What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids

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

That's right.

I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

and relate to the feelings
of brown people, like my grandfather,

a conservative Muslim guy.

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

not so religious but
laid-back, fairly liberal.

And of course, I could understand
and relate to the feelings of white people.

The white Norwegians of my country.
You know, white, brown, whatever,

I loved them all. I understood them all,

even if they didn't always
understand each other,

they were all my people.

My father, though,
was always really worried.

He kept saying that
even with the best education,

I was not going to get a fair shake.

I would still face discrimination,
according to him, and that they only way

to be accepted by white people
would be to become famous.

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

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

so its either got to be sports,
or its got to be music.

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

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

and he threw them all away.

In exchange, he gave me a crappy little
Casio keyboard and singing lessons.

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

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

and bizarrely, I became almost
a kind of poster child

for Norwegian multi-culturalism.

I felt very proud, of course.

Even the newspapers were starting
to write nice things about brown people,

so I could feel that
my superpower was growing.

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

I took a little detour
because I wanted to buy

my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.

I know they sound kind of awful,
but I absolutely love them.

They're basically these little salty
licorice bits in the shape of feet.

And now that I say it out loud,
I realize how terrible that sounds,

but be that as it may,
I absolutely love them.

So on my way into the store,
there was this grown white guy

in the doorway blocking my way.

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

and he was staring at me,
and he spit in my face,

and he said, get out of my way
you little black bitch,

you little Paki bitch,
go back home where you came from.

I was absolutely horrified.
I was staring at him.

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

even as it was mixing with my tears.

I remember looking around,
hoping that any minute now,

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

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

I was very confused
because I was thinking,

well, my white people, come on!
Where are they? What's going on?

How come they're not
coming and rescuing me?

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

I just ran home as fast as I could.

Things were still okay, though, I thought.

As time went on, the more successful
I became, I eventually started attracting

harassment from brown people.

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

and dishonorable for a woman
to be involved in music

and to be so present in the media.

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

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

and the last thing I see is
a young brown face

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

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

but I kept singing anyway.

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

They even tried to
kidnap me at one point.

The death threats were endless.

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

and he said, the reason
I hate you so much

is because you make
our daughters think

they can do whatever they want.

A younger guy warned me
to watch my back.

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

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

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

Again, I was so confused.

I couldn't understand
what was going on.

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

Instead of bridging the worlds,
the two worlds, I felt like I was

falling between my two worlds.
I suppose for me, spit was kryptonite.

So by the time I was 17-years-old,
the death threats were endless

and the harassment was constant.
It got so bad, at one point my mother

sat me down and said, look,
we can no longer protect you,

we can no longer keep you safe,
so you're going to have to go.

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

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

I had a very public exit from Norway.

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

Nobody said, hold on, this is wrong.

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

Nope. Nobody said that.

Instead, I felt like,
you know at the airport, on the baggage

carousel you have these different
suitcases going around and around

and there's always that one suitcase left
at the end, the one that nobody wants,

the one that nobody comes to claim.

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

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

Different place but unfortunately
the same old story.

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

and that rivers of blood were going
to flow and that I was going to be raped

many times before I died.

By this point, I have to say,

I was actually getting used
to messages like this,

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

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

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

And I was certainly not
going to be killed for something

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

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

But I decided that what I wanted to do
is spend the next however many years

of my life supporting young people
and to try to be there in some small way,

whatever way that I could.

I started volunteering for various
organizations that were working

with young Muslims inside of Europe.

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

were suffering and struggling.

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

who seemed to care more about
their honor and their reputation than the

happiness and the lives of their own kids.

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

Maybe there are more of
my people out there.

The thing is, what most people
don't understand is that there are so many

of us growing up in Europe who
are not free to be ourselves.

We're not allowed to be who we are.

We are not free to marry or to be in
relationships with people that we choose.

We can't even pick our own career.

This is the norm in the
Muslim heartlands of Europe,

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

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

it belongs to our parents
and their community.

I found endless stories of young people
who are lost to all of us,

who are invisible to all of us but
who are suffering

and they are suffering alone.

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

So, eventually, I realized,
after several years of working

with these young people that
I will not be able to keep running.

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

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

And I also realized that my silence,
our silence, allows abuse

like this to continue.

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

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

what its like to be a young person stuck
between your family and your country.

So I started making films
and I started telling stories.

I also wanted people to understand
the deadly consequences of us

not taking these problems seriously.

So the first film I made was about Benaz.

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

She was obedient, she did
whatever her parents wanted.

She tried to do everything right.

She married some guy that
her parents chose for her, even though

he beat and raped her constantly.

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

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

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

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

She was beaten so badly
her ears would bleed,

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

and she fell in love with,
the community and the family found out

and she disappeared.

She was found three months later.

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

She had been strangled,
she had been beaten to death by three men,

three cousins on the orders
of her father and uncle.

