1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When I was a child, I knew I had superpowers. 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's right. 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I thought I was absolutely amazing because I could understand 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and relate to the feelings of brown people, like my grandfather, 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a conservative Muslim guy. 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And also, I could understand my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father, 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 not so religious but laid-back, fairly liberal. 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And of course, I could understand and relate to the feelings of white people. 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The white Norwegians of my country. You know, white, brown, whatever, 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I loved them all. I understood them all, 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 even if they didn't always understand each other, 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 they were all my people. 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My father, though, was always really worried. 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He kept saying that even with the best education, 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was not going to get a fair shake. 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I would still face discrimination, according to him, and that they only way 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to be accepted by white people would be to become famous. 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Now mind you, he had this conversation with me when I was seven-years-old. 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So while I'm seven-years-old, he said, look, 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so its either got to be sports, or its got to be music. 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He didn't know anything about sports -- bless him -- so it was music. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So when I was seven-years-old, he gathered all my toys, all my dolls, 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he threw them all away. 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In exchange, he gave me a crappy little Casio keyboard and singing lessons. 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He forced me, basically, to practice for hours and hours every single day. 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Very quickly, he also had me performing for larger and larger audiences, 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and bizarrely, I became almost a kind of poster child 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 for Norwegian multi-culturalism. 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I felt very proud, of course. 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Even the newspapers were starting to write nice things about brown people, 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so I could feel that my superpower was growing. 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So when I was 12-years-old, walking home from school, 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I took a little detour because I wanted to buy 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 my favorite sweets called Salty Feets. 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I know they sound kind of awful, but I absolutely love them. 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They're basically these little salty licorice bits in the shape of feet. 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And now that I say it out loud, I realize how terrible that sounds, 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but be that as it may, I absolutely love them. 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So on my way into the store, there was this grown white guy 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in the doorway blocking my way. 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I tried to walk around him, and as I did that, he stopped me 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he was staring at me, and he spit in my face, 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he said, get out of my way you little black bitch, 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you little Paki bitch, go back home where you came from. 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was absolutely horrified. I was staring at him. 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was too afraid to wipe the spit off my face, 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 even as it was mixing with my tears. 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I remember looking around, hoping that any minute now, 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a grown-up is going to come and make this guy stop. 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But instead, people kept hurrying past me and pretended not to see me. 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was very confused because I was thinking, 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 well, my white people, come on! Where are they? What's going on? 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How come they're not coming and rescuing me? 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, needless to say, I didn't buy the sweets. 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I just ran home as fast as I could. 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Things were still okay, though, I thought. 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As time went on, the more successful I became, I eventually started attracting 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 harassment from brown people. 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Some men in my parent's community felt that it was unacceptable 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and dishonorable for a woman to be involved in music 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and to be so present in the media. 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So very quickly, I was starting to become attacked at my own concerts. 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I remember one of the concerts, I was onstage, I lean into the audience 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the last thing I see is a young brown face 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the next thing I know some sort of chemical is thrown in my eyes 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I remember I couldn't really see and my eyes were watering 67 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but I kept singing anyway. 68 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was spit in the face in the streets of Oslo, this time by brown men. 69 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They even tried to kidnap me at one point. 70 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The death threats were endless. 71 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I remember one older bearded guy stopped me in the street one time, 72 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he said, the reason I hate you so much 73 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is because you make our daughters think 74 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 they can do whatever they want. 75 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A younger guy warned me to watch my back. 76 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He said music is un-Islamic and the job of whores, 77 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and if you keep this up, you are going to be raped 78 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and your stomach will be cut out so that another whore like you will not be born. 79 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Again, I was so confused. 80 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I couldn't understand what was going on. 81 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My brown people now starting to treat me like this -- how come? 82 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Instead of bridging the worlds, the two worlds, I felt like I was 83 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 falling between my two worlds. I suppose for me, spit was kryptonite. 84 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So by the time I was 17-years-old, the death threats were endless 85 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the harassment was constant. It got so bad, at one point my mother 86 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 sat me down and said, look, we can no longer protect you, 87 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we can no longer keep you safe, so you're going to have to go. 88 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I bought a one-way ticket to London. I packed my suitcase, and I left. 89 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My biggest heartbreak at that point was that nobody said anything. 90 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I had a very public exit from Norway. 91 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My brown people, my white people, nobody said anything. 92 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Nobody said, hold on, this is wrong. 93 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Support this girl, protect this girl because she is one of us. 94 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Nope. Nobody said that. 95 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Instead, I felt like, you know at the airport, on the baggage 96 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 carousel you have these different suitcases going around and around 97 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and there's always that one suitcase left at the end, the one that nobody wants, 98 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the one that nobody comes to claim. 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I felt like that. I'd never felt so alone. I'd never felt so lost. 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, after coming to London, I did eventually resume my music career. 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Different place but unfortunately the same old story. 