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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I thought I was absolutely amazing because
I could understand and relate to

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the feelings of brown people like
my grandfather, a conservative Muslim guy,

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

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not so religious but
laid back, fairly liberal.

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And of course I could understand 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, I loved them all.

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I understood them all 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,
I would face discrimination,

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according to him, and 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 its either got to be sports
or its 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 al 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 singing lessons,

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and forced me 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 poster
child for Norwegian multiculturalism.

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I felt very proud of course 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 I took a little detour

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because I wanted to buy
my favourite sweets called 'salty feet'.

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I absolutely loved them.

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On my way into the store, there was this
grown white guy in the doorway

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blocking my way, 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,
and he spit in my face and he said

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‘Get out of my way you little black bitch,
you little Paki bitch, get out of my -

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go back home where you came from.’
I was absolutely horrified.

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

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even as it was mixing with my tears.
I remember looking around,

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hoping any minute now a grownup
was going to come and make this guy stop.

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

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I was very confused because I was thinking

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‘Well, 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
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 attracting
harassment from brown people.

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Some men in my parents community felt that
it was unacceptable and dishonorable

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for a woman to be involved in music,
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
on stage, I lean in to 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.
The death threats were endless.

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

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‘The reason I hate you so much 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, he said

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‘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 and your stomach will be cut out,

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so that another whore
like you will not be born.’

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Again I was so confused.
I couldn’t understand what was going on,

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my brown people now
starting to treat me like this.

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How come?
Instead of bridging the two worlds,

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I felt like I was falling
between the my 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
the death threats were endless,

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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. Instead I felt like,

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you know at the airport,
on the baggage carousel,

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you have these different suitcases
going round and round,

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and there’s always
that one suitcase left at the end.

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The one that nobody wants.
That nobody comes to claim.

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I felt like that. 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 has to say 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. 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 that wasn’t even my dream,

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it was my father’s choice.

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So I kind of got lost, 
I kind of fell apart,

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but I decided that what I wanted to do is

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to spend the next however many years
of my life supporting young people,

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and to try to be there in some small way,
whatever way that I could.

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So I started volunteering for various
organisations that were working

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with young Muslims inside of Europe.

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And, to my surprise what I found,
was so many of these young people

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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 honour 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.
We are not allowed to be who we are.

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We are not free to marry, or to be
in relationships with, people 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 are 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,
who are lost to all of us,

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Who are invisible to all of us,

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but they are suffering and 
they are suffering alone.

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Kids that we are losing to forced marriages,
to honour based violence and abuse.

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So eventually I realised, 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 realised 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

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understand what it's like to be
a young person stuck

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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

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the deadly consequences of us
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 parent’s 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’ve 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, the community
and the family found out,

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and she disappeared.
She was found three months later.

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She’d been stuffed into a suitcase,
and buried underneath a 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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story 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.

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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 are also meeting
misunderstanding and apathy

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in the countries 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,
we lose them.

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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 and we can’t really interfere.’

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I can assure you,
being murdered is not my culture.

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And surely people who look like me, 
young women who come

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from backgrounds like mine,
should be subject to the same rights,

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the same protections,
as anybody else in our country.

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Why not?

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

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some of our young Muslim kids in Europe
are drawn to extremism and violence.

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But with that topic,
also recognised

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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
for many many years.

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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
why some of our young people

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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, that I was hoping to find

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quite frankly because it would have been
very satisfying, I found broken people.

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Just like Banaz, I found that
these young men were torn apart

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from trying to bridge
the gaps between their families,

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and the countries that they were born in.

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And what I also learnt 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 towards violence.

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‘Come to us!’, they say.

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‘Reject both sides, your family and
your country, because they reject you.

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For your family, their honour
is more important than you,

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and for your country, a real Norwegian, 
Brit or a French person

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will always be white and never you.’

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They are 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.
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 are doing
for our young people.

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

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The thing is, I’m not trying to
justify 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.

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I would like to also show you,

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these are childhood photos
of some of the guys in the film.

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What really struck me is that so many
of them - I never would have thought this,

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but so many of them have
absent of abusive fathers.

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And several of these young guys ended up

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finding caring and compassionate father
figures within these extremist groups.

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I also found men brutalized
by racist violence,

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but who found a way to stop feeling like
victims by becoming violent themselves.

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In fact, I found something
to my horror that I recognised.

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I found the same feelings that I felt
as a 17 year old, as I fled from Norway.

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The same confusion, the same sorrow,
the same feeling of being betrayed.

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And not belonging to anyone.

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The same feeling of being lost
and torn between two cultures.

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Having said that,
I did not choose destruction,

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I chose to pick up a camera,
instead of a gun.

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And the reason I did that,
is because of my superpower,

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I could see that understanding
is the answer, instead of violence.

