Translator: Sylwia Magon Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Today, my greatest hope is for peace.
But for the first 16 years of my life,
like many other young people from my community,
I wanted to sacrifice my life in the name of violent jihad,
to become a martyr.
I have experienced what it takes
to make a young person want to be a jihadist,
and I have learned what it takes to prevent radicalization.
Since then, I have created a movement for peace,
unleashing young peoples' potential
to create flourishing and prosperous communities.
We have saved the lives of more than 10,000 young people
by preventing them from being recruited in militant jihadi groups.
Today, I want to share my journey with you.
I was born in Swabi.
It's a small village in the northwest of Pakistan,
a deeply remote area, traditional and religious.
At that time,
Pakistan was a perfect incubator for producing militant mindsets.
We learned to hate life,
believing that this life is short and the real life is after life
and the earlier it starts, the luckier we are
and all Muslims will go to heaven.
So I felt very lucky being born in a Muslim family.
Our village was conservative,
and discriminations were deeply rooted in the culture.
The birth of boys was cherished,
celebrated by firing guns into the air and by sharing delicious food,
while the birth of girls was a matter of shame and sadness.
I was 11,
when following local culture, my parents told me I was no longer a kid.
I had to wear a scarf; I could no longer play outside.
While most of my time was spent behind the walls,
outside I saw recruitment slogans for jihad
chalked on the walls of my village,
encouraging young people to go and fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
In Islam, though jihad means struggle,
but the political Islamists have limited its meaning to violent jihad, to war.
And we were told that under Muslim Brotherhood,
it is our responsibility to help Muslims who are suffering
in other countries in other parts of the world.
Thousands of young people went to fight.
I saw families receiving dead bodies of their loved ones,
killed in violent jihad.
Their deaths were cherished in the village.
Their families were considered more holier than other families,
and everyone believed that the whole family will go to heaven -
guaranteed.
And then, jihad was the real part of life that was open to both men and women.
It was glamorous; it was exciting.
And then, I saw it as a way of breaking through those walls of shame.
But there was a problem: my father.
He didn't believe in war in any jihad.
He believed in peace.
I was eight when we had to flee our village,
because my father was accused of being an infidel
and we feared worse to come.
One day, he overheard us talking about religion and our zeal for jihad.
He realised his own children had been indoctrinated,
and when he realized this, he started a mission of his own:
a mission to reverse the harm that has been done,
a mission to plant seedlings of hope and peace.
While other -
While other people in our family and neighborhood
were investing their money in buying lands,
buying new cars and building new homes,
my father decided he will invest his money in our better education.
And he started that by teaching us about local heroes,
people who had used their voice, not weapons,
to make their communities better places,
people like Bacha Khan,
who just like Gandhi,
has used nonviolence to ask for independence from colonization,
people like Nelson Mandela - to teach us about reconciliation.
He taught us about nonviolent heroism.
And he started introducing us to ideas like secularism, liberalism and pluralism,
and all that sounded so crazy then.
He introduced us to people who had very different ideas,
people who were freethinkers, activists, politicians.
And it was one of those meetings that changed my life.
One day, my father took me to hear a woman sharing the story of her 13-year-old son.
Her son used to go to a local madrasa after school to learn Quran.
And like any typical madras in Pakistan,
he was taught the importance of violent jihad.
He was taught that God comes first, parents come later,
so he did not need permission of his parents
to go for jihad.
One day, he disappeared.
His mother had no idea where the son has gone.
Until one day, she received his dead body and a congratulatory message:
"Congratulations!
You are the mother of a martyr; you will go to heaven."
I had never seen someone as devastated as that mother.
Her tears affected me deeply.
Her son's story was my story too.
The only difference was opportunity:
he had the opportunity to go and fight in jihad,
and thanks to my father, I had not.
That was the day I knew I didn't want to be that kid.
I didn't want to be a jihadist anymore.
I didn't want to kill; I didn't want to get killed.
I learned jihad brings pain, not glory.
I was 16.
I was transforming from the girl that had the dream to go for jihad
to the girl that wanted to prevent it,
from the girl that wanted freedom for herself
to someone who wanted freedom, independence and decision-making
for all women.
Me and my sister Saba, we became determined to do something
which will change the fate of girls in our communities.
We started visiting schools and neighborhoods
and started listening to girls about issues which bothered them,
about things they would like to change in their life.
