Al Qur'an dusturuna, the Koran is our constitution.
Wa jihad ou dari qouna, the jihad is our way.
And to die, to seek death and martyrdom
in the path of Allah is our highest ambition and our goal.
[female narrator] Last summer, I met this man,
one of the founding fathers of jihad in the UK.
I fought on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Kashmir and Burma.
I inspired and recruited.
I trained, I raised funds, I sent people for training,
I went and fought myself,
and it wasn't just for a one off... 15 to 20 years.
[narrator] His name is Abu Muntasir.
He is one of the people most responsible for spreading
jihadism throughout the Western world.
[Muntasir] I used to carry
three knives with me.
One was a bayonet, it's designed in such a way,
diamond shaped, so that the wound doesn't
close so more bleeding.
In my briefcase, in my car, a knuckle-duster, as well,
a metal one.
[narrator] I wanted to know why so many young people today
are drawn to violent extremism,
fighting and dying on battlefields far from home.
In the last 18 months, I've travelled the UK,
meeting men and women who had embraced extremism in the past,
to try to understand why.
I just had so much hate in me, I wanted to kill or be killed.
When you're fighting in a battlefield,
you do what you have to do.
You've got to shoot him, you've got to chop him,
you've got to take his head off.
Do what you've got to do, you're in a battlefield.
[narrator] I met a young man,
who had been groomed by an extremist.
So, all you think about is,
"I need to go out and I need to fight."
That's all you think about.
If you achieve martyrdom then that's the best thing.
[narrator] I met ordinary young Muslims,
too, and heard how they feel.
For all the harm that they've done to civilisations,
to people, to communities, to countries, to states.
My dream is to see the American empire fall.
[narrator] I wanted to know,
how can we save
the next generation from extremism?
I was called in at school and the teacher said to me,
"Your child came up and said that it's OK for us to kill,
you know, non-Muslims," and I thought, "Oh, my God.
What is happening here?"
[woman] My name is Deeyah Khan,
I was born in the West, to parents from the East.
Being a child of two cultures made me who I am.
I am now a film-maker, and a human rights activist.
Because of my work, I've faced threats
from religious extremists.
In the past, I had to leave my own home and my family.
And some of my friends have been harmed
and even killed by fundamentalists.
I've been horrified to see young people,
with backgrounds like mine, joining jihadi movements.
So for this film, I decided to meet
the men and women
who had embraced extremism in the past,
men and women of all ages and backgrounds,
all living in Britain today.
I wanted to know why they had been drawn into extremism.
Only by understanding the reasons,
can we begin to challenge this violent movement.
What I learned, and what I filmed,
surprised even me.
It all started when I met Abu Muntasir.
A British imam, he has a gentle manner and is softly spoken.
He leads a small community of devout Muslims.
He preaches around the country, he does charitable works.
But in his past, Abu Muntasir
was a jihadi fighter.
A man who worked tirelessly to radicalise thousands
of Western Muslims.
I sat with one of the founding fathers
of the Western Jihad and I listened.
Thirty years ago, Abu Muntasir was a charismatic
and fiery Islamic preacher, with a large following
in the UK.
[Khan] If you had to briefly describe
the world view that you had at that time, what was it?
The world is populated by Muslims and non-Muslims.
That everything that constitutes disbelief,
unbelief in their systems, in their education,
in their way of life, all of it is dishonourable
or defective or corrupt.
[Khan] Alyas was one of his loyal followers.
I found in Abu Muntasir an inspirational person.
A role model that I had been looking for all my life.
He was a strong male, with very strong ideas.
[Khan] Usama was a bookish, shy teenager when he joined
Abu Muntasir's group.
He was my hero when it came to religion.
You know, I totally looked up to him.
He was our group leader. He had all the qualities.
He was brave, he was educated, he was intelligent,
he was articulate.
We would all go, every week, to his circles in East London
and actually became his groupies very quickly.
They were offering something which, you know,
I never had before.
A family, understanding, belonging.
This is where the journey starts.
[Khan] Throughout the 1980s,
Islamic fighters in Afghanistan
were resisting the Russian invasion,
calling it a holy war, a jihad.
Young Muslims, like Abu Muntasir,
became energised and ready to fight for the cause.
I came out in the forefront and started to wake up
the people saying,
"What's the matter with you? Where is your spirit?"
And, "How can you be so lazy?"
And all this rhetoric and talk, you know,
garnished and sprinkled with lots of emotive
terms and words.
[Muntasir] We will not tolerate attack upon the Muslims.
It is our duty to conduct jihad.
The kuffar have no honour.
They are not the friends of Allah,
they're friends of Shaytan.
[Khan] After raising funds
and preaching jihad throughout the UK,
Abu Muntasir says he was among the first Muslims from Britain
to actually go and fight in Afghanistan.
I went to Peshawar in Pakistan.
