released a video showing Henning's execution — the fourth Western hostage killed that year. He appeared briefly on screen, made a statement that had clearly been dictated, and was beheaded. The video threatened the execution of another hostage — Peter Kassig, an American aid worker.
British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the killing. Henning's family expressed their devastation.
His case had made something clear that the other Western hostage killings had not: ISIS was not operating by any recognizable religious or moral code. They had killed a man who had the explicit support and blessing of the Muslim community he was trying to help, whose killing was condemned by Islamic scholars on religious grounds, whose captors' own stated constituency had publicly asked for his life to be spared.
It didn't matter. The killings were not about religion. They were about power, theater, and the escalating game of provocation that ISIS was playing with Western governments.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
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