The News Minute| June 21, 2014| 8.30 am IST
A chilling recruitment video titled “There is no life without jihad” has been posted on You Tube, and featured five men claiming to be British and Australian calling for Muslims in the Western world to join Jihad in Syria and Iraq.
The film posted by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), has been taken off by YouTube, but is a chilling reminder that radical groups are engaging more in social media campaigns. The video that has three British citizens has surfaced just days after Kurdish intelligence officers told British media that around 450 Britons had joined the jihad in Iraq and could be used to later attack UK.
One person in the video have been identified as 20 year old Nasser Muthana, a medical student from Cardiff. His younger brother 17-year old Aseel too is reportedly in Syria.
Their father Ahmed Muthana has told the Daily Mail that he has disowned then and if they ever return to the UK, he would love to see them go to jail. Daily Mail says that Muthana who has been offered places to study medicine by four universities, secretly went to Syria in November, 2013. His younger brother left to Syria in February this year.
Ahmed Muthana also claimed that his sons had been 'brainwashed' after they began worshipping at different mosques.
The thirteen minute long video has been professionally shot and Nasser Muthana is called ‘Abu Muthanna Al Yemeni’ in the video.
He says, "We understand no borders. We have participated in battles in Sham [Syria] and in a few days we will go to Iraq and will fight them, and will even go to Lebanon and Jordan, wherever our Sheikh [ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] wants to send us. Send us, we are your sharp arrows. Throw us at your enemies, wherever they may be."
Another 'Briton' featured in the video says, identified as Abu Bara' al-Hindi says: "Are you willing to sacrifice the fat job you have got, the big car you have got, the family you have? Are you willing to sacrifice this for the sake of Allah? "To all my brothers living in the west, I know how you feel [from] when I used to live there. In the heart you feel depressed. The cure for the depression is jihad."
Charles Lister, a terrorism expert at the Brookings Doha Centre, told The Independent: “Videos like this are but one facet of an all-encompassing strategy aimed at encouraging recruitment of foreign fighters. ISIS has proved remarkably adept at managing a slick - sometimes decentralised - media operation, which always stays loyal to the group’s central objective, which is to remain and expand.”