Took one friend with me from Kingston, a Punjabi brother.
And that's my very first time when I went to Afghanistan,
to clear and to create the link and clear the path,
that's the expressions we used to use.
And I came back, I think I was one of
the first people from England to go.
Came back, and opened the door.
And then it started from a trickle to a flow.
[Khan] On one trip, in 1990,
Usama asked to come along.
It was an exhilarating experience, I have to say,
when you are 19 and you are essentially a bookworm like me,
very academically minded.
To be transported into the incredibly beautiful
mountain of Afghanistan,
in the middle of a war, was absolutely exhilarating.
A real adventure.
[Khan] Abu Muntasir's example
spurred on many other Muslims across the West.
Everyone had to imitate him.
And there were many individuals who did,
followed in his footsteps.
He set the dye and then, as I said, it kind of spread.
I bought weapons for myself and others.
I arranged weapons drops, ammunition drops.
I am also one of the key persons in the UK
who brought in speakers from abroad
who advocated armed jihad and they motivated others.
[Khan] Munir was one of the many
young British Muslims who had heard
of his reputation.
This man was famous, famous to the point
he was infamous.
Six foot seven giant of a man who can pick up ten guys,
ten non-Muslims and toss them over a tank.
I had to meet this Abu Muntasir,
and I made it my kind of mission to track him down.
[Khan] He found Abu Muntasir
speaking in a mosque in London.
He was calm and he was considered.
I remember that really well.
Dressed in black. All black with a black turban.
I'd never seen anyone dress like that in the UK.
Legendary father of the jihad. I was in awe of that look.
I thought to myself, "This is what the warriors look like."
What we felt was, as a group, we were unique.
You know, there's no one like us.
We had a uniform, you know, we had a dress code.
I used to dress absolutely whack in those days.
Really, if I look at the way I used to dress,
I used to wear turbans like this, yeah.
Massive turbans, you know, and with long flowing Arab gowns
because it was a part of the rejection,
as well of my mainstream western dress.
[Khan] Alyas told me Abu Muntasir
used unusual tricks while teaching his followers.
OK, this is the trick.
Uh, you are in a circle, everyone's there.
He's doing the Islamic lecture. He's doing the Halaqa,
it's a circle, yeah.
And he'd get out some brown envelopes,
and he would give it to certain people.
And you're wishing, "Oh, I wish I get a brown envelope."
We are in the brown envelope brigade.
We are the brown envelopes. And then he would
give someone a brown...
He would give some envelopes and others no envelopes.
And if you didn't get an envelope you felt like shit.
[laughing] Honestly, you felt like absolute shit.
Oh, fucking hell, I ain't got one of these envelopes.
[laughing]
And all these other guys have got these envelopes, yeah.
"Oh, tell me what's in the envelope.
What's in... what's in the envelope?"
...we have the envelope, you haven't got the envelope.
We are in the inner circle, you're in the outer circle.
I feared not getting a brown envelope,
you know, come on.
This is silly stuff, isn't it?
But what it is, this is cults, this is how cults operate.
You know...
[Khan] What was in it?
Do you know what was in it?
It was such a benign thing,
it was just a photocopy of a book
you could get anywhere anyway.
It was just playing silly games with people.
And you think about it, you give up the best years
of your life.
You know, I gave the best years of my life to... to them.
[Khan] In the years to come,
many hundreds of Westerners went to fight abroad,
to the battlefields of Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Just like today, British fighters in balaclavas
wielding machine guns gave triumphant interviews.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm a third year medical student in Birmingham University
and I live in Golders Green. Every time I'm in Britain,
I watch the TV and tears roll down my face
when I see the Muslims in Bosnia,
Muslims in Palestine, Muslims in Kashmir.
And then I come here and you feel
a sense of satisfaction.
You feel that you're fulfilling your duty.
If you want to see true people, true Muslims with unity,
come to this place. Then you'll see.
These people, Mujahideen, come from all over the world.
They come to fight here, not for the money,
-for the sake of Allah. -Allahu akbar!
[Khan] Shahid was one man
who heeded the call,
spurred on by atrocity footage of the war in Bosnia.
I came out of the Birmingham Central Masjid,
there was a guy standing outside,
he had a big brown box full of video cassettes.
It was called "Massacres in Bosnia and Croatia."
[Khan] The videos featured
disturbing footage,
similar to this Bosnian TV footage of
a bloody massacre in Sarajevo.
The video was very explicit.
I mean, you know, it actually showed,
pregnant women with their stomachs cut open.
All kinds of stuff. I mean, it was shocking.
[Khan] Shahid says he travelled to
Bosnia in an aid convoy.
When you actually see, physically...
When you smell the stench of vomit and you hear
the screams and the cries and the children who are hungry,
that's when something just clicked inside my heart
and inside my head.
