WEBVTT

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When I was a child,
I knew I had superpowers.

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That's right.

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(Laughter)

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I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

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and relate to the feelings
of brown people,

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like my grandfather,
a conservative Muslim guy.

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And also, I could understand
my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father,

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not so religious
but laid-back, fairly liberal.

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And of course, I could understand

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and relate to the feelings
of white people.

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The white Norwegians of my country.

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You know, white, brown, whatever --

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I loved them all.

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I understood them all,

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even if they didn't always
understand each other;

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they were all my people.

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My father, though,
was always really worried.

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He kept saying that
even with the best education,

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I was not going to get a fair shake.

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I would still face discrimination,
according to him.

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And that the only way
to be accepted by white people

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would be to become famous.

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Now, mind you, he had this conversation
with me when I was seven years old.

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So while I'm seven years old, he said,

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"Look, so it's either got to be sports,
or it's got to be music."

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He didn't know anything about sports --
bless him -- so it was music.

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So when I was seven years old,
he gathered all my toys, all my dolls,

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and he threw them all away.

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In exchange he gave me
a crappy little Casio keyboard and --

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(Laughter)

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Yeah. And singing lessons.

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And he forced me, basically, to practice
for hours and hours every single day.

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Very quickly, he also had me performing
for larger and larger audiences,

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and bizarrely, I became
almost a kind of poster child

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for Norwegian multiculturalism.

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I felt very proud, of course.

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Because even the newspapers at this point

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were starting to write
nice things about brown people,

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so I could feel
that my superpower was growing.

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So when I was 12 years old,
walking home from school,

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I took a little detour,

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because I wanted to buy
my favorite sweets called "salty feet."

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I absolutely love them.

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So on my way into the store,

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there was this grown white guy
in the doorway blocking my way.

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So I tried to walk around him,
and as I did that, he stopped me

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and he was staring at me,

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and he spit in my face, and he said,

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"Get out of my way

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you little black bitch,
you little Paki bitch,

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go back home where you came from."

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I was absolutely horrified.

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I was staring at him.

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I was too afraid
to wipe the spit off my face,

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even as it was mixing with my tears.

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I remember looking around,
hoping that any minute now,

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a grown-up is going to come
and make this guy stop.

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But instead, people kept hurrying past me
and pretended not to see me.

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I was very confused
because I was thinking, well,

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"My white people, come on!
Where are they? What's going on?

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How come they're not
coming and rescuing me?"

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So, needless to say,
I didn't buy the sweets.

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I just ran home as fast as I could.

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Things were still OK, though, I thought.

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As time went on,
the more successful I became,

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I eventually started also attracting
harassment from brown people.

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Some men in my parent's community
felt that it was unacceptable

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and dishonorable for a woman
to be involved in music

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and to be so present in the media.

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So very quickly, I was starting
to become attacked at my own concerts.

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I remember one of the concerts,
I was onstage, I lean into the audience

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and the last thing I see
is a young brown face,

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and the next thing I know is some sort
of chemical is thrown in my eyes

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and I remember I couldn't really see
and my eyes were watering

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but I kept singing anyway.

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I was spit in the face in the streets
of Oslo, this time by brown men.

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They even tried to kidnap me at one point.

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The death threats were endless.

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I remember one older bearded guy
stopped me in the street one time,

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and he said, "The reason
I hate you so much

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is because you make our daughters think

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they can do whatever they want."

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A younger guy warned me to watch my back.

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He said music is un-Islamic
and the job of whores,

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and if you keep this up,
you are going to be raped

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and your stomach will be cut out so that
another whore like you will not be born.

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Again, I was so confused.

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I couldn't understand what was going on.

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My brown people now starting
to treat me like this -- how come?

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Instead of bridging the worlds,
the two worlds,

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I felt like I was falling
between my two worlds.

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I suppose, for me, spit was kryptonite.

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So by the time I was 17 years old,

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the death threats were endless,
and the harassment was constant.

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It got so bad, at one point
my mother sat me down and said,

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"Look, we can no longer protect you,
we can no longer keep you safe,

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so you're going to have to go."

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So I bought a one-way ticket to London,
I packed my suitcase and I left.

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My biggest heartbreak at that point
was that nobody said anything.

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I had a very public exit from Norway.

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My brown people, my white people --
nobody said anything.

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Nobody said, "Hold on, this is wrong.

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Support this girl, protect this girl,
because she is one of us."

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Nobody said that.

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Instead, I felt like --
you know at the airport,

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on the baggage carousel
you have these different suitcases

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going around and around,

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and there's always
that one suitcase left at the end,

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the one that nobody wants,
the one that nobody comes to claim.

