‘Articles by Deeyah Khan’

al-Araby al-Jadeed interview with Deeyah

June, 2014 What were the biggest challenges logistically/ personally you had with filming this documentary? What took the longest was finding the right voices and stories that I wanted to highlight in the film.  I wanted to make a film that goes beyond the usual conversations around radicalization which either centre around western foreign policy or jihadist ideology. I wanted to look at the human face of this topic and…

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Wounds this deep: Extremism and exclusion

Deeyah Khan June, 2015 Each of us handles dozens of interactions every day: buying a bus ticket, acknowledging an acquaintance in the street, drinking coffee with friends, a quick hello to a neighbour – and these have emotional and psychological effects. A well-meant compliment from a stranger can put a spring in your step; but an unwelcome and aggressive sexual approach can leave you grinding your teeth for hours. In…

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Leaving home for Hell Square

Deeyah Khan, June 2015   At the beginning of this year, the al-Khansa Brigade uploaded its Arabic language manual for the women of the Islamic State. The 10,000 word document advises that Muslim girls are married between the ages of nine and seventeen, cover their bodies and faces, and live in seclusion. Meanwhile, women and girls as young as ten from Iraq’s minority sects have been enslaved and raped –…

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We Must Tackle Extremism Without Compromising Freedom of Speech

Deeyah Khan, June 2015 The Queen announced last week that her government will be taking measures “to promote social cohesion and protect people by tackling extremism”. These measures, as outlined by home secretary Theresa May, may include the ability to vet television programmes before they are broadcast. Like Theresa May, I regularly find myself infuriated by the rantings of Anjem Choudary and other hate preachers. Every time Choudary and his ilk are…

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JIHAD AND THE ROAD BACK

Deeyah Khan May 2015 JIHAD AND THE ROAD BACK As a young South Asian woman, growing up in Norway, I felt the difficulties of being between two cultures. The door of my house opened into a world quite different from that of my schoolmates, and I often felt awkward, suspended between the world of my parents, and that of my friends. I used this dual culture to forge my own…

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Violence is the real provocation, not speech

Deeyah Khan, 24th of January 2015   Freedom of expression is essential for feminists and dissidents in the Muslim world. As a girl, I abandoned a promising singing career due to violent harassment by Islamists. Since then, over twenty years later as a film-maker and activist, I am a passionate advocate for the freedom of expression, even when this challenges ideas and images that are held to be sacrosanct. The…

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Women’s rights in principle, women’s rights in practice

Deeyah Khan,06 March 2015   International Women’s Day (8 March) is a celebration unlike any other: on one hand we have the accomplishments of half the world to celebrate. On the other, we have to confront the fact that women and girls continue to face discrimination in almost all sectors of life: from the home to school, to the workplace, to the political arena. One of the most devastating forms of…

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Courage and creativity: World Woman celebrates ‘dissident’ artists and activists

Deeyah Khan, January 2015   Courage and creativity: World Woman celebrates ‘dissident’ artists and activists When I established the first World Woman festival in Oslo, the major theme was freedom of expression, both in art and politics. This was partly the result of my own experiences of being harassed and threatened for my singing career as a young girl. But the dampening of freedom of expression in service of protecting…

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Finding My Own Voice

Deeyah Khan, March 2014   My journey started in Norway.  My father grew up with his father and stepmother in Pakistan, before moving to Oslo in the 60s. My grandfather was well-known and respected as one of the founders of the Norwegian Muslim community, revered as a deeply religious and traditional man and uninterested in any world beyond his own traditions. His unwavering beliefs pushed my father to an opposite…

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Religious extremism and the war on culture

Deeyah Khan, February 2015 As a girl, I studied and sang the Khyal music form which is a strand of traditional north Indian and Pakistani classical music, using techniques learned under the tutelage of Ustad Bade Fateh Ali Khan. I was harassed and physically attacked by fundamentalist Muslims, to whom a woman singing, no matter how modest, was an offence to their regressive ideas. While I felt myself to be…

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The most dangerous job in the world

Deeyah Khan September 2014 Growing up I was exposed to courageous feminists from Pakistan, the Middle East and India when my father would gather artists and intellectuals from different parts of the world in our home for discussions about world politics, human rights and social justice. As a young girl I was inspired and moved by these women, mesmerized by their courage, kindness and fearlessness — women who were larger…

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A burning house

Deeyah Khan, May 2015   South Carolina lies in the heartland of the Southern Baptist movement; it also has the highest level of domestic homicides in the United States. Reporters writing a Pulitzer-winning exposé of domestic violence found that the churches that formed the social centres of the community provided little support to women at risk: “The ministers told us, ‘It’s really a family issue. They need to work that…

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Honour, violence and silence

I grew up in a community where “honour” was a form of currency that determined each family’s status in the community. It was expressed by stifling the autonomy of women from birth to death. As I grew up, I began to hear more and more whispered stories of beatings, forced marriages, and even murder, which were justified by this idea of “honour.” It was all shrouded in silence, covered in…

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Women’s Voices Must Not Be Silenced

Deeyah Khan, 15th of February 2015   The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. – Alice Walker When I organised World Woman I was keen to emphasise the need for freedom of expression for activists and artists, to identify that those who are most likely to be silenced by the religious right most often share the culture of those who wish to silence…

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Recognising Rape – In War and Peace

Deeyah Khan, 17th of March 2015   Noor (not her real name), a 14-year-old girl from a small village in northern Iraq, was sold 15 times, passed from one Islamic State (Isis) fighter to the next. Each time, she was raped… “The worst moments,” Noor said, “were when one man would sell me to another. And I would have to hear them debating what my life was worth.” – (from The…

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