And I thought to myself,
"Well, you know, I haven't got any money to give you,
I haven't got any food to give you.
But there is one thing I can do. I can fight, I can defend you."
And that's when I made up my mind to stay and to,
basically, to defend these people.
[Khan] Shahid was later convicted
of terrorism in Yemen, although he says he was
tortured into a false confession.
He says he doesn't support ISIS.
For him, fighting in Bosnia was a noble act
to help other Muslims, a distinction also made
by other former fighters.
It's our ambition. It's part of our deen.
We want an Islamic state. We want sharia to prevail.
We want everyone to live in peace.
When you're fighting in a battlefield,
they're in front of you and you fight,
that's a different story.
Then there's... then it's kill or be killed.
Let's not mince words, he's coming for you,
you're going for them.
You know what I mean, you do what you have to do.
You got to shoot him, you gotta chop him,
you gotta take his head off. Do what you gotta do,
you're in a battlefield. You're fighting.
But when, once you've subdued your enemy,
he's now at your mercy.
He's got no weapon. His head is down,
his hands are bound.
That's when the true character of a mujahid comes out,
because that's when you show compassion.
[Khan] Growing up in London, Munir, too,
says he became immersed in the message of extremism.
My story, when I look back on it,
and my journey as a young man...
I just had so much hate in me.
Raging inside me was hatred, by that age, was anger,
was disaffection.
I wanted to vent that so badly. I wanted to kill or be killed.
So my wishes at the time...
were that I died on the field of battle.
And I killed as many non-believers as I could
who opposed me on that field.
I'd have liked to have been on the streets of Afghanistan.
I'd like to have dealt with Russian soldiers.
I wanted to look the enemy in the eye.
I wanted to meet them on the field of battle.
[Khan] Looking back now,
what has been the impact
of Abu Muntasir on where we are today?
If we go back into the '80s and '90s
there were viruses,
these were viruses you could say,
infected the Muslim community.
One of them was the virus that might is right.
That the only way you could achieve change
is through violence.
That virus, you know, was already there.
We carried that virus further and then we kind of,
you could say, infected a generation
with that particular virus.
It wasn't that this was a good thing to do.
This is the best to do.
This is the most noble thing to do.
Everything that you're doing should be culminating in that.
[Khan] What's the culmination?
Jihad and to die as a martyr.
[Khan] That was his message?
Ultimately, that was the message, yeah.
[Khan] It was a message
spread throughout the world,
by extremist clerics.
Speakers like Anwar Al-Awlaki,
who was given a stage to speak in Britain by Abu Muntasir,
and went on to be a notorious jihadi preacher.
We are fighting for a noble cause.
We are fighting for God.
Jihad is binding upon myself,
just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.
[Khan] In the past few years,
the infection has spread faster and faster.
We love death the way you love life.
As you kill us, you will be killed.
And as you bomb us, you will be bombed.
Fighting the enemies of Allah,
you see no one who does it like us.
It's you that need jihad. We just want to meet our lord.
Ask yourselves, why would thousands of men
be ready to give their lives for the cause of Muslims?
[Khan] I'd seen how jihadism
had started in the West,
but now I wanted to know, why do some people
embrace this message?
I asked Alyas, was there something in his past,
in his own personal history, which could explain why
he was drawn to extremism?
In South London, I grew up in a white,
working class community.
I had no interest in Islam whatsoever.
I hated being brown, I hated being Pakistani,
I hated being Muslim.
[Khan] Why did you hate being brown?
Because I grew up in an environment where there was
non-stop racism,
brown people were seen as lesser,
second class.
You know, it was just that inferiority complex
that you have.
There was nothing to celebrate about
who you were.
Especially in an environment where everyone else is white.
You want to fit in, you know. And you fit in how?
By being just like everyone else but more so, over compensating,
over exaggerating.
I had my white girlfriends, and then middle class parents
saying,
"Oh, but you'll have mongrel children."
These were middle class, so called middle class,
educated parents who were doing this.
I've done everything to fit in.
I've even got the white girlfriend
and everything else
and still you're not accepted, bizarrely.
Still you're not accepted.
[Khan] Munir is another man
who was marked by his past.
I had serious issues coming to terms
with the way I looked.
The physical impairment from birth.
I grew up feeling emasculated anyway
because of my disability.
And I'd walk home from school as a six-year-old on my own
and sometimes be heckled and sometimes chased
and threatened.
I'd have things thrown at me.
P-A-K-I
G-O H-O-M-E
I heard that religiously,
like the five times call to prayer,
for the first 16 years of my life.
I felt so shunned by everybody.
I felt so alone, so isolated.
I just felt like death would have been a really good option.
I didn't have a passion for life.
Martyrdom, the notion of the shaheed, the mujahid,
they became inspiring, they very much became enabling.
I think, for me, I was unmistakably drawn to it.