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I felt like that.

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I'd never felt so alone.
I'd never felt so lost.

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So, after coming to London,
I did eventually resume my music career.

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Different place, but unfortunately
the same old story.

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I remember a message sent to me
saying that I was going to be killed

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and that rivers of blood
were going to flow

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and that I was going to be raped
many times before I died.

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By this point, I have to say,

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I was actually getting used
to messages like this,

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but what became different was that
now they started threatening my family.

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So once again, I packed my suitcase,
I left music and I moved to the US.

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I'd had enough.

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I didn't want to have anything
to do with this anymore.

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And I was certainly not
going to be killed for something

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that wasn't even my dream --
it was my father's choice.

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So I kind of got lost.

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I kind of fell apart.

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But I decided that what I wanted to do

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is spend the next
however many years of my life

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supporting young people

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and to try to be there in some small way,

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whatever way that I could.

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I started volunteering
for various organizations

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that were working
with young Muslims inside of Europe.

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And, to my surprise, what I found was

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so many of these young people
were suffering and struggling.

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They were facing so many problems
with their families and their communities

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who seemed to care more
about their honor and their reputation

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than the happiness
and the lives of their own kids.

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I started feeling like maybe I wasn't
so alone, maybe I wasn't so weird.

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Maybe there are more
of my people out there.

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The thing is, what most people
don't understand

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is that there are so many of us
growing up in Europe

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who are not free to be ourselves.

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We're not allowed to be who we are.

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We are not free to marry

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or to be in relationships
with people that we choose.

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We can't even pick our own career.

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This is the norm in the Muslim
heartlands of Europe.

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Even in the freest societies
in the world, we're not free.

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Our lives, our dreams, our future
does not belong to us,

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it belongs to our parents
and their community.

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I found endless stories of young people

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who are lost to all of us,

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who are invisible to all of us

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but who are suffering,
and they are suffering alone.

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Kids we are losing to forced marriages,
to honor-based violence and abuse.

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Eventually, I realized after several
years of working with these young people,

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that I will not be able to keep running.

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I can't spend the rest of my life
being scared and hiding

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and that I'm actually
going to have to do something.

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And I also realized
that my silence, our silence,

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allows abuse like this to continue.

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So I decided that I wanted to put
my childhood superpower to some use

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by trying to make people on the different
sides of these issues understand

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what it's like to be a young person stuck
between your family and your country.

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So I started making films,
and I started telling these stories.

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And I also wanted people to understand
the deadly consequences of us

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not taking these problems seriously.

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So the first film I made was about Banaz.

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She was a 17-year-old
Kurdish girl in London.

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She was obedient, she did
whatever her parents wanted.

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She tried to do everything right.

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She married some guy
that her parents chose for her,

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even though he beat
and raped her constantly.

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And when she tried to go
to her family for help, they said,

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"Well, you got to go back
and be a better wife."

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Because they didn't want
a divorced daughter on their hands

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because, of course,
that would bring dishonor on the family.

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She was beaten so badly
her ears would bleed,

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and when she finally left
and she found a young man that she chose

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and she fell in love with,

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the community and the family found out

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and she disappeared.

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She was found three months later.

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She'd been stuffed into a suitcase
and buried underneath the house.

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She had been strangled,
she had been beaten to death

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by three men, three cousins,
on the orders of her father and uncle.

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The added tragedy of Banaz's story

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is that she had gone to the police
in England five times asking for help,

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telling them that she was
going to be killed by her family.

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The police didn't believe her
so they didn't do anything.

NOTE Paragraph

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And the problem with this

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is that not only are so many of our kids
facing these problems

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within their families
and within their families' communities,

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but they're also meeting misunderstandings

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and apathy in the countries
that they grow up in.

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When their own families betray them,
they look to the rest of us,

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and when we don't understand,

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we lose them.

NOTE Paragraph

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So while I was making this film,
several people said to me,

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"Well, Deeyah, you know,
this is just their culture,

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this is just what those people
do to their kids

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and we can't really interfere."

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I can assure you
being murdered is not my culture.

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You know?

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And surely people who look like me,

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young women who come
from backgrounds like me,

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should be subject to the same rights,
the same protections

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as anybody else in our country, why not?

NOTE Paragraph

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So, for my next film,
I wanted to try and understand

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why some of our young
Muslim kids in Europe

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are drawn to extremism and violence.

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But with that topic,

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I also recognized that I was going
to have to face my worst fear:

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the brown men with beards.

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Similar men to the ones that have
hounded me for most of my life.

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Men that I've been afraid of
most of my life.

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Men that I've also deeply disliked,

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for many, many years.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I spent the next two years
interviewing convicted terrorists,

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jihadis and former extremists.

