The Muslim on the airplane, Amal Kassir, TEDxMileHighWomen
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| The Muslim on the airplane, Amal Kassir, TEDxMileHighWomen |
Translator: Sm Masum Reviewer:
Peter van de Ven Whenever I travel, I carry a little metal
boxof Altoids mints because after a four-hour,7 AM flight, everyone has bad
breath, so almost anyoneis willing to take the mint from the Muslim on the
airplane. (Laughter) And I know I've been successfulwhen my neighbor turns and
asks, "So, what's your name?"
You see, even if there wasan elephant
in the room, I'm still the elephant in the room. (Cheer) Yeah! When an
elephantoffers you mints on an airplane, I'm fully aware thatit's not always
easy to accept, so when the courageously curiousdo pop the what's-your-name
question, I try to make it worth their while. (Laughter) My name is Amal. It
means 'hope' in Arabic. Most days my name is waitressat my family's Damascus
restaurant, full-time university studentand then some, pre-law, world traveler,
11 countries. My name is I've performed poetryin eight of those countries.
(Cheers) (Applause)
International spoken word poet,unapologetic Muslim woman.
Syrian, American, hijabi,activist, social justice advocate. My name is writer,
teacher,Colorado-born Mile High baby! (Laughter) (Applause) But at the
airport,my name is random search. (Laughter) And on the street, it's terrorist,
sand nigger, raghead, oppressed, and on the news, it's ISIS, jihadi, suspect,
radical. My name is, "Could your Muslimneighbor be an extremist?" My
mama, who wears the hijab,the Islamic headdress, is often referred to
as"Go back to you country," but she's from Iowa! (Laughter) And her
nickname is Lisa Pizza. (Laughter) And it does not take morethan a couple
questions to figure out that her countryis the Council Bluffs cornfields.
(Laughter) But, how would someoneknow this without asking? They say the
shortest distancebetween two people is a story. Well, I elaborate on that to
saythat the greatest distance you can travel in the shortest amount of time,is
by asking someone their name.
The way we name ourselvesis a reflection of who
we are, our declarations, family histories,the things we believe, the morals we
abide by,our homes, cultures, transformations. Like a Mohammed turned Mo,or a
Lisa Pizza turned Iman. And how we name others, and how,if, we allow others to
name themselves is a reflection of our own declarations, of our courage, and
our fear. The malleability of a person's storymust be self-determined, coming
from the lips of the storyteller, not the anchorman, not the megaphone, not
even the scarf on her heador the melanin in his skin, because no one can
speakthe names of billions in one breath, unless it's in prayer, and oftentimes
when we generalize,it isn't because we're praying. And when we don't ask
someone their name,we're not asking for their story. In the world of mass
mediaand rampant misinformation, it is hard for anyone, including myself, to
deconstruct all theseterrifying stories that we hear.
Sometimes, instead of
isolating them,individualizing them, we tend to paint a group of peoplewith a
broad brush, until suddenly, everyone with a hijab onis a raghead that needs
liberating, or everyone with white skinis a racist cracker, or everyone with
black skinis a fatherless nigger, or everybody who looks like my fatheris going
to blow up the airplane, or if the killer had a light complexion,he's just a
mentally fragile lone wolf. And we come to this point where we feel like we
don't even needto ask people their names because we already gave it to them. In
Europe right now,a monumental name change is taking place that has completely
transformeda humanitarian responsibility. Countries are deporting refugees, but
when you watch news coverage, these refugeesare being referred to as migrants.
Because let's face it, deporting migrantssounds way more reasonable than
deporting individualswho have been forced to flee their country because of
persecution,war, and violence - the United Nations definition of refugee.
(Applause) And in naming these people this way, we've attributed to them a
choiceinstead of a circumstance, some economic gain insteadof a desperation to
flee a war zone. These little onesare refugees, not migrants. I took this photo
last yearat a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border,and contrary to popular
belief, they aren't poisons.
They're not here to steal our democracy or to take
over our neighborhoods. They're people, families who wish that they could go
home but have had to makethat home somewhere else. And we've come to this
point,where the word 'migrant' essentially means piles of
brown,foreign-speaking people, and we end up forgettingthat there was a point
where some people would've consideredthose who looked like this to be migrants
as well. (Applause) Right, though? (Applause) And it is in this
forgetfulnessthat we assume, monopolize on people's stories,attribute their
race, social class, religions, clothing to the namesthat we chose for them.