[Khan] Munir says he was never
a core member of an extremist group,
but became sucked into the mentality
by listening to their preachers.
He was further radicalised
by images of wars against Muslims
and the deaths of innocent Muslim civilians abroad.
When people are able to relay to you powerful stories
of suffering and oppression from around the world,
and they can use one common binding theme that these people
are Muslims who are suffering,
then I realised, "I feel exactly like those people.
I feel as abused as they do. I feel as helpless as they do."
And you just transfer that angst,
you just transfer that sense of grievance.
For someone like me, who didn't even know
where I fit in,
fighting for the path of Allah
was almost a transcendental emotion.
[Khan] I'd heard from his followers,
but what about Abu Muntasir himself, the leader?
What was his story before he became a jihadi warrior?
I went back to him and asked him about
his childhood in Bangladesh,
before his family moved to Britain.
I was born in '59, the first war with India
happened in 1965.
So I was five or six years old.
And I remember when I was eight,
taking a vow, to kill a Hindu.
Any random Hindu.
Even just to go out in the streets and randomly stab.
Just because someone is a Hindu.
Then the '71 war happened with Pakistan,
to liberate Bangladesh,
which was very graphic in terms of the atrocities committed.
I saw dogs eating dead bodies.
People walking around with bullet wounds crying for help.
My neighbour upstairs and downstairs were taken away
and shot and they were pleading us, "Oh, please help us.
When I was about 11 or 12 years old, that's when
my elder brother was murdered.
So that very much affected me because I was very close to him.
So I lost 22 of my relatives. And I hear horror stories
about them.
And although that was 30, 40 years ago,
it affects me more now
because I can visualise, imagine.
A dozen of them were taken out of their houses
and their throats were slit.
[Khan] I was beginning to hear
the deeper reasons
why some people might be susceptible to extremism.
But I also wanted to talk to ordinary young Muslims.
I wanted to hear their perspectives.
Alyas offered to help me out.
He told me he's now renounced the extremism
of his younger years.
He's now an imam in Bradford, and he works with
young Muslims.
He introduced me to some of them.
I wanted to hear what they had to say.
And to hopefully build more understanding between people,
so that they can hate and fear each other less.
I've been trying to get young people across the UK
to talk about this issue.
And talk about the impact of the War on Terror on them.
Zekarias, I know you've got a lot to say on this.
There is one emotion that comes out of it
and that is anger.
We all are angry, we all are angry about the fact
that we are being victimised,
that we are being stopped and searched at airports,
and being forced to give in our DNA
simply because we walk in with a thobe and a beard.
Or that we are being stopped and searched in the street for
being black or wearing a hoodie.
You attack people who behead soldiers
on the streets of London,
but yet you don't talk about US soldiers or UK soldiers
who go into villages and murder innocent people by the hundreds
and by the thousands.
-So... -[Khan] Who is you?
The UK government and citizens of the UK,
regular citizens of the UK.
Citizens, just normal citizens. And the media.
[Khan] So how does that make Muslims feel,
especially young Muslims feel?
Isolated, alienated, and angry.
It could convert into something positive,
which would be activism,
which would be campaigning to make sure the government
is held responsible
for, you know, certain policy measures
where they incriminate Muslim people,
young Muslim people, particularly.
Or it can be converted into negative areas.
And that's where you have groups.
-[Alyas] Extremism, violence. -Exactly.
[Khan] Zekarias is now a student
anti-racist campaigner.
I asked him about his childhood.
I was raised around Harrow in North London.
And back then it wasn't gentrified.
So there was a lot of white folks living there,
working class white people and very racist.
We used to be called niggers,
we used to be called coons, blackies, you name it.
I became aware of my race,
aware of my ethnicity at the age of five.
I knew what it felt to be ashamed
of the thickness of my nose,
or my lips, or the darkness of my skin,
or the texture of my hair.
I knew exactly what it felt to be like that.
[Khan] What's your dream?
My dream is to see the American empire fall.
And... I mean that, I genuinely mean that,
for all the harm that they've done.
To civilisations, to people, to communities,
to countries, to states.
[Khan] And dreams for your own life?
-My own life? -[Khan] Yes.
[mumbles]
I don't really know.
[Khan] Be happy?
Yeah, I guess, I guess everyone
wants happiness, I guess.
I'm a pessimist... I don't really
look at things optimistically,
so... but... or a realist, whatever.
But I don't know, don't know, can't say.
I think the biggest discussions I have with people
really is about them finding out who they are.
It's hard being young, it's even harder being young and Muslim.
It's harder being young and Muslim and being alone,
and it's even harder being young, Muslim and alone
in the War on Terror.
It's harder for you to get the same job
as your white counterpart, even if you're a graduate.
You're living in poorer areas, you're more likely
to be unemployed,
you are more likely to be stopped and searched
by the police.