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What I already knew,
what was very obvious already,

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was that religion, politics,
Europe's colonial baggage,

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also Western foreign policy
failures of recent years,

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were all a part of the picture.

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But what I was more interested
in finding out was what are the human,

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what are the personal reasons

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why some of our young people
are susceptible to groups like this.

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And what really surprised me
was that I found wounded human beings.

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Instead of the monsters
that I was looking for,

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that I was hoping to find --

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quite frankly because
it would have been very satisfying --

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I found broken people.

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Just like Banaz,

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I found that these young men
were torn apart

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from trying to bridge the gaps

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between their families
and the countries that they were born in.

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And what I also learned
is that extremist groups, terrorist groups

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are taking advantage
of these feelings of our young people

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and channeling that -- cynically --
channeling that toward violence.

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"Come to us," they say.

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"Reject both sides,
your family and your country

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because they reject you.

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For your family, their honor
is more important than you

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and for your country,

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a real Norwegian, Brit or a French person
will always be white and never you."

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They're also promising our young people
the things that they crave:

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significance, heroism,
a sense of belonging and purpose,

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a community that loves and accepts them.

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They make the powerless feel powerful.

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The invisible and the silent
are finally seen and heard.

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This is what they're doing
for our young people.

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Why are these groups doing this
for our young people and not us?

NOTE Paragraph

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The thing is,

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I'm not trying to justify

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or excuse any of the violence.

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What I am trying to say
is that we have to understand

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why some of our young people
are attracted to this.

00:14:37.606 --> 00:14:39.942
I would like to also show you, actually --

00:14:39.966 --> 00:14:43.246
these are childhood photos
of some of the guys in the film.

00:14:45.466 --> 00:14:48.426
What really struck me
is that so many of them --

00:14:49.186 --> 00:14:50.842
I never would have thought this --

00:14:50.866 --> 00:14:54.186
but so many of them
have absent or abusive fathers.

00:14:55.026 --> 00:14:56.962
And several of these young guys

00:14:56.986 --> 00:15:01.122
ended up finding caring
and compassionate father figures

00:15:01.146 --> 00:15:02.746
within these extremist groups.

00:15:05.346 --> 00:15:08.506
I also found men
brutalized by racist violence,

00:15:09.226 --> 00:15:11.482
but who found a way
to stop feeling like victims

00:15:11.506 --> 00:15:13.002
by becoming violent themselves.

00:15:13.026 --> 00:15:18.322
In fact, I found something,
to my horror, that I recognized.

00:15:18.346 --> 00:15:24.666
I found the same feelings that I felt
as a 17-year-old as I fled from Norway.

00:15:25.586 --> 00:15:28.962
The same confusion, the same sorrow,

00:15:28.986 --> 00:15:32.466
the same feeling of being betrayed

00:15:34.137 --> 00:15:35.737
and not belonging to anyone.

00:15:38.656 --> 00:15:41.776
The same feeling of being lost
and torn between cultures.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:42.856 --> 00:15:45.392
Having said that,
I did not choose destruction,

00:15:45.416 --> 00:15:48.152
I chose to pick up a camera
instead of a gun.

00:15:48.176 --> 00:15:51.512
And the reason I did that
is because of my superpower.

00:15:51.536 --> 00:15:56.432
I could see that understanding
is the answer, instead of violence.

00:15:56.456 --> 00:15:58.152
Seeing human beings

00:15:58.176 --> 00:16:01.912
with all their virtues and all their flaws

00:16:01.936 --> 00:16:03.792
instead of continuing the caricatures:

00:16:03.816 --> 00:16:06.472
the us and them, the villains and victims.

00:16:06.496 --> 00:16:08.592
I'd also finally
come to terms with the fact

00:16:08.616 --> 00:16:12.272
that my two cultures
didn't have to be on a collision course

00:16:12.296 --> 00:16:15.416
but instead became a space
where I found my own voice.

00:16:15.936 --> 00:16:18.672
I stopped feeling
like I had to pick a side,

00:16:18.696 --> 00:16:20.776
but this took me many, many years.

00:16:21.736 --> 00:16:23.752
There are so many
of our young people today

00:16:23.776 --> 00:16:25.792
who are struggling with these same issues,

00:16:25.816 --> 00:16:27.816
and they're struggling with this alone.

00:16:29.536 --> 00:16:32.176
And this leaves them open like wounds.

00:16:32.656 --> 00:16:35.712
And for some, the worldview
of radical Islam

00:16:35.736 --> 00:16:39.096
becomes the infection
that festers in these open wounds.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:41.208 --> 00:16:44.433
There's an African proverb that says,

00:16:46.056 --> 00:16:49.072
"If the young are not
initiated into the village,

00:16:49.096 --> 00:16:51.856
they will burn it down
just to feel its warmth."

