What we don’t know about Europe’s Muslim kids and why we should care | Deeyah Khan | TEDxExeter
-
Not SyncedWhen I was a child,
I knew I had superpowers. -
Not SyncedThat’s right.
-
Not SyncedI thought I was absolutely amazing because
I could understand and relate to -
Not Syncedthe feelings of brown people like
my grandfather, a conservative Muslim guy, -
Not Syncedand also I could understand
my Afghan mother and Pakistani father, -
Not Syncednot so religious but
laid back, fairly liberal. -
Not SyncedAnd of course I could understand and
relate to the feelings of white people, -
Not Syncedthe white Norwegians of my country.
-
Not SyncedYou know white, brown,
whatever, I loved them all. -
Not SyncedI understood them all even if they
didn’t always understand each other -
Not SyncedThey were all my people.
-
Not SyncedMy father though was
always really worried. -
Not SyncedHe kept saying that,
even with the best education -
Not SyncedI was not going to get a fair shake,
I would face discrimination, -
Not Syncedaccording to him, and the only way
to be accepted by white people -
Not Syncedwould be to become famous.
-
Not SyncedNow mind you, he had this conversation
with me when I was seven years old. -
Not SyncedSo, while I’m seven years old he said
-
Not Synced'Look, so its either got to be sports
or its got to be music.' -
Not SyncedHe didn’t know anything about sports,
bless him, so it was music. -
Not SyncedSo when I was seven years old
he gathered al my toys, all my dolls, -
Not Syncedand he threw them all away.
-
Not SyncedIn exchange he gave me a crappy little
Casio keyboard, and singing lessons, -
Not Syncedand forced me to practice for hours
and hours every single day. -
Not SyncedVery quickly he also had me performing
for larger and larger audiences, -
Not Syncedbizarrely I became almost a poster child
for Norwegian multiculturalism. -
Not SyncedI felt very proud of course because
even the newspapers at this point -
Not Syncedwere starting to write
nice things about brown people, -
Not Syncedso I could feel that
my superpower was growing. -
Not SyncedSo when I was 12 years old walking home
from school I took a little detour -
Not Syncedbecause I wanted to buy
my favourite sweets called 'salty feet'. -
Not SyncedI know they sound kind of awful,
but I absolutely loved them. -
Not SyncedThey are basically these little
salty licorice bits, in the shape of feet. -
Not SyncedAnd now that I say it out loud I realise
how terrible that sounds, -
Not Syncedbut be that as it may,
I absolutely loved them. -
Not SyncedOn my way into the store, there was this
grown white guy in the doorway -
Not Syncedblocking my way, so I tried to walk around
him, and as I did that he stopped me, -
Not Syncedand he was staring at me,
and he spit in my face and he said -
Not Synced‘Get out of my way you little black bitch,
you little Paki bitch, get out of my - -
Not Syncedgo back home where you came from.’
I was absolutely horrified. -
Not SyncedI was staring at him, I was too afraid
to wipe the spit off my face, -
Not Syncedeven as it was mixing with my tears.
I remember looking around, -
Not Syncedhoping any minute now a grownup
is going to come and make this guy stop. -
Not SyncedBut instead people kept hurrying past me
and pretending not to see me. -
Not SyncedI was very confused because I was thinking
-
Not Synced‘Well, my white people come on,
where are they? What’s going on? -
Not SyncedHow come they’re not
coming and rescuing me?’ -
Not SyncedSo needless to say I didn’t buy the sweets
I just ran home as fast as I could. -
Not SyncedThings were still ok though, I thought.
-
Not SyncedAs time went on, the more
successful I became, -
Not SyncedI eventually started attracting
harassment from brown people. -
Not SyncedSome men in my parents community felt that
it was unacceptable and dishonorable -
Not Syncedfor a woman to be involved in music,
and to be so present in the media. -
Not SyncedSo very quickly I was starting to
become attacked at my own concerts. -
Not SyncedI remember one of the concerts, I was
on stage, I lean in to the audience, -
Not Syncedand the last thing I see is
a young brown face, -
Not Syncedand the next thing I know is some sort
of chemical is thrown in my eyes. -
Not SyncedAnd I remember I couldn’t really see,
and my eyes were watering, -
Not Syncedbut I kept singing anyway.
-
Not SyncedI was spit in the face in the streets
of Oslo, this time by brown men. -
Not SyncedThey even tried to kidnap me at one point.
The death threats were endless. -
Not SyncedI remember one older bearded guy
stopped me in the street one time and said -
Not Synced‘The reason I hate you so much is that
you make our daughters think -
Not Syncedthey can do whatever they want.’
