This film is 20 minutes of interviews with former friends of Warren Christopher Clark, a Texan who travelled to Syria to work for the Islamic State. The documentary is not satisfying because it gives very little information.
He has been a practicing Muslim since high school. He was a lonely kid who didn't fit in. The Muslim kids were nice to him, so he converted to their religion. Over the years that they knew him his views got more and more extreme. His friends didn't know what to make of it. They wondered if he was an FBI agent looking for Muslim extremists. We never learn what he actually did.
The following is what I discerned from news stories. Clark is a 34 year old Muslim convert and former substitute teacher. His parents are veterans and retired teachers. He got a degree in political science from the University of Houston in 2007. Starting in 2011 he made statements on social media expressing support for jihadist and terrorist actions. He taught English in Saudi Arabia from 2012 to 2014. He crossed into Syria from Turkey in June 2015. He was seeking a position teaching English at a university in Mosul, which is occupied by ISIS. U.S.-backed forces captured him in Syria on January 6, 2019 when he was trying to escape ISIS territory.
Clark says he never fought for ISIS and that he was repeatedly detained for refusing to take up arms for them. He appears to accept violence to advance Muslim extremism. He talked in an interview with NBC about witnessing public crucifixions and how "that's just normal life there. This is Islamic society, an Islamic country, so things like that happen." He said it didn't bother him to see the executions because that's what he went there to see. Why he went: "I wanted to go see exactly what the group was about, and what they were doing...I wanted to learn more about the ideology. I'm a political science major, global business minor. I like politics. I like travel, world events."
He was indicted in US federal court in Houston on January 23, 2019 on a charge that he attempted to provide himself as material support to the Islamic State from 2011 to October 2015. If convicted he faces up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. He pled not guilty. He's awaiting trial.
Part of the problem is that this film was made before Clark was captured, so there wasn't a lot of information to work with. It would have been helpful to have some context about the phenomenon more broadly of Americans traveling to Iraq and Syria to support the Islamic State. A report by George Washington University's Program on Extremism says there have been 250-300.
He has been a practicing Muslim since high school. He was a lonely kid who didn't fit in. The Muslim kids were nice to him, so he converted to their religion. Over the years that they knew him his views got more and more extreme. His friends didn't know what to make of it. They wondered if he was an FBI agent looking for Muslim extremists. We never learn what he actually did.
The following is what I discerned from news stories. Clark is a 34 year old Muslim convert and former substitute teacher. His parents are veterans and retired teachers. He got a degree in political science from the University of Houston in 2007. Starting in 2011 he made statements on social media expressing support for jihadist and terrorist actions. He taught English in Saudi Arabia from 2012 to 2014. He crossed into Syria from Turkey in June 2015. He was seeking a position teaching English at a university in Mosul, which is occupied by ISIS. U.S.-backed forces captured him in Syria on January 6, 2019 when he was trying to escape ISIS territory.
Clark says he never fought for ISIS and that he was repeatedly detained for refusing to take up arms for them. He appears to accept violence to advance Muslim extremism. He talked in an interview with NBC about witnessing public crucifixions and how "that's just normal life there. This is Islamic society, an Islamic country, so things like that happen." He said it didn't bother him to see the executions because that's what he went there to see. Why he went: "I wanted to go see exactly what the group was about, and what they were doing...I wanted to learn more about the ideology. I'm a political science major, global business minor. I like politics. I like travel, world events."
He was indicted in US federal court in Houston on January 23, 2019 on a charge that he attempted to provide himself as material support to the Islamic State from 2011 to October 2015. If convicted he faces up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. He pled not guilty. He's awaiting trial.
Part of the problem is that this film was made before Clark was captured, so there wasn't a lot of information to work with. It would have been helpful to have some context about the phenomenon more broadly of Americans traveling to Iraq and Syria to support the Islamic State. A report by George Washington University's Program on Extremism says there have been 250-300.
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