An earnest young BBC reporter interviews "Ahmed", a British jihadi off to join IS in the happy business of chopping of the heads of the unbelievers:
We don't know his real name, or where he comes from in the UK, and during our TV interview his face is covered with a bright red scarf.
After he says hello, "Ahmed", as he wants to be known, speaks with purpose. He details why he wants to fight in Iraq or Syria.
"God has commanded for the Muslims to go and fight jihad", he says.
It follows a call from the extremist group ISIS, now calling itself Islamic State (IS), for Muslims to leave their homes and join it in its often brutal battle.
For Ahmed it is a religious call he cannot ignore: "This thing takes takes precedence over everything else in my life at the moment, this is the biggest thing for a Muslim.
"To die as a martyr is the promise of paradise, the highest paradise."
He only agreed to speak to us if he could cover his face and if we changed his voice. He never removed his scarf, we never caught even a glimpse of what he looked like.
"God has commanded for the Muslims to go and fight jihad", he said. I asked why: he had a choice, he didn't need to go, so why did he?
Ahmed paused before replying "I have a choice, yes but Islamically this is an obligation."
It's not all bad news though:
Ahmed tells us he has no intention of ever coming back.
"No not at all, people in this country perceive jihad as people coming back here and bombing train stations and airports and killing innocent people. When I go I will never come back to this country again."
Suddenly it's possible to see a positive side to all this radicalisation.
Perhaps "Ahmed" will come face to face with the 2nd Peshmerga Battalion - an all-women battalion of Kurdish fighters - to fulfil his longed-for dream of martyrdom.
Of course, this being the BBC and all, they're at pains to show us the other side. A Birmingham imam - "one of hundreds of imams to speak out against jihad" - explains how wrong this all is. The BBC, of course, are always scrupulous in the impartiality of their reporting, as we discovered recently in Gaza.
explains how wrong this all is
The rise of ISIS/ISIL into the self-declared Caliphate, and its activities beyond it, mirrors almost exactly their prophet's well documented rise to power and his immediate successors, in almost the same region of the world, that is why they go, to be like him.
Posted by: Runcie Balspune | August 16, 2014 at 04:48 PM