The added tragedy of Benaz's story
is that she had gone to the police

in England five times, asking for help,
telling them that she was

going to be killed by her family.

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

And the problem with this is that
not only are so many of our kids

facing this problem within their families
and within their families' communities,

but they're also meeting misunderstandings
and apathy in the countries

that they grow up in.

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

we don't understand, we lose them.

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

you know, this is just their culture,
this is just what those people do

to their kids and
we can't really interfere.

I can assure you being murdered
is not my culture -- you know?

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

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

the same protections as anybody else
in our country, why not?

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

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

But with that topic,
I also recognized that

I was going to have to face my worst fear:
the brown men with beards.

The same men, or similar men, to the ones
that have hounded me for most of my life.

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

Men that I've also deeply disliked,
for many, many years.

So I spent the next two years
interviewing convicted terrorists,

jihadis and former extremists.

What I already knew,
what was very obvious already,

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

Western foreign policy failures
failures of recent years,

were all a part of the picture.

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

what are the personal
reasons why some of our

young people are susceptible
to groups like this.

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

Instead of the monsters that I was
looking for, that I was hoping to find,

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

Just like Benaz, I found that these
young men were torn apart from trying

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

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

are taking advantage of these
feelings of our young people

and channeling that cynically,
channeling that toward violence.

Come to us, they say. "Reject both sides,
your family and your country

because they reject you..

For your family, their honor is more
important than you and for your country,

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

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

heroism, a sense of belonging and purpose,
a community that loves and accepts them.

They make the powerless feel powerful.

The invisible and the silent
are finally seen and heard.

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

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

The thing is, I'm not trying to justify
or excuse any of the violence.

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

why some of our young people
are attracted to this.

I would like to also show you, actually,
these are childhood photos

of some of the guys in the film.

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

thought this -- but so many of them
have absent or abusive fathers.

And several of these young guys ended up
finding caring and compassionate father

figures within these extremist groups.

I also found men brutalized
by racist violence, but who found a way

to stop feeling like victims
by becoming violent themselves.

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

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

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

and not belonging to anyone.

The same feeling of being lost
and torn between cultures.

Having said that,
I did not choose destruction,

I chose to pick up a camera
instead of a gun and the reason I did that

is because of my superpower.

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

Seeing human beings with all their virtues
and all their flaws, instead of continuing the

caricatures: the us and them,
the villains and victims.

I'd also finally come to terms with the fact
that my two cultures didn't have

to be on a collision course but instead
became a space where I found my own voice.

I stopped feeling like I had to pick
a side, but this took me many, many years.

There are so many of our young people
today who are struggling with

these same issues and
they're struggling with this alone.

And this leaves them open
like wounds, and for some,

the worldview of radical Islam becomes
the infection that festers

in these open wounds.

There's an African proverb that says,
if the young are not initiated

into the village, they will burn it down
just to feel its warmth.

I would like to ask Muslim
parents and Muslim communities,

will you love and care for your children
without forcing them

to meet your expectations?

Can you choose them instead of your honor?

Can you understand why they're so angry
and alienated when you put your honor

before their happiness?

Can you try to be a friend to your child
so that they can trust you

and want to share with you
their experiences, rather than having

to seek it somewhere else?

And to our young people, tempted
by extremism, can you acknowledge that

your rage is fueled by pain?

Will you find the strength to resist those
cynical old men who want to use

your blood for their own profits?

Can you find a way to live?

Can you see that the sweetest revenge

is for you to live a happy,
full and free life?

A life defined by you and nobody else.

Why do you want to become
just another dead Muslim kid?

And for the rest of us, when will we start
listening to our young people?

How can we support them
in re-directing their pain

into something more constructive?

They think we don't like them.

They think we don't care
what happens to them.

They think we don't accept them.

Can we find a way to make
them feel differently?

What will it take for us to see them
and notice them before they become

either the victims or
the perpetrators of violence?

Can we make ourselves care about them
and consider them to be our own?

And not just be outraged when the victims
of violence look like ourselves?

Can we find a way to reject hatred
and heal the divisions between us?

The thing is, we cannot afford to give up
on each other or on our kids,

even if they've given up on us.

We are all in this together.

And in the long term, revenge and violence
will not work against extremists.

Terrorists want us to huddle in our houses
in fear, closing our doors and our hearts.

They want us to tear open more wounds
in our societies so that they can use them

to spread their infection more widely.

They want us to become like them:
intolerant, hateful and cruel.

The day after the Paris attacks, a friend
of mine sent this photo of her daughter.

This is a white girl and an Arab girl.

They're best friends.

This image is kryptonite for extremists.

These two little girls with
their superpowers are showing

the way forward towards a society
that we need to build together,

a society that includes and supports,
rather than rejects our kids.

Thank you for listening.