Capturing the human
When I set out to film Jihad, I realised that I would be filming men and women who represent the great bogeyman of our age: religious extremists, driven by a hardline and intolerant version of Islam to justify taking part in violent jihad – a so-called ‘holy’ war. I spent two years talking to former religious extremists to find out what had led them into this movement. It was hard to forget my own history: that as a teenage musician, I had been harassed and physically attacked by men with a similar commitment to a bleak and joyless vision of Islam, to the extent that I was driven out of Norway, the country of my birth, for the ‘crime’ being a woman and a music artist. I wanted to get beyond my own feelings and experiences in order to understand why some young people are drawn towards this violent movement. I found that in many ways, I had a lot in common with the people I was interviewing. As the child of immigrant parents from a Muslim background myself, I was well aware of the sense of tension between the values of my parent’s community, and the world outside. I had experienced the same racist sneers in the streets and the same expectations placed upon me by our parents community.
I found that these people had often encountered hostility and racism outside the home, and stifling and dysfunctional relationships inside the home. Here, religious extremism provided a sense of belonging, whilst building a sense of resentment and hostility against people who did not follow their own reductive view of Islam. I found that these beliefs fuelled feelings of superiority often for people who had low self-esteem otherwise. In most cases, the people I spoke to eventually realised the brutality that underlay their fantasies of power. They were repelled by prejudice, exploitation and hypocracy within the jihadi movement, and the fact that many of the victims of jihadi violence were Muslims themselves. The journey out of extremism for some of the main characters in my film, started with addressing their past trauma, and then challenging their former beliefs, often through working with young people at risk of repeating their mistakes and becoming tempted into extremism.
My aim was to explore their personal journeys, from their rejection of Western society to their experiences within the jihadi movement. To achieve that, I used an intensely personal style of filming. I chose a style that focussed closely on their faces and expressions. I wanted to catch every micro-expression: every crinkle of the nose, every twitch of the eyelids, and every tightening of the lips. This created a deliberately stark and sustained intimacy, directly involving the viewer in the often very intense emotions and reflections of the interviewees. This was both an aesthetic choice and a way to engage the viewer in often uncomfortable emotions.
I also sought to increase the intensity and rawness of this very direct and human encounter with the core interviewees through the absence of a soundtrack. As a musician, I understand the power of music – but I also value the power of silence. A soundtrack would have overwhelmed the sense of intimacy which I wanted to create. Music tends to have an emotive impact, which can feel directive. I felt that due to the sensitivity of the subject, and my wish to focus tightly on the human emotions and experiences on display, that this silence would give both their expressions and their speech room to breathe. Similarly, I sought to create a sense of ambiguity by filming many of the core interviews against a grey backdrop – a symbolic sense of a rejection of the black-and-white perspectives that both inspire the jihadi ideology – and the ways in which these people are stereotyped.
All these effects worked together to build a close relationship between the viewer and people who are most often perceived as monsters, and to capture their humanity with an unblinking honesty.
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Exposure -Jihad: A British Story is nominated for Best Documentary on Current Affairs at The Grierson Awards 2016.
Deeyah Khan for Fuuse Films; first shown: ITV
