“Jihadi John” is a real issue, not a cartoon villain

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter watching the abhorrent 10-minute video released by ISIS earlier this week, it is clear what their intentions are. What is unclear is why the breadth of the international media, and notably the tabloid titles, feel the urge to immediately distil the complex story into a soundbite. The nauseous namesake billed by The Sun’s front page a day after the video was released referred to the child at the end of the video as “Jihadi Junior”, an extension of the long-running coinage of his predecessor, “Jihadi John”. I fail to understand why this happens so readily in our newsrooms.

We make this man sound like a cartoon character.

The terrifying masked figure in the video declares that Daesh (note: not Islamic State) will continue to “wage jihad, break borders and one day invade your land” and concludes by shooting the kneeling, handcuffed man in front of him in the back of the head. And we make this man sound like a cartoon character. I understand the premise of naming a terrorist. We hope to humanise something that appears to be monstrous. We rob them of the power and superiority they seek by making it clear that they are as vulnerable and irrational as the rest of us. But, on this occasion, we are trivialising the issue.

Jihadi John or Junior sounds a bit like Postman Pat, a children’s character that you could find in a comic book. The inherent ridicule that comes from this, while deliberate, does not tackle the issue but makes it into entertainment. The proof of this is the fact that “Jihadi John” returns in a new form in this video. This process of trivialisation has not worked – a new person has neatly slotted into the role of this villain and five more victims have been murdered as a result. They have been labelled as British spies, but sources claim that these were local citizens who passed on images and videos to the UK intelligence services. What strikes me about this is the fact that these victims appear to be Muslims and the masked man promotes an “Islamic” state, although the irony seems to be lost on him. There have been more Muslims than any other race or creed killed in these conflicts and yet this remains severely unreported or even ignored for the sake of these ridiculous soundbites.

 If we continue to absorb these pathetic soundbites at the expense of the more complex issues, then these executions will continue.

The rise of fanatic Wahhabism, conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Gulf States and the disenfranchisement of modern day Muslims in Western countries create the product of this “Jihadi John”. It has been widely reported that he has a London accent. The individuals who perpetrated the Paris attacks and stormed Charlie Hedbo’s offices were disenfranchised Parisians living in an increasingly poor suburb in France.Many critics have labelled the video a desperate attempt by Daesh to recover some much needed credibility after losing Ramadi this week. Whilst this may be true, it does not begin to explain the reasons why we do not seem to be taking these threats seriously. These are real people that live close to us, albeit on the fringes, while we continue to make them sound like paper villains. If we continue to absorb these pathetic soundbites at the expense of the more complex issues, then these executions will continue.

They will always have an audience. It is only when we stop trying to find quick fixes, remove these meaningless labels and actually look at our communities that we can find a solution to eliminating the threat that Daesh poses. Until then, let’s hope that we don’t see any more videos.