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Seeing human beings, with
all their virtues, and all their flaws,

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instead of continuing the caricatures
of us and them, the villains and victims.

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I had also finally come to terms
with the fact that my two cultures

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didn’t have to be on a collision course,

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but instead became a space
where I found my own voice.

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I stopped feeling
like I had to pick a side.

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But this took me many, many years.

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There are so many
of our young people today

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who are struggling with these same issues,
and they are struggling with this alone.

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And this leaves them open like wounds.

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And for some, the world view
of radical Islam

00:16:35.711 --> 00:16:39.637
becomes the infection that festers
in these open wounds.

00:16:39.637 --> 00:16:43.857
There’s an African proverb that says

00:16:43.857 --> 00:16:48.880
‘If the young are not
initiated into the village,

00:16:48.880 --> 00:16:53.580
they will burn it down
just to feel its warmth.’

00:16:53.580 --> 00:16:57.571
I would like to ask to Muslim parents
and Muslim communities,

00:16:57.571 --> 00:17:00.680
will you love and care for your children,

00:17:00.680 --> 00:17:03.275
without forcing them
to meet your expectations?

00:17:03.275 --> 00:17:05.660
Can you choose them, 
Instead of your honour?

00:17:05.660 --> 00:17:09.560
Can you understand why
they’re so angry and alienated,

00:17:09.560 --> 00:17:11.889
when you put your honour
before their happiness?

00:17:11.889 --> 00:17:16.514
Can you try to be a friend to your child
so that they can trust you,

00:17:16.514 --> 00:17:19.335
and want to share with you
their experiences,

00:17:19.335 --> 00:17:21.854
rather than having to seek it
somewhere else?

00:17:21.854 --> 00:17:25.261
And to our young people,
tempted by extremism,

00:17:25.261 --> 00:17:30.552
can you acknowledge that
your rage is fuelled by pain?

00:17:30.552 --> 00:17:34.892
Will you find the strength to resist
those cynical old men,

00:17:34.892 --> 00:17:38.457
who want to use your blood
for their own profits?

00:17:38.457 --> 00:17:41.626
Can you find a way to live?

00:17:41.626 --> 00:17:45.824
Can you see that the sweetest revenge
is for you to live a happy,

00:17:45.824 --> 00:17:50.461
full and free life, a life defined
by you and nobody else?

00:17:50.461 --> 00:17:55.047
Why do you want to become
just another dead Muslim kid?

00:17:55.047 --> 00:17:58.983
And for the rest of us, when will we
start listening to our young people?

00:17:58.983 --> 00:18:03.330
How can we support them
in redirecting their pain

00:18:03.330 --> 00:18:06.330
into something more constructive?

00:18:06.330 --> 00:18:10.565
They think we don’t like them, they think
we don’t care what happens to them.

00:18:10.565 --> 00:18:12.730
They think we don’t accept them.

00:18:12.730 --> 00:18:15.709
Can we find a way to
make them feel differently?

00:18:15.709 --> 00:18:19.657
What will it take for us
to see them, and notice them,

00:18:19.657 --> 00:18:24.989
before they become either the victims
or the perpetrators of violence?

00:18:24.989 --> 00:18:28.366
Can we make ourselves care about them,
and consider them to be our own,

00:18:28.366 --> 00:18:33.641
and not just be outraged when the victims
of violence look like ourselves?

00:18:33.641 --> 00:18:39.881
Can we find a way to reject hatred,
and heal the divisions between us?

00:18:39.881 --> 00:18:42.544
The thing, is we cannot afford
to give up on each other, or on our kids,

00:18:42.544 --> 00:18:46.536
even if they’ve given up on us.
We are all in this together.

00:18:46.536 --> 00:18:52.865
And in the long term, revenge and violence
will not work against extremists.

00:18:52.865 --> 00:18:57.288
Terrorists want us to huddle
in our houses and fear,

00:18:57.288 --> 00:18:58.993
closing our doors and our hearts.

00:18:58.993 --> 00:19:02.837
They want us to tear open
more wounds in our societies,

00:19:02.837 --> 00:19:06.901
so that they can use them
to spread their infection more widely.

00:19:06.901 --> 00:19:12.983
They want us to become like them,
intolerant, hateful and cruel.

00:19:12.983 --> 00:19:20.715
The day after the Paris attacks, a friend
of mine sent this photo of her daughter.

00:19:20.715 --> 00:19:24.738
This is a white girl and an Arab girl.
They’re best friends.

00:19:24.738 --> 00:19:28.660
This image is the kryptonite
for extremists.

00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:34.069
These two little girls,
with their superpowers,

00:19:34.069 --> 00:19:39.683
are showing the way forward towards
a society that we need to build together.

00:19:39.683 --> 00:19:47.204
A society that includes, and supports,
rather than rejects our kids.

00:19:47.204 --> 00:19:49.959
Thank you for listening.