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

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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 know they sound kind of awful,
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    but I absolutely love them.
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    They're basically these little
    salty licorice bits in the shape of feet.
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    And now that I say it out loud,
    I realize how terrible that sounds,
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    but be that as it may,
    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.
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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.
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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?
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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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    The same men, or similar men,
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    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.
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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?
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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.
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    I would like to also show you, actually --
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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 --
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    I never would have thought this --
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    but so many of them
    have absent or abusive fathers.
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    And several of these young guys
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    ended up finding caring
    and compassionate father figures
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    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
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    by becoming violent themselves.
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    In fact, I found something,
    to my horror, that I recognized.
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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,
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    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 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
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    with all their virtues and all their flaws
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    instead of continuing the caricatures:
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    the us and them, the villains and victims.
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    I'd also finally
    come to terms with the fact
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    that my two cultures
    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
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    and they're struggling with this alone.
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    And this leaves them open like wounds.
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    And for some, the worldview
    of radical Islam
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    becomes the infection
    that festers in these open wounds.
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    There's an African proverb that says,
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    "If the young are not
    initiated into the village,
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    they will burn it down
    just to feel its warmth."
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    I would like to ask --
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    to Muslim parents and Muslim communities,
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    will you love and care for your children
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    without forcing them
    to meet your expectations?
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    Can you choose them instead of your honor?
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    Can you understand
    why they're so angry and alienated
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    when you put your honor
    before their happiness?
  • 17:13 - 17:15
    Can you try to be a friend to your child
  • 17:15 - 17:17
    so that they can trust you
  • 17:17 - 17:19
    and want to share with you
    their experiences,
  • 17:19 - 17:21
    rather than having
    to seek it somewhere else?
  • 17:22 - 17:25
    And to our young people,
    tempted by extremism,
  • 17:27 - 17:30
    can you acknowledge
    that your rage is fueled by pain?
  • 17:32 - 17:35
    Will you find the strength
    to resist those cynical old men
  • 17:35 - 17:38
    who want to use your blood
    for their own profits?
  • 17:39 - 17:41
    Can you find a way to live?
  • 17:42 - 17:44
    Can you see that the sweetest revenge
  • 17:44 - 17:48
    is for you to live
    a happy, full and free life?
  • 17:48 - 17:50
    A life defined by you and nobody else.
  • 17:51 - 17:54
    Why do you want to become
    just another dead Muslim kid?
  • 17:55 - 17:59
    And for the rest of us, when will we start
    listening to our young people?
  • 18:01 - 18:02
    How can we support them
  • 18:02 - 18:06
    in redirecting their pain
    into something more constructive?
  • 18:07 - 18:08
    They think we don't like them.
  • 18:08 - 18:11
    They think we don't care
    what happens to them.
  • 18:11 - 18:13
    They think we don't accept them.
  • 18:13 - 18:16
    Can we find a way
    to make them feel differently?
  • 18:17 - 18:20
    What will it take for us
    to see them and notice them
  • 18:20 - 18:25
    before they become either the victims
    or the perpetrators of violence?
  • 18:25 - 18:29
    Can we make ourselves care about them
    and consider them to be our own?
  • 18:29 - 18:34
    And not just be outraged when the victims
    of violence look like ourselves?
  • 18:34 - 18:39
    Can we find a way to reject hatred
    and heal the divisions between us?
  • 18:39 - 18:43
    The thing is we cannot afford
    to give up on each other or on our kids,
  • 18:43 - 18:45
    even if they've given up on us.
  • 18:45 - 18:47
    We are all in this together.
  • 18:47 - 18:53
    And in the long term, revenge and violence
    will not work against extremists.
  • 18:53 - 18:57
    Terrorists want us
    to huddle in our houses in fear,
  • 18:57 - 18:59
    closing our doors and our hearts.
  • 18:59 - 19:03
    They want us to tear open
    more wounds in our societies
  • 19:03 - 19:07
    so that they can use them
    to spread their infection more widely.
  • 19:07 - 19:10
    They want us to become like them:
  • 19:10 - 19:12
    intolerant, hateful and cruel.
  • 19:14 - 19:17
    The day after the Paris attacks,
  • 19:17 - 19:20
    a friend of mine
    sent this photo of her daughter.
  • 19:21 - 19:23
    This is a white girl and an Arab girl.
  • 19:23 - 19:24
    They're best friends.
  • 19:25 - 19:29
    This image is the kryptonite
    for extremists.
  • 19:31 - 19:34
    These two little girls
    with their superpowers
  • 19:34 - 19:36
    are showing the way forward
  • 19:36 - 19:39
    towards a society
    that we need to build together,
  • 19:40 - 19:43
    a society that includes and supports,
  • 19:44 - 19:47
    rather than rejects our kids.
  • 19:48 - 19:49
    Thank you for listening.
  • 19:49 - 19:52
    (Applause)
Title:
What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids
Speaker:
Deeyah Khan
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
20:11

English subtitles

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