Terrorism is a finemodern-day example, unfortunately. In the past few years, so
much violencehas just spread across our country, but when you watch the
news,there's always a specification as to whether or notterrorism was involved,
which I think we all knowmeans the killer looked like this. [Arab dude]
Which... (Laughter) He's a babe! Which must mean... (Laughter) Which must mean
that the killer,of course, pledges his allegiance to this. [ISIS] Right?
But
correct me if I'm wrong, news coveragedoes in fact tend to be a little
different when the terrorist looks like this. [Robert Dear, Planned Parenthood
Shooter] (Applause) And it ultimatelyhas us forgetting that terrorism, by
definition of terrorism, has always come in all shapes [Ku Klux Klan] and colors.
[Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City Bomber] (Cheers) (Applause) And what happens
when we confinecertain names with certain depictions, wrongfully excluding
someand including others, we end up caging masses of peopleunder a name that
says 'dangerous,' even if they're nowhere near it. Like when we say
'thug'instead of 17-year-old black child. [Trayvon Martin] When we say
'alien'instead of 'immigrant.'
When we say 'lazy poor people'instead of
'unequal wealth distribution.' When we say 'bomb' instead of 'clock.' [Ahmed
Mohammad, clock inventor] (Applause) (Cheers) This man's name is Craig Hicks.
He's often referred toas a parking dispute, but his real name is a man who
shotand killed three Americans in their homes, in their heads, execution
stylebecause they were Muslim. His name is hate crime. Their names are Deah,
Yusor, and Razan, a 23 year old, 21, and 19. Deah and Yusor were just
namedhusband and wife, newlyweds, and the three were knownby their loved ones
as sons and daughters, brothers,sisters, students, activists, Instagrammers,
tax payers, Americans. But now, their namesare too young to have been taken,
their names are rest in peace,Allah Yerhamo. Hicks did not ask them their name.
He assigned it to themwhen he assigned them each a bullet, named them a threat
to his America,and as a result, took their lives. This is a photoon Deah and
Yusor's wedding day. It's so beautiful.
They were killedbefore they could even
see this. Studies show that duringbreaking news coverage, the first story is
the onethat sticks, even if it isn't true. Like during the Paris attacks, when
there was talkthat refugees were dangerous because they found a passport, only
to later confirm that there wereno Syrians or refugees involved. But when we
have sucha huge habit of misnaming people, it's easy to overlookthese kinds of
mistakes. And this is exemplaryof what happens in a culture of fear. In a
society that doesn't askone another their names, you end up with the mouth of
an anchorman or the mouth of a gundoing all the talking. On September 11th,
2001, I attended a private K-8 Islamic school, and within the first hours of
the tragedy, my school received two bomb threats. The word 'terrorist'was not
on my spelling list, but all of us kids picked it uppretty soon after. And in
naming us terroristsamidst this mass tragedy that affected us as Americans too,
in the words of Dalia Mogahed, we were not just mourners,but we were suspects
as well. But, a few months ago, me and my very handsome,white-boy-looking
brother named Usama were at the museumbuying planetarium tickets, and an
elderly white manwalked up to me and said, "I'm sorry about everythingyou
must be going through right now. I want you to know that not all
Americansbelieve what these buffoons are saying." (Applause) "Yeah,
he used the word 'buffoons!'" (Applause)
And he said, "I want you to
knowthat we stand by you." Now, had I not been wearinga little piece of my
identity on my head, he wouldn't have known to tell me this. And even though he
didn't ask mewhat my name was, he instead told me his. I have learned from
experiencethat when someone really wants to know, they will be willing to
crossthat threshold of fear and find out that my name means hope. And then,
they'll have the courageto ask the much more important questions that probably
only I can answer, like, "What's that thing on your head? Were you forced
to wear it? Are all Muslims really violent people? Does the Quranreally say to
kill all of us? Can you please tell mewhat's up with ISIS?"
And these
questions,though seemingly uncomfortable, are how I know that I have been
humanized, and are how the courageously curiousknow that really, I'm only as
scaryas the silence fear festers in. Upon meeting someone new,we ask their
names. We do not assign it to them. And with that name, we are given ancestry,
bloodlines and dialects, books and poems, perspectives, wars, struggles,and
survival stories. "What's your name?"is such a short distance to
cross, but when you ask me, oh, buddy! I will take you from Kuala Lumpurto Barcelona
to Beirut. We're going to go to Damascus,to Sydney, to Trinidad and Tobago. I
will show you Mecca, my closet with 70-plusinternational scarves, the graves of
my 31 family memberswho've been killed in Syria, the coffee shop that I hang
out atand do my homework.
But we must have the courageto claim our curiosity,
to go beyond anything we ever knew,anything we ever feared. But it takes two:
the elephant who offers the mint and the one who takes it. (Applause) (Cheers)
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