-
Not SyncedA younger guy warned me
to watch my back, he said -
Not Synced‘Music is un-Islamic
and the job of whores, -
Not Syncedand if you keep this up you are going to
be raped and your stomach will be cut out, -
Not Syncedso that another whore
like you will not be born.’ -
Not SyncedAgain I was so confused.
I couldn’t understand what was going on, -
Not Syncedmy brown people now
starting to treat me like this. -
Not SyncedHow come?
Instead of bridging the two worlds, -
Not SyncedI felt like I was falling
between the two worlds. -
Not SyncedI suppose for me,
spit was kryptonite. -
Not SyncedSo by the time I was 17 years old
the death threats were endless, -
Not Syncedand the harassment was constant.
-
Not SyncedIt got so bad at one point
my mother sat me down and said -
Not Synced‘Look, we can no longer protect you,
we can no longer keep you safe, -
Not Syncedso you’re going to have to go.’
-
Not SyncedSo I bought a one-way ticket to London.
I packed my suitcase, and I left. -
Not SyncedMy biggest heartbreak at that point
was that nobody said anything. -
Not SyncedI had a very public exit from Norway.
-
Not SyncedMy brown people, my white people,
nobody said anything. -
Not SyncedNobody said ‘Hold on, this is wrong.
-
Not SyncedSupport this girl, protect this girl
because she is one of us.’ -
Not SyncedNobody said that. Instead I felt like,
-
Not Syncedyou know at the airport,
on the baggage carousel, -
Not Syncedyou have these different suitcases
going round and round, -
Not Syncedand there’s always
that one suitcase left at the end. -
Not SyncedThe one that nobody wants.
That nobody comes to claim. -
Not SyncedI felt like that. I’d never felt so alone.
I’d never felt so lost. -
Not SyncedSo, after coming to London,
I did eventually resume my music career. -
Not SyncedDifferent place, but unfortunately
the same old story. -
Not SyncedI remember a message sent to me saying
that I was going to be killed, -
Not Syncedand that rivers of blood
were going to flow, -
Not Syncedand that I was going to be raped
many times before I died. -
Not SyncedBy this time I has to say I was actually
getting used to messages like this. -
Not SyncedBut what became different was that now
they started threatening my family. -
Not SyncedSo once again, I packed my suitcase,
I left music, and I moved to the US. -
Not SyncedI’d had enough. I didn’t want to have
anything to do with this anymore. -
Not SyncedAnd I wasn’t going to be killed for
something that wasn’t even my dream, -
Not Syncedit was my father’s choice.
-
Not SyncedSo I kind of got lost,
I kind of fell apart, -
Not Syncedbut I decided that what I wanted to do is
-
Not Syncedto spend the next however many years
of my life supporting young people, -
Not Syncedand to try to be there in some small way,
whatever way that I could. -
Not SyncedSo I started volunteering for various
organisations that were working -
Not Syncedwith young Muslims inside of Europe.
-
Not SyncedAnd, to my surprise what I found,
was so many of these young people -
Not Syncedwere suffering and struggling.
-
Not SyncedThey were facing so many problems
with their families and their communities, -
Not Syncedwho seemed to care more about
their honour and their reputation -
Not Syncedthan the happiness and
the lives of their own kids. -
Not SyncedI started feeling like maybe I wasn’t
so alone, maybe I wasn’t so weird. -
Not SyncedMaybe there are more
of my people out there. -
Not SyncedThe thing is what most people
don’t understand, -
Not Syncedis that there are so many
of us growing up in Europe -
Not Syncedwho are not free to be ourselves.
We are not allowed to be who we are. -
Not SyncedWe are not free to marry, or to be
in relationships with, people we choose, -
Not Syncedwe can’t even pick our own career.
-
Not SyncedThis is the norm in
the Muslim heartlands of Europe. -
Not SyncedEven in the freest societies
in the world, we are not free. -
Not SyncedOur lives, our dreams, our future,
does not belong to us, -
Not Syncedit belongs to our parents,
and their community. -
Not SyncedI found endless stories of young people,
who are lost to all of us, -
Not SyncedWho are invisible to all of us,
-
Not Syncedbut they are suffering and
they are suffering alone. -
Not SyncedKids that we are losing to forced marriages,
to honour based violence and abuse. -
Not SyncedSo eventually I realised, after several
years of working with these young people, -
Not Syncedthat I will not be able to keep running,
-
Not SyncedI can’t spend the rest of my life
being scared and hiding, -
Not Syncedand that I’m actually going
to have to do something. -
Not SyncedAnd I also realised that
my silence, our silence, -
Not Syncedallows abuse like this to continue.
