From the Darkness into the Light: Narratives of Conversion in Jihadi Videos

This chapter examines a specific format used by Jihadi-Salafi groups to offer an epistemic and ontological framework that helps people setting their individual biography in relation to this social collective. I trace the (re-)creation of two autobiographical narratives of religious conversion as they are presented in two videos authored by al-Muhajirūn and the Islamic State between 2016 and 2017. The epistemological interest of this chapter is to reconstruct the appropriation of key concepts from Islamic intellectual history and the teleological strategies employed in the audiovisual processing of these personal narrations. I will show the ways in which the videos’ authors use audiovisual means to construct and enhance the authenticity and plausibility of these individuals’ personal stories and their spiritual experiences.