And we started giving them ideas on how to make those changes.
And we called our campaign Aware Girls,
a campaign which will help girls
to make them speak up for their own rights.
By then, my parents were very proud of their children,
and at the end of my first semester in university,
he sent me to a two-months residential leadership course
for young people.
For the very first time,
I was on my own with men and women,
with people from different religions and ethnicities.
Yes, we learnt hope, peace and human rights,
but most importantly,
we lived it for two months, and that was transformative.
And I realized I can be bold, I can stand up against my greatest fears.
It's changed my life.
Then, in 2007,
the security situation in Pakistan started getting worse.
Swat Valley was occupied by Taliban,
and the news of suicide bomb attacks
was common.
My city, Peshawar,
which was known as "City of Flowers,"
became the city of suicide bomb attacks -
most of them done by young people.
Seeing young people killing and being killed
was heartbreaking for me.
I felt so close to them.
I felt so close to them;
I could relate to them because I had been there.
I couldn't close my eyes.
It was my calling,
my calling to counter radicalization,
my calling to prevent young people
from being recruited in militant organizations
and to give them hope
so that they can unleash their potential
to build peaceful and prosperous communities.
So we formed a youth peace network
to stop more young people
from being sent to their deaths in the name of religion.
While terrorist organizations
were recruiting people for terrorist activities,
I started recruiting young people for peace building.
We started with a group of 30 young people,
and drawing on our very own experiences,
we identified five key factors
which pull young peoples towards militancy and extremism.
Let me take you through those five elements.
Number one.
Militants promote one uniform worldview
and reject all others as haram, as wrong.
We bring young people of different faiths and ethnicities together
and give them the opportunity to know each other
and to celebrate the beauty of it,
to live the beauty of it.
Number two.
They cut off young people from their indigenous identities,
making them vulnerable.
We reconnect them,
and we help them celebrate
their indigenous history and their indigenous culture.
Number three.
Militants make young people feel worthy,
worthy and valuable through jihad.
We make them feel celebrated too.
Once young people start making a difference
in the lives of other young people in their community,
they start realizing they are valuable, they are worthy.
Number four.
Jihadists offer only one kind of hero, the martyr,
and offer only one kind of glory, the glory of war.
My mentors taught me nonviolent heroism.
We support young people to become heroes in their own lives
by rebuilding their communities,
by saving lives, by bringing prosperity,
by bringing peace in their communities.
We help them see glory and heroism in goals higher than jihad.
Number five.
We have learned that it is very important to engage young people individually.
While the political and social circumstances
might make them vulnerable to extremism and recruitment,
but their particular story,
their particular trigger to radicalization is personal.
So we get to know each individual.
Relationships are key.
Young people inspire other young people.
They become heroes and role model for each other.
When we started our work, no one believed we could bring any change.
But now we have grown from that group of 30 young people.
We are now more than 500 peer educators
who are reaching out to more than 3,000 young people every year.
We have impacted the lives of more than 10,000 young people
at the risk of radicalization,
changing their lives and saving lives of many countless more.
It is a powerful strategy.
It works.
20 years ago,
we left our village when my father was accused of being an infidel.
Three years back, I went back to work there with the young people.
Ahmad, who was 14 years old,
came to thank us for saving his life.
He used to go to a local madrasa,
where one of his teachers inspired him to go for jihad.
But then, he met one of our peer educators,
and he started -
and he started to ask himself questions:
If going to jihad is so important and the duty of every Muslim,
then why [don't] children
of these jihadi teachers and Imams go to jihad?
He decided not to go.
There is still so much work to do in Pakistan
and in other parts of the world.
So many places in the world are fertile grounds for radicalization.
Radicalization does not happen in vacuum.
Radicalization happens
when political circumstances and individual circumstances
collide with opportunities.
Extremist violence knows no borders.
The militant groups and militants' attacks
that we had seen for a long time happening in my home region
are now happening in many parts of the world.
But I believe that if every young person
is presented with the kind of opportunities I was presented with,
that our network offers,
then, like me, they can make different choices.
We need to tear down the walls in our minds
and offer a new and more hopeful vision,
where everyone is valued and everyone is able to contribute.
And even a more powerful movement:
a movement for peace.
This is the hope I want to share with you.
This strategy is working in Pakistan,
and I believe it can work everywhere in the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)