With
all respects to the movie Yesterday, the world would have been a much
better place without these certain Beatles—namely the quartet of Daesh
terrorists dubbed “The Beatles” by their Western hostages, because of their
British accents. By far, the most notorious was the one referred to as “Jihadi
John” in the media, because he is the one who committed the atrocities in the
infamous beheading videos. There is plenty of biographical detail, but all the
really difficult questions are skirted in Anthony Wonke’s Unmasking Jihadi
John: Anatomy of a Terrorist, which premieres this Wednesday on HBO.
Mohammed
Emwazi was born in Kuwait, but his family soon immigrated to London to escape
tribal oppression. During his early school days, he was a shy Manchester United
fan, but he turned more delinquent in his teen years. Inevitably, radical Islam
offered a worldview that excused him of all responsibility, making him the poor
victim.
Emwazi’s
terrorist sympathies were no secret to the British authorities. In fact, they intercepted
him during his first attempt to wage jihad in Iraq. Much is made of this
episode, during which time a British intelligence officer tried to turn him
into an asset. Wonke and screenwriter Richard Kerbaj are determined to frame
this as a tipping point, pushing him into radicalism, but this seems to rather
overstate matters, since he was already determined to commit acts of terrorism against
his former country.
Regardless,
he would indeed enlist with Daesh (Wonke and Kerbaj refer to it by the terrorists’
preferred term, ISIS), just as it was emerging as the successor to Al-Qaeda
among the hearts and minds of violent Islamists. Eventually, he and three other
British born terrorist-traitors took a leading role holding and eventually
executing a group of Western hostages, including James Foley.
As
we know from the horrific footage, it was Emwazi who slit their throats on
camera. Clearly, he was chosen for the job precisely because of his London
accent. It did indeed create a firestorm, but Wonke and Kerbaj try to present
it purely in terms of sensationalistic journalism and the disbelief that one of
our Britain’s own could turn on his own country.
They
completely ignore the wider point about what the Emwazi case says about radical
Islam. He was not oppressed by Israel or brutalized in a refugee camp. He didn’t
even suffer from long bouts of unemployment. Instead, his history suggests
there is something intrinsically violent and anti-social in his Islamist world
view. Right, Wonke and Kerbaj would rather have us move along, wanting us to
think there is nothing to see here.
There
is still some informative dot-connecting with respects to Daesh’s operations,
but that is nuts and bolts stuff, rather than deep insights. Frankly, the film
almost could pass for an effort to forestall such in-depth analysis, despite
the participation of experts, including the unexpected presence of Gen. David
Patraeus. Somewhat disappointing, Unmasking Jihadi John need not be
considered required viewing when it premieres Wednesday (7/31) on HBO.