No matter what you try to do to fit in,
to be a part of society,
you are always being othered and seen as an outsider.
And that is really deeply unsettling.
[Khan] In Birmingham, I was introduced
to Sabeel and Waseem.
Now you know what, I always say when I'm in England I'm a Paki.
That's what I get called. I'm in England
I get called a Paki.
And when I go to Pakistan, they're like,
"Oh, you're British."
They're calling me British.
So I really feel like I belong on an airplane,
just somewhere in between.
Just hovering, that's where I belong,
like, that's the middle ground. Because I feel like
I'm not going to have the chance
to have certain jobs and that,
you're just programmed to think, like,
you know, you're not good enough to have that certain job,
or that type of job is for that type of person.
You know, if I was younger and I says,
"I want to be a politician, or whatever,"
they would have laughed at me, they says,
"Come on, bruv. You're a Paki from Balsall Heath,
you can't... that's not for you," you know.
Why couldn't I be?
Why couldn't I be the prime minister
if I wanted to?
What, because I'm from Balsall Heath,
you can't have a prime minister that's from Balsall Heath?
But, automatically, even we feel like that.
Even we think like that. If one of my friends
wanted to do the same thing,
me having that programmed into my mind all that time
I'd probably say the same thing to him.
"Come on bruv, don't be silly.
You're gonna own a corner shop, and you're gonna drive a taxi."
You know, that's the stereotypical thing
what, you know, people are made to believe.
That's what we're going to do, that's just what we do.
You're told what to dream about, you know.
You're told that this is what you can achieve.
You being what you are, the religion you are,
the skin colour you are and from the area you are,
this is your limit.
The sky's not the limit for you.
[Khan] While I was filming,
a long-running terrorism case
was taking place at the Old Bailey in London.
Two brothers from Bradford had already pleaded guilty
to downloading jihadi manuals from the internet.
The prosecution also said they'd conspired to attend
a terrorist training camp,
but the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Now, they were waiting to see if they faced a retrial.
The court had been told the brothers had been
radicalised by their cousin,
Muhammed Shafaraz Ahmed, who is now
a convicted terrorist. So, we're hoping the judge
will concede with our argument
and will dismiss the matter today.
[woman] And do you feel hopeful? Do you feel that that's likely?
We are hopeful, because these are young lads
who are being groomed, in essence,
and the prosecution case concedes the fact
that they are being groomed by their cousin,
who is a convicted terrorist, who's facing 16 years
of a prison sentence.
[Khan] One of the brothers, Saeed,
agreed to talk to me.
He told me, despite the charge he was facing,
he never had any intention of going to join
a training camp abroad.
But he said his cousin had tried to radicalise him.
He said he had watched videos of extremist preachers,
like Anwar Al Awlaki,
intended to have a strong emotional impact
on vulnerable young people like him.
It puts that image inside you,
that these are the true warriors.
When I was feeling emotion just watching these videos,
you watch the Taliban and Al Qaeda,
you watch these sort of videos,
and you'll think you'll have some sympathy for them,
thinking that, look, these... they know how to fight,
they are representing Islam. That's how you feel,
but obviously later on, you start understanding
that look, this is not how it is supposed to be.
[Khan] Is it heroic?
That's how it makes you feel, yeah, you feel like a hero.
[Khan] What was your life like at the time?
It was just boring. I didn't really go out, no.
I never actually used to go out, play football.
I wasn't that type of person, I used to just be at home.
[Khan] Why is that?
That's the upbringing that I've had.
[Khan] Did you feel like a hero
in your life before that?
Uh, no, I didn't feel like I really achieved anything.
Going out and fighting felt like,
that's the best achievement to do.
Like, if you achieve martyrdom, then that's the best thing.
[Khan] Was your cousin nice to you?
Yeah, he was really nice to me.
Being with him, and going out with him,
it felt like... it was a different feeling,
or something that we've never done before.
[Khan] If you could be anything
in the world what would you do?
Um...
I don't really know.
[Khan] Alyas spends a lot of time
mentoring young Muslim men, many of whom have difficult
relationships at home.
I know from my own life,
that many South Asian families can be controlling.
Young people must obey their parents.
The fear of bringing shame on the family
can set unbearable limits on your dreams
and your choices.
Who you can marry, what you can study
and even what you can aspire to be in life.
In the South Asian context, you know,
there are lots of expectations, and this is the biggest one.
You cannot dishonour the family, you can't make them
ashamed of you.
And this creates loads of expectations
on young people
that they feel that they cannot meet.
They cannot achieve those expectations.
So often, they lead a double life.
[Khan] I felt this was starting
to get to the heart of why some young people
are drawn into extremism.
They crave acceptance, and they don't
feel they belong,
either in the family, or in the wider society.
Extremist groups exploit this.
