In the Skin of a Jihadist: Inside Islamic State's Recruitment Networks

“Don’t forget, you’re mine now. You belong to me for eternity. Do you understand? Don’t forget!”

When French freelance journalist Anna Erelle (a pseudonym) first got in contact with Abu Bilel Al-Firanzi, an Islamic State (ISIS) fighter of French-Algerian origin, while researching a story, she had little inkling of the potential consequences of her action. Posing as a young Muslim convert interested in finding out more about ISIS, within a few months Erelle found herself effectively married to the terrorist and planning to undertake a journey to the fraught border between Turkey and ISIS-controlled Syria.

Things didn’t go entirely to plan, however, and Erelle was forced to go underground, hiding from the very organisation she had sought to expose after they issued a fatwa calling for her execution. What started as simple journalistic curiosity and an eye for a story swiftly turned into one of the most psychologically gruelling and physically dangerous chapters of her life. In the process, however, she gained a valuable insight into to recruiting tactics of ISIS fighters, and especially the tools and tactics they use to groom vulnerable young women to join their cause.

Predictably, Erelle has now written a book about her experience, In the Skin of a Jihadist, whose publication earlier this year coincided with rising public concern about the number of young Western women willing to risk their lives to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State. The front cover image of the book captures this mood perfectly; a sensationalised portrait of the black-shrouded figure of a female “terrorist”, only her heavily made up eyes visible amidst layers of black fabric. It is an image that also succeeds in capturing the tone of the book itself: amateurish, chatty, arrogant, and Orientalist.

Erelle paints an extremely personal portrait of the events that took her from professional journalist to jihadi bride – so personal, indeed, that we learn more about her life and of her alias “Mélodie” than we do about the Islamic State or the young recruits who aspire to fight for it. We are given a blow by blow account of the back story Erelle has invented for her alter ego, everything from her childhood growing up in a broken home, to her run-ins with a bad crowd, to her obsession with rappers Mister You and Diam, to her eventual conversion to Islam.

“Mélodie’s difficult life made her into a ticking time bomb,” Erelle writes, “She didn’t wish anyone harm, except perhaps herself. Life itself was flaying her alive.”

The problem with these exercises in psychological realism – quite apart from their reliance on worn tropes and stereotypes and the sheer self-consciousness of the writing – is that they distract from the real story, that of ISIS and its recruitment tactics, and instead place the focus on the imaginary character that Erelle has conjured into existence for her own purposes. The entire book blurs the line between non-fiction and confessional monologue, and reads something like a teenage diary, rather than a work of professional journalism. As Erelle herself admits later in the book: “This story went beyond professional interest; it was personal.” The problem is, the book is too.

The cumulative result of these extended passages of personal introspection and fictional musings leaves the reader with the impression that Erelle has very little to say about ISIS itself, beyond the key facts previously published in a number of articles, and that the book is an exercise in publicity and self-promotion more than a work of investigative journalism in itself. A recent New York Timesinterview with a 23-year-old Christian girl groomed to join Islamic State, for example, sheds more light on ISIS and its recruitment tactics than the entire 230 pages of Erelle’s book.

In the Skin of a Jihadist may be worth reading for an interesting, if amateurish, exercise in introspection and character construction, but for a true insight into the inner workings of the Islamic State, best to look elsewhere.