A Portrait of the Islamic State’s British Propagandist Ifthekar Jaman

A Portrait of the Islamic State’s British Propagandist Ifthekar Jaman

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, British police estimate that at least 700 British Muslims are believed to have traveled to that country to fight for various jihadist groups (BBC, September 18). Few have so far achieved significant leadership positions or any enduring stature, largely due to the high rate of attrition among fighters, their poor Arabic and their general lack of battlefield ability. Others who may have potentially emerged as a significant terrorist threat have been deliberately eliminated. These include Junaid Hussain and Reyaad Khan, two British Muslims who were killed in a Royal Air Force drone strike in Syria in September after evidence emerged that they “were involved in actively recruiting ISIL [Islamic State] sympathizers and seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the West (Gov.uk, September 7). However, aside from these, one individual particularly stands out—Ifthekar Jaman, who was killed by Syrian government forces in the east of the country in December 2013. Jaman, who was just 23 years old when he was killed, was noteworthy for his role in the propaganda operations of the Islamic State’s previous incarnation—the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. There is growing evidence that the example he provided to Islamist militants, both through his life and the violent manner of his death, continues to inspire other British jihadists.

Born in the UK to first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants, Ifthekar Jaman was brought up in the southern English town of Portsmouth, where his family ran an Indian restaurant. Unlike many other Western jihadists, he reportedly had a stable upbringing and did not adopt hardline Islamism as a radical response to an earlier messy involvement in drinking, drug use or crime. On the contrary, in his early teens, his parents sent him to an Islamic boarding school in London for a year, which seems to have imbued him with both an enduring sense of piety and a strong Islamic identity (Newsweek, January 23). Illustrating this piety, upon his return to Portsmouth from London in his late teens, he was active in the “Portsmouth Dawa Team,” a small group of Salafists seeking to convert others to Islam, often through setting up stalls and engaging with passersby on the city’s high street (Telegraph, August 23, 2014; New Statesman, November 6, 2014). He also had a job in a call center, where he interacted with non-Muslim colleagues without incident; after his death, one non-Muslim colleague who attended a memorial service for him described him as “very passionate about his faith… very devout and always very polite” (Portsmouth News, December 19, 2013).

At the same time, however, for reasons presently unknown, he also adopted a more hardline ideological stance, likely as a result of radicalization, at least partially online. For instance, British media had reported that before traveling to Syria, he had tweeted praise for Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American English-language al-Qaeda preacher who was killed in a drone strike in 2011 (BBC, November 21, 2013). In early 2013, having told his parents that he was going to the Middle East to study, Jaman traveled to Turkey before crossing into Syria thanks to a chance encounter in Turkey with a Syrian extremist-sympathizer from Aleppo. He initially hoped to join Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in the country, but he was rejected due to his lack of jihadist credentials (New Statesman, November 6, 2014). As a result, he subsequently joined ISIS, which was apparently willing to accept foreign volunteers who had not been explicitly vouched for by current jihadists. Jaman’s exact motives for seeking to join first Jabhat al-Nusra, and then ISIS, remain slightly obscure. Although he later told British media that he had joined ISIS to do his “duty” as civilians were “being slaughtered,” it is likely that the group’s commitment to both enforcing Shari’a and to, in the long-run, pursuing a global jihadist agenda was at least part of the attraction, as demonstrated by his previous praise for al-Awlaki (BBC, November 21, 2013)

Once in Syria, ISIS quickly recognized Jaman’s value as an online propagandist, spreading the group’s message through social media and engaging online with would-be volunteers. This was likely partly because at the time, months before its offensive in northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, the group was still relatively little-known and, as a result, lacked an extensive cadre of internet-savvy, English-speaking volunteers. Although Jaman was relatively coy about his exact role in ISIS, the group appears to have accommodated him some distance from the frontlines, apparently in a facility dedicated to online media work. For instance, in his online comments, Jaman alluded to working with ISIS’s media team and even offering them advice, saying: “I’m also suggesting to the media team to take women to join the media war” (Ask.fm, November 14, 2013). Elsewhere, he said that “the doula [ISIS] place I’m at now has installed internet in the building with wifi for us,” which is again suggestive of the relatively stable rear-area location where the group prioritized online work (Ask.fm, November 11, 2013).