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I remember a message sent to me saying that I was going to be killed 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that rivers of blood were going to flow and that I was going to be raped 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 many times before I died. 105 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 By this point, I have to say, 106 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was actually getting used to messages like this, 107 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but what became different was that now they started threatening my family. 108 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So once again, I packed my suitcase, I left music and I moved to the US. 109 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'd had enough. I didn't want to have anything to do with this anymore. 110 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I was certainly not going to be killed for something 111 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that wasn't even my dream -- it was my father's choice. 112 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I kind of got lost. I kind of fell apart. 113 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But I decided that what I wanted to do is spend the next however many years 114 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of my life supporting young people and to try to be there in some small way, 115 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 whatever way that I could. 116 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I started volunteering for various organizations that were working 117 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 with young Muslims inside of Europe. 118 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And, to my surprise, what I found was so many of these young people 119 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 were suffering and struggling. 120 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They were facing so many problems with their families and their communities 121 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 who seemed to care more about their honor and their reputation than the 122 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 happiness and the lives of their own kids. 123 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I started feeling like maybe I wasn't so alone, maybe I wasn't so weird. 124 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Maybe there are more of my people out there. 125 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The thing is, what most people don't understand is that there are so many 126 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of us growing up in Europe who are not free to be ourselves. 127 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're not allowed to be who we are. 128 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are not free to marry or to be in relationships with people that we choose. 129 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We can't even pick our own career. 130 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is the norm in the Muslim heartlands of Europe, 131 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 even in the freest societies in the world, we're not free. 132 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Our lives, our dreams, our future does not belong to us, 133 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it belongs to our parents and their community. 134 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I found endless stories of young people who are lost to all of us, 135 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 who are invisible to all of us but who are suffering 136 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and they are suffering alone. 137 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Kids we are losing to forced marriages, honor-based violence and abuse. 138 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, eventually, I realized, after several years of working 139 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 with these young people that I will not be able to keep running. 140 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I can't spend the rest of my life being scared and hiding and 141 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that I'm actually going to have to do something. 142 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I also realized that my silence, our silence, allows abuse 143 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 like this to continue. 144 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I decided that I wanted to put my childhood superpower to some use 145 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 by trying to make people on the different sides of these issues understand 146 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 what its like to be a young person stuck between your family and your country. 147 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I started making films and I started telling stories. 148 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I also wanted people to understand the deadly consequences of us 149 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 not taking these problems seriously. 150 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So the first film I made was about Benaz. 151 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She was a 17-year-old Kurdish girl in London. 152 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She was obedient, she did whatever her parents wanted. 153 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She tried to do everything right. 154 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She married some guy that her parents chose for her, even though 155 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 he beat and raped her constantly. 156 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And when she tried to go to her family for help, they said, 157 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 well you got to go back, and be a better wife. 158 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because they didn't want a divorced daughter on their hands 159 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because, of course, that would bring dishonor on the family. 160 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She was beaten so badly her ears would bleed, 161 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and when she finally left and she found a young man that she chose 162 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and she fell in love with, the community and the family found out 163 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and she disappeared. 164 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She was found three months later. 165 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She'd been stuffed into a suitcase and buried underneath the house. 166 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She had been strangled, she had been beaten to death by three men, 167 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 three cousins on the orders of her father and uncle. 168 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The added tragedy of Benaz's story is that she had gone to the police 169 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in England five times, asking for help, telling them that she was 170 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 going to be killed by her family. 171 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The police didn't believe her so they didn't do anything. 172 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And the problem with this is that not only are so many of our kids 173 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 facing this problem within their families and within their families' communities, 174 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but they're also meeting misunderstandings and apathy in the countries 175 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that they grow up in. 176 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When their own families betray them, they look to the rest of us, and when 177 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we don't understand, we lose them. 178 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So while I was making this film, several people said to me, well Deeyah, 179 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you know, this is just their culture, this is just what those people do 180 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to their kids and we can't really interfere. 181 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I can assure you being murdered is not my culture -- you know? 182 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And surely people who look like me, young women who come 183 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 from backgrounds like me, should be subject to the same rights, 184 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the same protections as anybody else in our country, why not? 185 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, for my next film, I wanted to try and understand why some of our 186 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 young Muslim kids in Europe are drawn to extremism and violence. 187 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But with that topic, I also recognized that 188 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was going to have to face my worst fear: the brown men with beards. 189 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The same men, or similar men, to the ones that have hounded me for most of my life. 190 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Men that I've been afraid of most of my life. 191 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Men that I've also deeply disliked, for many, many years. 192 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I spent the next two years interviewing convicted terrorists, 193 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 jihadis and former extremists. 194 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What I already knew, what was very obvious already, 195 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 was that religion, politics, Europe's colonial baggage, also 196 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Western foreign policy failures failures of recent years, 197 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 were all a part of the picture. 198 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But what I was more interested in finding out was what are the human, 199 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 what are the personal reasons why some of our 200 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 young people are susceptible to groups like this. 201 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And what really surprised me was that I found wounded human beings. 