00:16:53.336 --> 00:16:54.816
I would like to ask --

00:16:55.736 --> 00:16:58.272
to Muslim parents and Muslim communities,

00:16:58.296 --> 00:17:00.712
will you love and care for your children

00:17:00.736 --> 00:17:03.512
without forcing them
to meet your expectations?

00:17:03.536 --> 00:17:05.976
Can you choose them instead of your honor?

00:17:06.496 --> 00:17:09.512
Can you understand
why they're so angry and alienated

00:17:09.536 --> 00:17:11.856
when you put your honor
before their happiness?

00:17:12.616 --> 00:17:15.191
Can you try to be a friend to your child

00:17:15.215 --> 00:17:16.992
so that they can trust you

00:17:17.016 --> 00:17:19.312
and want to share with you
their experiences,

00:17:19.336 --> 00:17:21.576
rather than having
to seek it somewhere else?

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:22.455 --> 00:17:25.536
And to our young people
tempted by extremism,

00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:30.360
can you acknowledge
that your rage is fueled by pain?

00:17:31.736 --> 00:17:35.152
Will you find the strength
to resist those cynical old men

00:17:35.176 --> 00:17:38.376
who want to use your blood
for their own profits?

00:17:39.136 --> 00:17:41.056
Can you find a way to live?

00:17:41.976 --> 00:17:44.232
Can you see that the sweetest revenge

00:17:44.256 --> 00:17:47.712
is for you to live
a happy, full and free life?

00:17:47.736 --> 00:17:50.096
A life defined by you and nobody else.

00:17:50.656 --> 00:17:54.336
Why do you want to become
just another dead Muslim kid?

00:17:55.176 --> 00:17:59.336
And for the rest of us, when will we start
listening to our young people?

00:18:00.616 --> 00:18:01.872
How can we support them

00:18:01.896 --> 00:18:05.856
in redirecting their pain
into something more constructive?

00:18:06.856 --> 00:18:08.312
They think we don't like them.

00:18:08.336 --> 00:18:11.112
They think we don't care
what happens to them.

00:18:11.136 --> 00:18:12.912
They think we don't accept them.

00:18:12.936 --> 00:18:15.656
Can we find a way
to make them feel differently?

00:18:17.376 --> 00:18:20.312
What will it take for us
to see them and notice them

00:18:20.336 --> 00:18:25.272
before they become either the victims
or the perpetrators of violence?

00:18:25.296 --> 00:18:28.872
Can we make ourselves care about them
and consider them to be our own?

00:18:28.896 --> 00:18:33.752
And not just be outraged when the victims
of violence look like ourselves?

00:18:33.776 --> 00:18:38.792
Can we find a way to reject hatred
and heal the divisions between us?

00:18:38.816 --> 00:18:42.792
The thing is we cannot afford
to give up on each other or on our kids,

00:18:42.816 --> 00:18:44.952
even if they've given up on us.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:44.976 --> 00:18:47.152
We are all in this together.

00:18:47.176 --> 00:18:52.656
And in the long term, revenge and violence
will not work against extremists.

00:18:53.576 --> 00:18:57.352
Terrorists want us
to huddle in our houses in fear,

00:18:57.376 --> 00:18:59.552
closing our doors and our hearts.

00:18:59.576 --> 00:19:03.392
They want us to tear open
more wounds in our societies

00:19:03.416 --> 00:19:06.952
so that they can use them
to spread their infection more widely.

00:19:06.976 --> 00:19:09.672
They want us to become like them:

00:19:09.696 --> 00:19:11.936
intolerant, hateful and cruel.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:14.296 --> 00:19:16.752
The day after the Paris attacks,

00:19:16.776 --> 00:19:20.176
a friend of mine
sent this photo of her daughter.

00:19:20.896 --> 00:19:23.352
This is a white girl and an Arab girl.

00:19:23.376 --> 00:19:24.576
They're best friends.

00:19:25.216 --> 00:19:28.696
This image is the kryptonite
for extremists.

00:19:31.336 --> 00:19:34.392
These two little girls
with their superpowers

00:19:34.416 --> 00:19:35.912
are showing the way forward

00:19:35.936 --> 00:19:39.336
towards a society
that we need to build together,

00:19:40.216 --> 00:19:43.536
a society that includes and supports,

00:19:44.576 --> 00:19:46.776
rather than rejects our kids.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:48.056 --> 00:19:49.392
Thank you for listening.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:49.416 --> 00:19:56.416
(Applause)