The BEST episodes directed by Robb Leech
#1 - My Brother the Islamist
BBC Documentaries - Season 2011 - Episode 74
Tree surgeon-turned-filmmaker Robb Leech is an ordinary white middle-class boy from the Dorset seaside town of Weymouth. So too is his stepbrother Rich, but a little over a year ago Rich became a radical Islamist who now goes by the name of Salahuddin. He associates with jihadist fundamentalists and believes the UK should be ruled by Sharia law. In a film that took over twelve months to shoot, Robb sets out to reconnect with his extremist stepbrother and find clues to what led Rich to become Salahuddin. It charts the brothers' relationship and Robb's attempt to understand why the person he'd once looked up to as a teenage role model could so strongly reject all that his family and the Western world believe in. As Robb spends time with Salahuddin, he witnesses a very particular phenomenon - the embrace of radical Islamism by young men, many of them white. Robb first heard of Rich's conversion in a national newspaper in the summer of 2009. The article said Rich had converted under Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Muslim group Islam4UK (later banned under Britain's anti-terror laws). Robb was horrified by the things his stepbrother was telling him - that under Sharia law, women should be stoned to death for committing adultery, that he was prepared to die for Islam and that as a non-believer, Robb was going to hell. Just the previous summer the two brothers had shared a room on holiday in Cyprus and been practically inseparable. Robb began filming what was happening to Rich to try to understand why it had happened and what the world was like that Rich had chosen.
#2 - Welcome to the Mosque
BBC Documentaries - Season 2015 - Episode 222
East London Mosque is one of the largest in Europe and the central hub of East London’s Muslim community, but for many it’s a place of mystery and the unknown. Documentary filmmaker Robb Leech has been granted unprecedented access to the mosque and takes us inside to find out what life is really like for some of the two million people who come through the doors every year. Leech first came to The East London Mosque in Whitechapel with his stepbrother Richard, who’d converted to an extreme brand of Islam, and in 2013 was convicted of preparing terrorist acts and jailed for six years. Now the Mosque has invited Robb back. During eight months of filming he captures key moments: from the rituals of washing before Friday prayers to preparing Muslim couples for marriage at the centre’s very own match-making service. Robb meets young Muslims at the Mosque’s school who discuss ‘British values’. He meets older community members who tell him about the racism they experienced growing up in the East End; he witnesses segregation and attempts to understand its cultural value; and meets younger community members, fearful of the dangers of 'free-mixing' with the opposite sex. While Robb is filming, the story breaks about the three London schoolgirls who fled Britain to join Isis jihadists in Syria. Robb explores the Mosque’s response to events that shocked the community, and made headlines around the world. He captures the frantic first phone call to the Mosque’s charismatic young media manager from a distraught sister of one of the girls and travels to Istanbul with the families of the missing girls to try and track them down.