When someone for the first time starts to understand you,
emotionally support you, put that arm around you.
Show compassion and love for you,
this is enormously powerful and compelling.
We unconditionally accept you. Brilliant, that's so powerful.
I always say to Pakistani parents,
tell your children you love them
and tell them you are proud of them,
because if you don't do that
you are actually creating massive rejection.
[Khan] I can imagine why the perceived glamour
and excitement of fighting might attract young men.
But I can't understand why young women would
want to leave the UK
and join an extremist organisation like
the Islamic state in Syria.
So Alyas introduced me to Yasmin.
Years ago, she joined an extremist group in the UK.
Although I find these groups to be deeply misogynist,
she said she found it a liberation.
This was a group where, again, we wanted to make history.
Our message, our visibility was powerful at that time.
You know, saying that women were part of this great structure.
If I look at myself at that time, it was just, like,
everyone was disgusting, everything was dirty.
We portrayed this or termed this as being the kuffar system,
the dirty kuffar system.
[Khan] She says, one day,
something happened
which made her realise how extreme she had become.
[Yasmin] I think the striking thing was
when I was called in at school
and the teacher said to me that, "Oh, we'd like to chat to you."
And I said, "OK, what's the matter?"
And she goes, "Look, I know you're good people."
I said, "What's happened?"
She said, "Well, you know, your child came up
and said that it's OK for us to kill, you know, non-Muslims."
And I thought, "Oh, my God. What is happening here?"
[Khan] She started to find her way
out of the extremist group and their mind-set.
But I still wanted to know why had she joined
in the first place.
Yasmin told me that, before she joined the extremists,
she had been the victim of sexual abuse.
She says she reported it to the police,
but the case was dropped for lack of evidence.
So imagine that, the hurt that I felt,
the hate that I felt.
Not only that the criminal justice system
had also let me down
because my case didn't go through court.
You are by yourself.
You know, you've got to carry all those issues into your life.
Where do you get the justice?
I wanted to see implementation of the Islamic State,
to see my perpetrator, to be accountable
for what he did.
My innocence was executed.
I wanted him to be... to see the pleasure of him
being executed in front of my very eyes.
[Khan] I asked Yasmin what she would
say to her 20-year-old self.
Girl, you just got to have a mind of your own.
Be critical, don't let anyone brainwash you.
OK. No matter what. I love this saying,
"The choices we make dictates the life that we lead."
Islam is a way living and not a way of death.
[man] Do you think Yasmin would have listened to you?
-Nah. -[laughing]
She'd be like, "Whatever." I'd probably smack her ennit,
around the head.
[Khan] Yasmin is now using
the benefit of her experience
to help young women out of extremism or abuse.
I was learning more and more to get beyond the caricature
of angry extremists,
to find the human reality which lies beneath it.
I found out that one of Alyas' causes
is to get the Muslim community to be more open about
the issue of sex for young people.
When it comes to sex,
who do you talk to about sex then?
Are you going to talk to your mum and dad about it?
-No. -[man] Highly unlikely.
Are you going to talk to your imam about it?
[man] Getting further away.
Even more less likely. Even in school,
you're uncomfortable with the whole thing
because you have been told at home that,
you know, these are not our values.
So already there's a discomfort there...
OK, because you feel that...
But talking about sex is a very important thing
and having guidance on that.
Where do you get the guidance from?
[Khan] I asked him about it later.
You know what, I was talking to my wife this morning
and I said,
"You know... I said, "This is all about sex.
This is all really, everything comes back
to basics."
And she said, "You can't say that, though."
But I said, "This is it, these guys just want girls.
That's all they want." She's says,
"You can't say that, though,
'cause you're going to get really lambasted for it."
Guys do things for girls. And that's it.
I'm there with my gun, which is more or less
just a penis extension, out there.
It is! Out there,
look at me, I got my gear on and I always say,
"You want to do it, dress up.
If you want to dress up go dress up somewhere
and, you know, do all that macho dress up stuff.
You know, but..."
OK, but really, you know,
it's a serious point.
It is a serious point, because if you grow up
and you are brought up with this value that you cannot
have sex before marriage.
That you cannot have a girlfriend.
That you cannot be, in any way,
this is something which is very big.
Haram. Very big prohibition for an individual.
Then you're growing up in a sexualised society.
There's a real sense of hate that you have
that, I can't do this, and that's why I find
greater sexual dysfunction sometimes in Muslim communities
as a result of that.
Now I'm a powerless person who's no one.
I'm never... I'm not even considered.
I don't even think I'm good looking, you know.
And who... and no girls looking at me.
But you know what, I'm a mujahid now.
I'm there with my gun, I'm powerful now. I'm sexy now.
Girls are going to look at me, and there's girls who will
want to become my bride now.
[Khan] In the end, I want to know
how people come out of the cycle of extremism
and violence.
Is there any hope?