202 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Instead of the monsters that I was looking for, that I was hoping to find, 203 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 quite frankly because it would have been very satisfying, I found broken people. 204 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Just like Benaz, I found that these young men were torn apart from trying 205 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to bridge the gaps between their families and the countries that they were born in. 206 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And what I also learned is that extremist groups, terrorist groups 207 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 are taking advantage of these feelings of our young people 208 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and channeling that cynically, channeling that toward violence. 209 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Come to us, they say. "Reject both sides, your family and your country 210 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because they reject you.. 211 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For your family, their honor is more important than you and for your country, 212 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a real Norwegian, Brit, or a French person will always be white and never you." 213 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They're also promising our young people things that they crave: significance, 214 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 heroism, a sense of belonging and purpose, a community that loves and accepts them. 215 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They make the powerless feel powerful. 216 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The invisible and the silent are finally seen and heard. 217 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is what they're doing for our young people. 218 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Why are these groups doing this for our young people and not us? 219 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The thing is, I'm not trying to justify or excuse any of the violence. 220 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What I am trying to say is that we have to understand 221 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 why some of our young people are attracted to this. 222 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I would like to also show you, actually, these are childhood photos 223 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of some of the guys in the film. 224 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What really struck me is that so many of them -- I never would have 225 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 thought this -- but so many of them have absent or abusive fathers. 226 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And several of these young guys ended up finding caring and compassionate father 227 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 figures within these extremist groups. 228 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I also found men brutalized by racist violence, but who found a way 229 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to stop feeling like victims by becoming violent themselves. 230 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In fact, I found something, to my horror, that I recognized. 231 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I found the same feelings that I felt as a 17-year-old as I fled from Norway. 232 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The same confusion, the same sorrow, the same feeling of being betrayed 233 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and not belonging to anyone. 234 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The same feeling of being lost and torn between cultures. 235 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Having said that, I did not choose destruction, 236 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I chose to pick up a camera instead of a gun and the reason I did that 237 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is because of my superpower. 238 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I could see that understanding is the answer, instead of violence.. 239 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Seeing human beings with all their virtues and all their flaws, instead of continuing the 240 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 caricatures: the us and them, the villains and victims. 241 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'd also finally come to terms with the fact that my two cultures didn't have 242 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to be on a collision course but instead became a space where I found my own voice. 243 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I stopped feeling like I had to pick a side, but this took me many, many years. 244 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There are so many of our young people today who are struggling with 245 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 these same issues and they're struggling with this alone. 246 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And this leaves them open like wounds, and for some, 247 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the worldview of radical Islam becomes the infection that festers 248 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in these open wounds. 249 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There's an African proverb that says, if the young are not initiated 250 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth. 251 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I would like to ask Muslim parents and Muslim communities, 252 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 will you love and care for your children without forcing them 253 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to meet your expectations? 254 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you choose them instead of your honor? 255 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you understand why they're so angry and alienated when you put your honor 256 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 before their happiness? 257 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you try to be a friend to your child so that they can trust you 258 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and want to share with you their experiences, rather than having 259 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to seek it somewhere else? 260 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And to our young people, tempted by extremism, can you acknowledge that 261 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 your rage is fueled by pain? 262 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Will you find the strength to resist those cynical old men who want to use 263 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 your blood for their own profits? 264 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you find a way to live? 265 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you see that the sweetest revenge 266 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is for you to live a happy, full and free life? 267 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A life defined by you and nobody else. 268 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Why do you want to become just another dead Muslim kid? 269 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And for the rest of us, when will we start listening to our young people? 270 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How can we support them in re-directing their pain 271 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 into something more constructive? 272 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They think we don't like them. 273 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They think we don't care what happens to them. 274 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They think we don't accept them. 275 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can we find a way to make them feel differently? 276 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What will it take for us to see them and notice them before they become 277 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 either the victims or the perpetrators of violence? 278 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can we make ourselves care about them and consider them to be our own? 279 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And not just be outraged when the victims of violence look like ourselves? 280 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can we find a way to reject hatred and heal the divisions between us? 281 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The thing is, we cannot afford to give up on each other or on our kids, 282 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 even if they've given up on us. 283 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are all in this together. 284 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And in the long term, revenge and violence will not work against extremists. 285 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Terrorists want us to huddle in our houses in fear, closing our doors and our hearts. 286 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They want us to tear open more wounds in our societies so that they can use them 287 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to spread their infection more widely. 288 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They want us to become like them: intolerant, hateful and cruel. 289 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The day after the Paris attacks, a friend of mine sent this photo of her daughter. 290 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is a white girl and an Arab girl. 291 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They're best friends. 292 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This image is kryptonite for extremists. 293 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 These two little girls with their superpowers are showing 294 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the way forward towards a society that we need to build together, 295 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a society that includes and supports, rather than rejects our kids. 296 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Thank you for listening.