Does Jihadi John have a CELTA?

Posted on 01/03/2015 by alexcase

A lot of news sources are reporting that Mohammed Emwazi, allegedly the ISIS member nicknamed Jihadi John, did a “Celta” course before unsuccessfully applying to teach in Saudi in 2012, but apparently the only source of that info  says “His frustration with his predicament resulted in him choosing to undertake a SELTA course with two other friends, which he passed well”, so not sure how anyone became sure that it was the Cambridge CELTA. In perhaps a sign that I’m not the only one with doubts, one of the news stories later took his life timeline with that bit in down. Doing a TEFL course because you can’t see any other way out of your life does sound about right though…

This entry was posted in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Does Jihadi John have a CELTA?

  1. alexcase's avatar alexcase says:
    02/03/2015 at 07:15

    Having thought about it more, I think I can answer my own question with “Almost certainly yes”. The original source was based on interviews with the guy who is probably Jihadi John, presumably with someone who heard him say “CELTA” but didn’t know how to spell it. Still somewhat dodgy journalism for someone to correct that without saying what they’d done and others to copy it without saying the source though….

  2. Richard's avatar Richard says:
    24/03/2015 at 13:42

    Doesn’t that also make him the source of the claim that he did well? He did well enough to be turned down for a job- beyond that, we don’t know,

  3. alexcase's avatar alexcase says:
    25/03/2015 at 10:04

    That is also true – that part of it hadn’t even occured to me…

Leave a Reply