People I met who'd embraced extremism in the past
told me they'd now renounced their views.
Even Abu Muntasir, one of the godfathers
of the British jihad,
eventually left violent extremism.
I asked him how it happened.
He told me that even while he was fighting throughout
the 1990s,
he was starting to form doubts.
Often it seemed to him,
that instead of defending Muslims against non-believers,
they were actually fighting other Muslims.
And again and again, he encountered corruption
and power battles amongst the Mujahideen leaders.
He says it all came to a head on his last jihad.
He went to fight in Burma, thinking he would be
defending the minority Muslim population,
against a repressive government.
I saw the corruption in the sense
that how we would...
the commanders of the upper echelons
would have privileged diet.
We are raising money here.
£100,000 at a go or something like that,
£50,000 cash we're giving to the Mujahedeen.
Half the money is going to the commander's son,
studying a degree course in Malaysia to pay for his fees.
We are justifying it, saying, "Well, you have to
support the commanders.
Without them how can the fight carry on?"
And nobody asks you, "Why does the fight have to carry on?"
The one story that affects me the most...
concerning Burma,
is in the jungles when I met two brothers.
Thirteen years old.
[exhales]
I tried to visualise my son and daughter
in the same position.
It's not the suffering of being in the jungle
and living in the dirt and eating poor food,
it's the idea and the picture of them,
my son and daughter, carrying guns to be maimed
or blown up at the behest of leaders and commanders
who fight for a false ideal and an unwinnable war.
And those two boys came to me.
My children may want to not go to school
and run away from homework.
They came to me, and they begged me
to take them with me
and they said they were not lying,
you can tell when people are lying.
Thirteen-year-olds telling me, "I just want to go to school."
[sobbing]
We can make the difference and we didn't.
[sniffling]
I'd rather live as slaves and have my kids go to school.
I don't want this false... What is this honour?
I am happy to be a coward.
Perhaps they are not alive today.
Already dead because very soon after that was the next meeting.
And the commander lined up all the platoon commanders,
there's eight in a platoon, and about 20 platoons
were lined up.
The average age is about 15. [clears throat]
And these two 13-year-olds were carrying grenade launchers,
machine guns, you know 13-year-olds.
And I'm over 40 years old. Dad of 12.
Still living, still smiling, going to parks.
And if I can, I should die to give them a chance for peace.
And I didn't. So I withdrew completely.
But the commander lined us all up,
platoon commanders,
and he made a special point to look at me.
And he was saying a speech, oh, they'd just come back
from a conflict and they have...
Two of our boys got killed, so on our side, two young,
those 13, 14-year-olds were killed.
Why were they killed?
Because they belonged to the wrong organisation.
Because the people who killed our boys
were a rival Muslim organisation
fighting for the same cause, for the same people.
So once again, Muslim against Muslim.
I said, "Yeah, this is what we are for,
what am I doing?"
We all talk about jihad and idealism and stuff.
[sighs deeply]
He looked at me and said, "And so and so.
Mr. so and so is our enemy."
and telling all these 20 times eight, 160-200 people,
you have to learn to kill your rival organisation
because they have killed your people.
Creating hatred and enmity amongst each other,
while the Burmese soldiers are happy in their camps,
the Burmese government couldn't care at all.
And we are in the jungles, not giving peace a chance
and just want to be supported in our jihad.
What jihad, I don't know, it's not jihad at all.
And in Britain, even mention this,
about jihad and they will jump up.
Women might give their jewellery in support of jihad
and men will want to go and fight and they will say,
you are a coward, or you have lost your faith,
or you have become a sellout.
It's fine. The short life will pass.
You will die. You may or may not
meet your lord.
I think I will. And then we'll see.
Anyway, that's when I stopped this whole foolishness.
[Khan] I had been trying to find out
why people become radical,
and if there is a way out of this madness.
I had met Munir, too.
As a teenager, he said he'd wanted
to kill and to die as a martyr,
and now, just like Abu Muntasir,
he says he's realised the real reasons
that he became an extremist.
For me, coming to terms with my physical state
has been the greatest realisation I've known
as a human being on this earth.
For me to be able to accept that I don't need to be ashamed
of how I look, and I don't need society
to tell me that I don't need to be ashamed.
My greatest jihad was, back then, coming to terms with me.
My greatest jihad, even today, is still
coming to terms with me.
And it sparked a journey of discovery
and realisation that I've carried forward for 18 years.
[Khan] He now works to de-radicalise
other young people,
and explores issues of pain and identity
through art and poetry.
Usama, once a bookish 19-year-old who went to jihad
with Abu Muntasir in Afghanistan,
is now an Imam in London who preaches moderation
and tolerance.
And as for Alyas, I asked him what he feels now
about Abu Muntasir,
the man who led him into extremism,
and to whom he gave the best years of his life.
