The State

The premise is simple so I will skip that. The Muslim Jihad is a call to arms for all Muslims regardless of one's life in the false world. Those who have been called are fed propaganda by the previous waves of fighters who answered the call to jihad.

We learn that each person truly wants and believes in their faith. They each want to believe in the struggle and participate in their own way. We also learn that the Mujahadeen or soldiers know this is a losing battle. For them it is a path to shaheed or martyrdom. This is the ultimate gift from God.

But what each person thought they were seeking in their faith or even their own personal lives cannot be had in the caliphe or Islamic State. Each person has a different challenge that defies the teachings of the hadith or prophet.

They each learn that it isn't the lies but the truth that scares them.

Great portrayal of the heinous nature of ISIS. And how regular British Muslims can get sucked in by the internet propaganda. And then are shocked when they actually arrive and see the true nature of these people supposedly called Muslims. When they are just extremists like every Religion has. It really put into perspective for me that Christians & Muslims are not that different. And both have radical extremists that use religion as an excuse for violent and offensive behavior. I don't know how anyone saw this as propaganda for ISIS. Who would want to live that way? It wasn't glorified at all. It showed the harsh reality of everyday life. And it didn't look fun to me.

Those who low rated this TV series and called it preposterous, alleging that intelligent people who have heard about ISIS crimes via the media would not naively go to Syria to join the Jihad, completely missed the point, which is that people believe what they want to believe and shut out anything which does not fit their belief. If this was not so, there would be no major religions and no one would smoke cigarettes or drive drunk.

Who in their right mind would believe in a heaven somewhere up in the clouds with pearly gates guarded by golden haired angels, or that a destructive evil named Satan ruled over an everlasting fiery pit. There are those in the Southern US who firmly believe that the Bible was written in English by Jesus Christ, and that Jesus was a blue eyed Anglo Saxon. If people can believe that the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago, that a savior was born to a virgin and after his death he rose again for 40 days, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they will believe anything.

Many otherwise intelligent people firmly believe in the lost continent of Atlantis, others that all the ancient ruins such as the pyramids and the temples of Central America were built by aliens as if ancient humans were not able to work things out for themselves. It is the same with those who run off to join the Jihad. Some are impressionable youths, but as in the case of Shakira, others might actually believe they are going to do good. They have closed their minds to whatever challenges their belief or brainwashing. Just as we had fanatical religious martyrs in the past dying for their faith, we now have martyrs dying for the Islamic faith. The fanatical Christians were created saints and venerated for their beliefs, so were hermits, monks and nuns who lived in severe hardship and discomfort and spent their days praying.

I did find some of the characters acted stupidly, but had they not been a little on the naive side they would never have gone to Syria in the first place. I certainly did not find the series a recruitment tool for ISIS as some viewers and reviewers seemed to. More like Reefer Madness being a considered a deterrent for marijuana use.

Story of 4 Brits going out to Syria to support IS state in the overthrow of the Syrian regime. As the majority of British Moslems are Sunni and IS state supports the Sunni Muslims against the Shia followers, it doesn't take much effort for Sunni Muslims in Britain to go and support their fellow believers in Syria. The series pulls no punches of the brutality of the IS State and shows where it ignores the teachings of Mohammed "for their own ends" thereby corrupting the teachings of Islam. You can see how the four Brits start to slowly realize that the teachings of Islam is not really the main force of the IS leadership, they are looking for power and control and are just using the teachings of Mohammed, to lure the stupid and vulnerable, for their own ends. It shows how decent people are used, against their wishes to be humane, because of a corrupt ideology.

An excellent series that shows a good preliminary work of investigation in order to make it as realistic as possible. It is neither by far nor by near, an apology for Islamic radicalism and violence; show only a naked reality that, whether we like it or not, exists and which is not worth ignoring. The most attentive viewer will find during the 04 episodes not only the large references associated with ISIS (free and medieval violence, religion, the situation of women, accepted and justified slavery, but also small references to the bombing of civilian targets, former officers of Saddam who, by being ostracized and persecuted in the Iraq, formed the backbone of senior officers who allowed ISIS to have some success at the beginning of the expansion of the Califado, as well as the relevant issue of advertising and its dissemination in social networks. To see without reservations ...