stephen c
Never gets past the kind of introductory material you could find online
Written and directed by Ciaran Cassidy, Jihad Jane tells the stories of Colleen LaRose (the eponymous Jihad Jane) and Jamie Paulin Ramirez (Jihad Jamie), two forty-something white American women who were separately radicalised by Islamic extremists online and brought into an al-Qaeda plot to kill artist Lars Vilks. Dubbed the "new face of terrorism" by the almost comically ill-informed and sensationalist American news media, LaRose and Ramirez were ultimately revealed as two fragile and damaged women, each of whom had a history of abuse and were more interested in finding a sense of belonging than in politics. The film is a decent enough overview of the subject, but there's very little here that you can't find on Wikipedia, with Cassidy failing to engage with the more interesting sociological themes behind LaRose and Ramirez's stories.
In 2012, LaRose met a Muslim man in an elevator in Amsterdam and became interested in Islam. Watching YouTube videos of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, she began to interact with a user called Black Flag, who invited her to join a jihadi chatroom, soon revealing (in unencrypted conversations) that he was the leader of an al-Qaeda cell in County Waterford in the Republic of Ireland, convincing both LaRose and Ramirez to join him. and tasking them with killing Lars Vilk, a Swedish artist who had published a series of drawings depicting Muhammad as a roundabout dog.
Jihad Jane isn't really about Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda, or even terrorism in general. Rather, it's about how radicals target damaged individuals and how easily such people can become radicalised. It also looks, rather too briefly, at the sensationalism of the American news media. Presenting an absurd scenario wherein white Americans would join al-Qaeda en masse, no one, it seems, ever stopped to ask why LaRose and Ramirez were specifically targeted – what was it in their lives that left them vulnerable to radicalisation. On this subject, Cassidy paints a picture of abuse, neglect, and a complete absence of any self-worth. That it was Islamic extremists that got to them is almost arbitrary; they could just as easily have been indoctrinated into a book club – they were vulnerable to any group that offered them a sense of belonging.
However, despite the incredible story and fascinating main players, Jihad Jane didn't really work for me. Apart from looking at LaRose and Ramirez's vulnerability, perhaps the most interesting theme in their story is the culpability of the media in fanning the fires of paranoia and promulgating the belief that without the "War of Terror", an army of white American al-Qaeda soldiers would storm the White House and establish a jihadi state in Washington, DC. Instead, the film reveals the cell in Waterford to be comically inefficient. However, Cassidy disappointingly glosses over the media's complicity, and although he does show some clip of news anchors prophesying doom, he doesn't go anywhere with it, which is a real shame, as the LaRose and Ramirez stories are tailor-made to expose the illogical grip that Islamophobia has in the US.
There are other problems as well. For example, Cassidy fails to draw much of a distinction between ordinary Muslims and Islamic fundamentalists, which is unforgivable in a documentary of this nature. He also lets Vilks off the hook during his interview. Vilks is a narcissist, an empty provocateur who seems to enjoy aggravating Muslims, but Cassidy never pushes him on why. Finally, and this is a small aesthetic thing – Cassidy leaves almost every interview hanging for a good 1-3 seconds too long; after the interviewee is finished speaking, Cassidy waits to cut away, leaving an awkward 'dead air' that really started to get on my nerves as the film progressed.
All in all, Jihad Jane will tell you little you can't find on Wikipedia or in the four-part Reuters article about LaRose. It's one of those documentaries that has no business being shown in the cinema, as it's visually bland and relies far too heavily on talking heads. I didn't hate it, and I suppose it is a decent starting point if you're interested in looking into the case in more detail, but it offers nothing beyond cursory introductory material.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
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