-
Not SyncedSo I decided that I wanted to put
my childhood superpower to some use, -
Not Syncedby trying to make people on
the different sides of these issues -
Not Syncedunderstand what it's like to be
a young person stuck -
Not Syncedbetween your family and your country.
-
Not SyncedSo I started making films,
and I started telling these stories. -
Not SyncedAnd I also wanted people to understand
-
Not Syncedthe deadly consequences of us
not taking these problems seriously. -
Not SyncedSo the first film I made was about Banaz.
-
Not SyncedShe was a 17 year old
Kurdish girl in London. -
Not SyncedShe was obedient, she did
whatever her parents wanted. -
Not SyncedShe tried to do everything right.
-
Not SyncedShe married some guy
that her parent’s chose for her, -
Not Syncedeven though he beat
and raped her constantly. -
Not SyncedAnd when she tried to go
to her family for help they said -
Not Synced‘Well, you’ve got to go back
and be a better wife.’ -
Not SyncedBecause they didn’t want
a divorced daughter on their hands, -
Not Syncedbecause of course, that would bring
dishonor on the family. -
Not SyncedShe was beaten so badly
her ears would bleed. -
Not SyncedAnd when she finally left, and she found
a young man that she chose, -
Not Syncedand she fell in love with, the community
and the family found out, -
Not Syncedand she disappeared.
She was found three months later. -
Not SyncedShe’d been stuffed into a suitcase,
and buried underneath a house. -
Not SyncedShe had been strangled,
she had been beaten to death, -
Not Syncedby three men, three cousins,
on the orders of her father and uncle. -
Not SyncedThe added tragedy of Banaz’s story,
-
Not Syncedstory is that she had gone to the police
in England five times asking for help. -
Not SyncedTelling them that she was going
to be killed by her family. -
Not SyncedThe police didn’t believe her,
so they didn’t do anything. -
Not SyncedAnd the problem with this,
-
Not Syncedis that not only are so many of
our kids facing these problems, -
Not Syncedwithin their families and
within their families communities, -
Not Syncedbut they are also meeting
misunderstanding and apathy -
Not Syncedin the countries they grow up in.
-
Not SyncedWhen their own families betray them,
they look to the rest of us. -
Not SyncedAnd when we don’t understand,
we lose them. -
Not SyncedSo while I was making this film,
several people said to me -
Not Synced'Well, Deeyah, you know
this is just their culture, -
Not Syncedthis is just what those people do to
their kids and we can’t really interfere.’ -
Not SyncedI can assure you,
being murdered is not my culture. -
Not SyncedAnd surely people who look like me,
young women who come -
Not Syncedfrom backgrounds like mine,
should be subject to the same rights, -
Not Syncedthe same protections,
as anybody else in our country. -
Not SyncedWhy not?
-
Not SyncedSo, for my next film, I wanted
to try and understand why -
Not Syncedsome of our young Muslim kids in Europe
are drawn to extremism and violence. -
Not SyncedBut with that topic,
also recognised -
Not Syncedthat I was going to have
to face my worst fear. -
Not SyncedThe brown men with beards.
-
Not SyncedThe same men, or similar men, to the ones
that have hounded me for most of my life. -
Not SyncedMen that I’ve been afraid of
most of my life. -
Not SyncedMen that I’ve also deeply disliked
for many many years. -
Not SyncedSo I spent the next two years
interviewing convicted terrorists, -
Not Syncedjihadis and former extremists.
-
Not SyncedWhat I already knew,
what was very obviously already, -
Not Syncedwas that religion, politics,
Europe’s colonial baggage, -
Not Syncedalso Western foreign policy failures
of recent years, -
Not Syncedwere all a part of the picture.
-
Not SyncedBut what I was more interested
in finding out, was what are the human, -
Not Syncedwhat are the personal reasons
why some of our young people -
Not Syncedare susceptible to groups like this.
-
Not SyncedAnd what really surprised me,
was that I found wounded human beings. -
Not SyncedInstead of the monsters that I was
looking for, that I was looking to find, -
Not Syncedquite frankly because it would have been
very satisfying, I found broken people. -
Not SyncedJust like Banaz, I found that
these young men were torn apart -
Not Syncedfrom trying to bridge
the gaps between their families, -
Not Syncedand the countries that they were born in.
-
Not SyncedAnd what I also learnt is that
extremist groups, terrorist groups,
- Title:
- What we don’t know about Europe’s Muslim kids and why we should care | Deeyah Khan | TEDxExeter
- Description:
-
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 19:58
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