Was The State shocking? No, just a silly f lop

CHANNEL 4’s drama The State – about British recruits heading to Syria to sign up with Islamic State – was, in the end, a flop and an evasion. I doubt if anyone will be encouraged to join IS by it. But so what? It has to be judged in other ways.

Above all, it couldn’t explain why any educated, aware, intelligent British Muslims would have hurried to Raqqa. Dim, hate-filled fanatics wouldn’t have been surprised by the medieval subjection of women, the slavery, the head-chopping and the indoctrination of children, as so many of the programme’s characters were. They would have welcomed it. That’s what they went there for.

And why would someone, who had been so appalled by Islamic State in practice that she risked her life to get away, object to a request from MI5 to report on IS activity in her community back in Britain? This silly scene was just Channel 4 being its teenage Leftist self. Those who join these movements aren’t, for the most part, the educated, idealistic types we were shown here. They are criminal low-lifes, violent, spiteful, ignorant and permanently damaged by drugs.

Again, you’d need a microscope to notice it, but the alleged ringleader of the Barcelona gang, Abdelbaki Es Satty, had done time for dope smuggling, and dope paraphernalia was found at the ‘safe house’ in Ripoll, used by the supposed driver of the death van, Younes Abouyaaqoub.