screenshots from Channel 4's 'The State'"The State" is a four-part television serial written and directed by Peter Kosminsky, dramatising the experiences of young British Muslims going to Syria to join ISIS.
The series opens with the young recruits heading to Syria as if they are travelling to a summer camp and the complexity of this life-changing experience is neither explored nor caught. Kosminsky’s decision not to provide a context or character back stories in order not to glamorise ISIS weakens the series. Unlike his epic work, The Promise, whose characters’ mindsets is made clear to viewers, The State leaves them in the dark when it comes to the motives behind the radicalisation of such reasonable, intelligent young people. The drama could have gone further if it explored the reasons why young men and women decide to leave their comfortable life, mainly in the west, to embark on an arduous journey through many countries and join ISIS, without propagating their ideology. This is unexpected from a usually daring and courageous writer and director, who treads where others wouldn’t dare.
If you stuck your ear to the ground throughout the series you will hear them whispering their motives. They list racism, British foreign policy, establishing an Islamic Caliphate, or just thrill-seeking. Fighting the Assad regime, which many cite as the main reason behind their travel to Syria is mentioned in passing in the final episode. Many young men and women couldn’t resist the lure of an Islamic utopia: an easy, dignified life, under a 'just caliphate', and access to marriage or sex slaves, which is spun and spewed on social media by the propaganda machine of ISIS. Their odyssey begins and the consequences are tragic.
