Islamic State is notorious for releasing images of beheadings, yet the group also produces a stream of sophisticated propaganda videos, and is beginning to shift away from the ultra-violence that provokes international outrage.
A new series of videos produced by the group’s in-house Al Hayat production company has matched skilful production with appeals to western youth. These emphasise the excitement of battle but also the supposed utopia that Isis, as it is also known, is creating in Iraq and Syria.
Experts said that a video titled Let’s Go for Jihad sought to offer an intoxicating impression of the lives of young western jihadists through rapid editing effects commonly used in Hollywood movies.
The five-minute video features pounding music and violence, including killings, but shies away from the lingering gore of previous videos in favour of excitement and exhortations.
“Isis has consistently had the best video out there, really from the start,” said Shiraz Maher, senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. “It is fast- action stuff, motivational religious songs.”
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Previous films, such as The Clashing of Swords, were apparently intended to intimidate by showing the full horror and casual cruelty of Isis militants as they killed prisoners in mass murders.
That is starkly different from a new set of videos, coyly entitled the Mujatweets series, that include no violence and conjure 90-second visions of communal happiness and high living standards under Isis rule. The professionally shot short films feature fighters speaking French, German and English. One episode features blond children playing with guns and waving Isis flags.
A video released in July showed a five-minute interview with Andre Poulin, 24, a Canadian Muslim convert who died in Syria last year. It presented Poulin and his fellow jihadists as “regular Joes”, and featured images of him fishing and playing ice hockey in Canada. Poulin was shown saying: “Before I come here to Syria, I had money, I had family, I had good friends, I had colleagues. You know I worked as a street janitor — I made over $2,000 a month. It was a very good job, a very good job.”
The video ends with footage of Poulin running across a battlefield before being killed. A graphic image of his corpse is shown as he is hailed a martyr.
“The most significant evolution is that they don’t want people to record and disseminate beheadings,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorist Radicalisation in Washington. “They realise they have an image problem. They don’t prohibit beheadings but they do prohibit dissemination of them. They are finally understanding that a lot of the imagery could be harmful to them.”
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Mr Gartenstein-Ross said that he believed Isis was feeling the backlash. “They have done immense damage to their own brand. They are an organisation with a lot of weaknesses. I think al-Qaeda have dealt much better with the problems inherent in their DNA and that is why I think al-Qaeda are the more long-term threat. Isis has alienated everyone it possibly could.”