[Khan] Do you forgive him?
Of course, I forgive him, yeah.
You know, it was just, you know...
You've got to realise we were all, even Abu Muntasir,
we were all young.
And we were foolish.
And we didn't have the whole picture. That was it.
So I think we've just got to realise that.
I can look back and I say, you know, this was just,
you know,
of course, with hindsight we can say,
I should have done this and I should have done that,
but the reality is that we were just young and foolish.
We have to forgive and the forgiveness is,
you could say, also supported by the fact that people
try to make amends,
you know, and try to redress the damage that they've done.
[Khan] In September last year,
Saeed and his brother
were told they wouldn't have to face a retrial
Saeed was given a suspended sentence of 22 months
for the offences he did admit, and his brother 15 months.
Their cousin was given 16 years in prison.
Many of the men and women I have met had embraced
a stronger Islamic identity as a way of expressing anger.
[speaks indistinct] [Khan]
Everyone is different.
Not all Muslims feel alienated
and the majority of Muslims reject extremism.
And the two men I met in Birmingham, Sabeel and Waseem,
told me that adopting Islam was a way of becoming
a better person.
All it's done for me and my life is made me a better person.
It's made me a nicer person.
It's sorted out the relationship problems
that I was having between me and my parents.
It's sorted out the problems that I was having between,
you know, friends and being in the right crowds.
It's sorted out me making a legal living.
I used to be dangerous. I used to be dangerous,
but all of us, you know, now we're nicer people.
You wouldn't have this interview with me,
we wouldn't be sitting here
talking to you four years ago, trust me.
If we knew that you're coming into our area
and you've got those expensive cameras.
We're going to find a way to take 'em off ya.
We ain't going to sit here and talk to you about,
you know, about anything.
Or they'll be coming out of Lahore's at 5:00 o'clock.
Yeah... sneaky one, make the phone call,
that's how it would happen.
But, yo, it's made us, Alhamdulillah.
-It's made us better people. -Definitely.
Why on the news are you always picking the guy
that looks the angriest?
We're not angry. I'm not angry. I'm a happy person.
Come and speak to me, I'll smile,
you know, I'll do the same things that you do.
I'm just as British as anybody else, you know.
Why do you think I'm angry at the world?
Like, you know, why do you always pick that one person
to go on the news that's always angry
at everybody else?
Maybe he's got some personal problems
that he's not happy about.
You know, he can't represent me.
[Khan] During the 18 months
I spent making this film,
even my own friends were sceptical.
They said I shouldn't try to understand extremists.
They said they are just monsters,
that they are throwing away comfortable lives in the West
and we should just let them go and kill themselves.
But here is I what I have learned.
I came to understand that radicalisation is about pain.
It's the pain of young people, facing racism,
exclusion from society, isolation from
the opposite sex,
overwhelming pressure from families and communities,
a crisis of identity and feeling powerless
and insignificant.
Yes, many of them have material comforts,
but I believe too many of them lead lives
of emotional poverty.
And what I also found is that people can
come out of extremism and rebuild their lives.
So I said to my friends, "There is hope
and we shouldn't give up.
We need to look beyond what divides us
and come together to create a society where we all belong."
I ended up where I started, with Abu Muntasir.
Since he renounced extremism,
he has become a moderate voice
in the British Muslim community,
doing interfaith work and promoting a tolerant
and compassionate expression of Islam.
I asked him if he thinks he will be forgiven
for the harm
that he did in his extremist days.
Why am I not arrested, I don't know.
I hope I'm not arrested because I want to do
much good in society.
I want to educate people. I want to tell others
how to be better in being at home in your community.
And if you don't want to do that,
people decide it's not worth it, they are too nervous,
do what you want, it's legal, just, fair.
I have my reward with God, whether you kill me
or let me live,
I want to die with a clean conscience.
And that's what Islam is about.
[Khan] Do you think you should be forgiven?
Do you feel you should be forgiven?
If I've done those things which have terribly upset people
or hurt people, I should be forgiven.
I should forgive others as well.
Don't forget that for me, personally,
I had my elder brother killed.
I have forgiven. I have truly forgiven,
I will embrace, I will shake hands.
I will work with my murderers...
my brother's murderers,
hand in hand. Even if my mother
cries at my feet and says,
"Son, what are you doing? He killed your brother."
I will say, "No, Mum. I am a Muslim,
I have forgiven, God will judge."
I cannot hate. Hate is not what
Mohammed taught.
Salla llahu walay-hi wa-alehe-wa-sallam.
I have been forgiven, I will forgive.
That's the least I can do.
You have a right to punish me if you think that's fair.
I will take it on.
[Khan] Have you forgiven yourself?
[sniffling]
[sniffling continues]
[breathes deeply]
How do I look?
[Khan indistinct]
Let's continue.
I don't know.
How do you answer that?