BBC should be congratulated for documentary that seeks to understand radicalisation

At the time of writing, the BBC is planning to broadcast to one of the youngest sections of its audience a remarkable documentary in which a corporation journalist talks about his own experience of a “sense of alienation” similar to that which has driven some young Muslims to fight for Islamic State (Isis).

“I remember even before those [9/11 and 7/7 attacks] growing up and feeling that, as a Muslim and as a British Asian, I was living in a society that didn’t respect me and didn’t really want me here,” young Newsnight reporter Secunder Kermani tells listeners of youth networks BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra.

Kermani’s one-hour report, Isis: Young, British & Radicalised, is an important piece of work and places the exodus to Syria of around 700 young British Isis fighters in a context rarely given. The BBC should be commended for making it.

As we try to come to terms with the shock of Friday night’s onslaught in Paris, it’s more important than ever to try to understand the process by which the perpetrators became transformed into desensitised murderers. And it’s even more crucial to get to grips with the susceptibility to Isis propaganda of the young people who might yet travel to join their ranks.

Kermani’s report is highly controversial, not least because it concludes with the suggestion that returning, but disillusioned, Jihadis should not be arrested but embraced as future campaigners against Isis. “One [answer] though, according to those I have interviewed, would be to help empower – not criminalise – the voices of those young people who have been in Syria and seen how the reality is different to that portrayed in propaganda videos,” he says.

The Newsnight reporter, who has built a reputation for making contact with and interviewing Western jihadis, was recently targeted by police who, in a worrying infringement on the rights of a professional journalist, seized his laptop using powers obtained under the Terrorism Act.

His documentary opens with a warning to young listeners: “Be warned this documentary contains strong language, scenes of graphic violence and extremist thoughts,” it begins. “We believe it’s important to explore these difficult and sensitive issues in order to understand them better, but if you feel you may be offended please listen to another Radio 1 programme on BBC iPlayer.”

Kermani refers to Isis not as terrorists but as a “militant group”, which might be difficult for some listeners in the wake of the atrocities in Paris. He is also less judgmental of the jihadists than almost any other British commentator on the subject I have encountered.

But it’s 14 years since the 9/11 attacks and four since Isis really came to prominence after the onset of the Syrian civil war and our understanding of western jihadis is still woefully inadequate. It was comforting, for a time, to write them off as the kind of bungling incompetents satirised by Chris Morris in the 2010 film Four Lions. The concept doesn’t sit so easily in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January and the appalling events of Friday.

Neither is it especially helpful to simplistically cast Isis fighters as monsters, no matter that they assiduously court such a reputation in their own grisly media.

Mohammed Emwazi, known to the world as “Jihadi John”, was the most notorious example of this. The Americans claimed on Friday to be “reasonably certain” to have killed the Londoner in a drone strike. It wasn’t quite the “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him!” triumph of the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 but any sense of a propaganda coup was instantly erased by the slaughter in Paris.

Events in the French capital meant limited exposure for a fascinating piece of footage of Emwazi as a London teenager, unearthed on Friday by Darshna Soni of Channel 4 News. Jihadi John, the supremely confident psychopath of Isis beheading videos, is revealed in these out-takes from a documentary film made at Emwazi’s London comprehensive to have been a painfully shy youth. He was always at the margins of social groups and continually covered his mouth with a hand or a piece of material, apparently because other children teased him about his breath. Alienation takes many forms.

The documentary includes disturbing audio clips from another of these almost cartoon ‘baddies’ from the Isis frontline, Omar Hussain – the so-called ‘Supermarket Jihadi’ from High Wycombe.

Using the mobile messaging service WhatsApp, he tells Kermani: ‘I’ve witnessed a few beheadings and that, I’ve seen a few heads being chopped off…’

He claims to be happiest looking down the barrel of his gun with a human target in his sights: ‘The best feeling ever is to kill a disbeliever.’ The comments stunned some of Hussain’s old friends in Buckinghamshire.But Kermani tells listeners that the 27-year-old former Morrison’s worker could be a ‘really polite’ interviewee. ‘It sounds weird but sometimes he would be really nice, asking how I was, apologising if he was ever late.’

The BBC reporter’s own testimony is equally compelling. He speaks with a note of passion as he argues that a ‘sense of alienation’ is a cause of radicalisation. ‘The perception, right or wrong, that Islam is under attack globally by the West and here in the UK with government policies – that’s all making people more susceptible.’

Some listeners might regard this as editorialising; an angry young man lecturing on politics rather than reporting the news. But if a bright and successful journalist like Kermani feels such a strong sense of injustice then that’s a degree of insight we rarely get from the rest of the British media.

The Home Office has a £40m-a-year programme ‘Prevent’, designed to combat radicalisation and it felt like a missed opportunity that it declined to participate in the documentary, except through a statement.

It’s vital that young Muslims in Britain feel that they are fairly represented in mainstream news because they have a world of alternative sources on the Internet and many are anything but benign. Isis: Young, British & Radicalised gives a compelling account of the seductiveness of Isis propaganda. I’m sure not every Muslim feels Kermani speaks for them – but the 60-minute broadcast takes in a diversity of voices, from imams to young people who say they can happily combine the values of Islam with a pride in Britain.

The friends and relatives of jihadis warn of the lies of Isis social media promises and the futility and mortal danger of travelling to the false utopia of the ‘caliphate’. And this is the programme’s over-riding message. The interviews are blended with poignant music clips from the likes of indie band The XX and London Grammar, with lyrics that evoke the search for identity that every teenager undergoes to some degree. ‘These guys were just like you and me and then something changed,’ says Kermani of the jihadis. I hope his message gets through.