"Brother Eli, are you still asleep? What’s up with Islam?” There was a time when Jakob's missionary zeal frightened his brother Eli: “I dreamt I was in hell!" A profane hell: the heat came from a radiator. According to his own words, Jakob discovered the Koran in 2009, "at a hippie gathering in the mountains of Morocco". He must have changed quickly. Before he converted, "partying and making music" were his life. Former flatmates explain how Jakob became more and more intolerant, refused to accept other opinions, and began to disrespect women. He was then kicked out of the WG, with the result that Jakob found his new home and security in a mosque. A godfather recounts how Jakob even sent his ten-year-old daughter Salafist mails.
In 2013, according to Islamic rites, Jakob marries another convert, Kathrin. He can already repeat set Arabic phrases. Contact with his family - his parents were aid workers – has largely been broken off. Elis's film is also an attempt to revive relations with his younger brother. This brings Jacob to Franconian Windsbach, where he poignantly takes care of his sick grandmother, says his prayers in Arabic, and piously explains the meaning of ritual ablutions. But the alienation from the family continues. They want them both to leave. At the same time, the clan may be less offended by Jakob's religious convictions than by outward appearances: Kathrin wears a chador. The young woman begins to cry, admitting that she doesn’t like black clothes but has nothing else to wear.
This very discreet film barely goes into the details behind the family conflict and the parties concerned. "For me, standing behind the camera provides a certain protection. I dare to ask questions more intensively, and to edit a topic more intensively, when I’m making a film out of it. I felt that it gave us the opportunity to get closer ... This is not a film about Salafism, but about my brother!" (Eli Roland Sachs). Nevertheless, the film doesn’t persist with the purely private, but also tells of a helpless youth’s search for meaning and its allure - in Germany and elsewhere. At times, the solution seems to be frighteningly simple for Jakob: "I love Germany, but I hate faithlessness. How beautiful Germany would be if it were only Muslim!" In a later statement, which doesn’t appear in the film, Jakob confirms, “If the Saudi scholars, whose views his Salafist “brothers”"had acccepted in the mosque, considered it good to engage in specific combat operations, I would have been willing to do so. I yearned for a meaningful death on God’s behalf! "
But then the young man also speaks of his fear: "The Koran makes me afraid that I do not satisfy the demands of Allah!" Jacob then takes a second step: "I do not love this God, because I’m afraid of him!" The German Muslim couple opts for a different religious community and joins the Bahai religion. In Kathrin’s case especially, this decision seems to represent a radical emancipation. Jacob is convinced that the move follows Allah’s will. His controversial Imam, Abdul Adhim Kamous, who is periodically observed by the domestic intelligence services and had once praised the converts, seems scarcely able to tolerate this explanation. According to him, it follows the "will of Satan."
Whether Jakob, who has risen above Salafism and finds a new sanctuary in the Bahai religion - which ultimately places humanitarian ideals (even though he can only frame them vaguely) above religious dogma - has finally reached his search’s goal remains unanswered, especially since he is far from overcoming his mixture of naiveté and overly talkative longing for transcendence. The tenacity of his search is nevertheless admirable.