Once established online, Jaman rapidly gained a significant following of would-be jihadists in the West, putting out his message through a variety of platforms, including Twitter (where he had 3,000 followers) and Instagram, as well as videos. Although Jaman shared photos of himself posing with weapons, many of his conversations focused on more mundane aspects of life with ISIS, deliberately downplaying the risks. In one widely quoted online remark, he said: “There are those who think that the Jihad in Syria is 24/7 fighting but it’s much more relaxed than that. They’re calling it a five star jihad” (Channel4, February 5, 2014). Separately, in a question-and-answer session on the online forum Ask.fm, he reassured one would-be jihadist that there was no need to speak Arabic before coming to Syria, saying he “knew only a tiny bit of Arabic… There are many like you & you will fit in [Inshallah] with the help of Allah,” (The National, [UAE], December 9, 2013; Ask.fm, November 10, 2013). In other social media posts, he shared diverse photos showing fighters relaxing, landscapes and even kittens, although he was clear about his motives: “The reason why I share so much is to show you how it is, the kittens, the landscape, etc, hoping to make you see the beauty of it & come” (New Statesman, November 6, 2014). At the same time, Jaman remained firmly committed to imposing ISIS’s hardline Islamic vision, apparently seeing no contradiction between his desire to fight “oppression” while simultaneously helping the group to forcibly impose its interpretation of Shari’a on Syria’s people, which he described as “trying to establish the law of God, the law of Allah” (BBC, December 17, 2013). Much of his media work therefore had a dual purpose: to make jihad seem both attainable and relatively risk-free to non-Arabic speaking Muslims in the West, but at the same time a glorious, noble struggle against evil.

Through his media work, Jaman is known to have convinced at least one group of five other British men to travel to Syria, including three close friends and relatives from Portsmouth, although his real influence is likely to have been considerably greater (Channel4, February 5, 2014). The group of five, which included his cousin Asad Uzzaman, traveled to Turkey in October 2013, flying inconspicuously on a tourist flight to the Mediterranean resort of Antalya, before crossing into Syria (Guardian, July 27). As well as providing them with ideological inspiration, Jaman was later found to have also offered them large amounts of practical advice, including what clothes to bring and how much money was needed to purchase weapons, and probably facilitated their actual crossing into Syria (CPS, 2014). The group of five, who styled themselves the “Bangladeshi Bad Boys Brigade,” achieved only brief fame. Although they managed to cultivate their own social media profiles, inspiring further foreign fighters, four of them were killed in Syria within a year. The fifth returned to the UK and was arrested and imprisoned—the first UK citizen jailed on terrorism charges for involvement in jihadist activity in Syria (Portsmouth News, December 5, 2014).

In December 2013, in what was apparently his first actual involvement in combat, Jaman was killed by a Syrian government tank-shell in the village of Ghazwa al-Khair, near the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, reportedly while attacking an arms depot (Financial Times, March 28, 2014). In retrospect, it is clear that ISIS made a serious mistake in allowing this practically untrained individual take part in this operation; his value to the group was far greater online than on the battlefield. Death has not ended Jaman’s influence, however. Shortly after his death, Osmaan Majid, a community worker in Scotland, recorded and distributed online an audio eulogy for him, describing Jaman as a “martyr” and calling him “handsome.” The eulogy also said that he died “in a way pleasing to Allah,” adding that “this guy looks like what the prophet would have looked like” (Daily Record, January 25). Jaman’s brother, Mustakim, also told the British media: “He died protecting the people. He fought for his God and the people itself… His martyrdom is such a noble way to go out” (Channel4, February 4, 2014). In October 2015, Mustakim and another brother were convicted of providing assistance for fighters traveling to Syria, including by using their bank accounts to transfer money for the fighters, a move likely partly inspired by their brother’s example (Portsmouth News, October 21). Material found on laptops used by the family included recorded sermons by the deceased Yemeni-American al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, underlining that their commitment to jihad in Syria was at least partly influenced by ideas of global, anti-Western jihadism (Portsmouth News, May 5).

These continuing developments, including online eulogies and fresh involvement in plots by his family, underline how the train of events set in motion by Jaman, both through his actions and through the example of his “martyrdom” in Syria, continue to reverberate. They further show the powerful influence that a single individual foreign jihadist can have through their social media work—especially if, as in the case of Jaman, the Islamic State successfully recognizes their potential and provides them the space, time and internet facilities to dedicate themselves to this task. At the same time, for now at least, the heavy attrition of foreign fighters in Syria, both through drone strikes and due to their short life expectancy on the actual battlefield, is preventing other such individuals from gaining similar prominence. Therefore, although Jaman, unlike other English-speaking radical propagandists such al-Awlaki, leaves no significant body of work or thought behind, his example nonetheless shows the dangers that can arise when a native English speaker, who knows how to communicate with their target audience of young disillusioned Muslims in the West, joins forces with an active militant group, such as the Islamic State, in pursuit of a common cause.

James Brandon is a political and security risk analyst.