‘It’s jihad, innit, bruv’: meet the British Muslims going to fight in Syria

Turkey, Syria, Iraq: ‘It’s jihad, innit, bruv.’ The young British Muslim cut an absurd figure in ski mask, dark glasses and hoodie. He had not used that exact phrase but it would have summed up our faintly comical encounter. I remembered a security analyst’s remark that British Islamists in the Middle East are best explained by Four Lions, the mock documentary about some Yorkshire jihadis on an incompetent quest for martyrdom.

He called himself ‘Obeid’ and he described, in a Leeds or Bradford accent, how he had arrived in Turkey on a tourist visa. Then, speaking no Arabic, and barely knowing one end of a Kalashnikov from the other, he had managed to sign up with one of the most feared and bloodthirsty jihadi commanders, a Chechen credited with 300 beheadings.

He had not taken part in any fighting, or even any beheading, though. So far, his jihad had consisted of guard duty outside a base. He was, however, part of Isis, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — or ‘the Islamic State’ as they are now known.

I met Obeid in Turkey; the ski mask wouldn’t have been so funny in Syria. He was in his late twenties, British-born of Pakistani descent. Before jihad, he had been ‘a bad lad, gettin’ into bovver’: petty crime, car theft, insurance fraud, running prostitutes. Then he found Islam, but not his parents’ version of it. His parents still didn’t know he was fighting in Syria. He was heavily disguised to hide as much from them as from MI5.

He had been encouraged by jihadi propaganda on social media. A classic of the genre is a YouTube video from an ‘Isis mujahid’ on ‘how to leave that Gangster Life’.