A historic moment in the Arab world

Ten years ago exactly, I was in Afghanistan. I was covering the war in Afghanistan, and I witnessed, as a
reporter for Al Jazeera, the amount of suffering and destruction that emerged out of a war like that.
Then, two years later, I covered another war -- the war in Iraq. I was placed at the center of that war
because I was covering the war from the northern part of Iraq. And the war ended with a regime
change, like the one in Afghanistan. And that regime that we got rid of was actually a dictatorship, an
authoritarian regime, that for decades created a great sense of paralysis within the nation, within the
people themselves. However, the change that came through foreign intervention created even worse
circumstances for the people and deepened the sense of paralysis and inferiority in that part of the
world.

For decades, we have lived under authoritarian regimes -- in the Arab world, in the Middle East. These
regimes created something within us during this period. I'm 43 years old right now. For the last 40 years,
I have seen almost the same faces for kings and presidents ruling us -- old, aged, authoritarian, corrupt
situations -- regimes that we have seen around us. And for a moment I was wondering, are we going to
live in order to see real change happening on the ground, a change that does not come through foreign
intervention, through the misery of occupation, through nations invading our land and deepening the
sense of inferiority sometimes? The Iraqis: yes, they got rid of Saddam Hussein, but when they saw their
land occupied by foreign forces they felt very sad, they felt that their dignity had suffered. And this is
why they revolted. This is why they did not accept. And actually other regimes, they told their citizens,
"Would you like to see the situation of Iraq? Would you like to see civil war, sectarian killing? Would you
like to see destruction? Would you like to see foreign troops on your land?" And the people thought for
themselves, "Maybe we should live with this kind of authoritarian situation that we find ourselves in,
instead of having the second scenario." That was one of the worst nightmares that we have seen.

For 10 years, unfortunately we have found ourselves reporting images of destruction, images of killing,
of sectarian conflicts, images of violence, emerging from a magnificent piece of land, a region that one
day was the source of civilizations and art and culture for thousands of years. Now I am here to tell you
that the future that we were dreaming for has eventually arrived. A new generation, well-educated,
connected, inspired by universal values and a global understanding, has created a new reality for us. We
have found a new way to express our feelings and to express our dreams: these young people who have
restored self-confidence in our nations in that part of the world, who have given us new meaning for
freedom and empowered us to go down to the streets. Nothing happened. No violence. Nothing. Just
step out of your house, raise your voice and say, "We would like to see the end of the regime."

This is what happened in Tunisia. Over a few days, the Tunisian regime that invested billions of dollars in
the security agencies, billions of dollars in maintaining, trying to maintain, its prisons, collapsed,
disappeared, because of the voices of the public. People who were inspired to go down to the streets
and to raise their voices, they tried to kill. The intelligence agencies wanted to arrest people. They found
something called Facebook. They found something called Twitter. They were surprised by all of these
kinds of issues. And they said, "These kids are misled." Therefore, they asked their parents to go down
to the streets and collect them, bring them back home. This is what they were telling. This is their
propaganda. "Bring these kids home because they are misled." But yes, these youth who have been
inspired by universal values, who are idealistic enough to imagine a magnificent future and, at the same
time, realistic enough to balance this kind of imagination and the process leading to it -- not using
violence, not trying to create chaos -- these young people, they did not go home. Parents actually went
to the streets and they supported them. And this is how the revolution was born in Tunisia.

We in Al Jazeera were banned from Tunisia for years, and the government did not allow any Al Jazeera
reporter to be there. But we found that these people in the street, all of them are our reporters, feeding
our newsroom with pictures, with videos and with news. And suddenly that newsroom in Doha became
a center that received all this kind of input from ordinary people -- people who are connected and
people who have ambition and who have liberated themselves from the feeling of inferiority. And then
we took that decision: We are unrolling the news. We are going to be the voice for these voiceless
people. We are going to spread the message. Yes, some of these young people are connected to the
Internet, but the connectivity in the Arab world is very little, is very small, because of many problems
that we are suffering from. But Al Jazeera took the voice from these people and we amplified [it]. We
put it in every sitting room in the Arab world -- and internationally, globally, through our English
channel.

And then people started to feel that there's something new happening. And then Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali
decided to leave. And then Egypt started, and Hosni Mubarak decided to leave. And now Libya as you
see it. And then you have Yemen. And you have many other countries trying to see and to rediscover
that feeling of, "How do we imagine a future which is magnificent and peaceful and tolerant?" I want to
tell you something, that the Internet and connectivity has created [a] new mindset. But this mindset has
continued to be faithful to the soil and to the land that it emerged from. And while this was the major
difference between many initiatives before to create change, before we thought, and governments told
us -- and even sometimes it was true -- that change was imposed on us, and people rejected that,
because they thought that it is alien to their culture. Always, we believed that change will spring from
within, that change should be a reconciliation with culture, cultural diversity, with our faith in our
tradition and in our history, but at the same time, open to universal values, connected with the world,
tolerant to the outside. And this is the moment that is happening right now in the Arab world. This is the
right moment, and this is the actual moment that we see all of these meanings meet together and then
create the beginning of this magnificent era that will emerge from the region.

How did the elite deal with that -- the so-called political elite? In front of Facebook, they brought the
camels in Tahrir Square. In front of Al Jazeera, they started creating tribalism. And then when they
failed, they started speaking about conspiracies that emerged from Tel Aviv and Washington in order to
divide the Arab world. They started telling the West, "Be aware of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is taking over our
territories. These are Islamists trying to create new Imaras. Be aware of these people who [are] coming
to you in order to ruin your great civilization." Fortunately, people right now cannot be deceived.
Because this corrupt elite in that region has lost even the power of deception. They could not, and they
cannot, imagine how they could really deal with this reality. They have lost. They have been detached
from their people, from the masses, and now we are seeing them collapsing one after the other.

Al Jazeera is not a tool of revolution. We do not create revolutions. However, when something of that
magnitude happens, we are at the center of the coverage. We were banned from Egypt, and our
correspondents, some of them were arrested. But most of our camera people and our journalists, they
went underground in Egypt -- voluntarily -- to report what happened in Tahrir Square. For 18 days, our
cameras were broadcasting, live, the voices of the people in Tahrir Square. I remember one night when
someone phoned me on my cellphone -- ordinary person who I don't know -- from Tahrir Square. He
told me, "We appeal to you not to switch off the cameras. If you switch off the cameras tonight, there
will be a genocide. You are protecting us by showing what is happening at Tahrir Square." I felt the
responsibility to phone our correspondents there and to phone our newsroom and to tell them, "Make
your best not to switch off the cameras at night, because the guys there really feel confident when
someone is reporting their story -- and they feel protected as well."

So we have a chance to create a new future in that part of the world. We have a chance to go and to
think of the future as something which is open to the world. Let us not repeat the mistake of Iran, of
[the] Mosaddeq revolution. Let us free ourselves -- especially in the West -- from thinking about that
part of the world based on oil interest, or based on interests of the illusion of stability and security. The
stability and security of authoritarian regimes cannot create but terrorism and violence and destruction.
Let us accept the choice of the people. Let us not pick and choose who we would like to rule their future.
The future should be ruled by people themselves, even sometimes if they are voices that might now
scare us. But the values of democracy and the freedom of choice that is sweeping the Middle East at this
moment in time is the best opportunity for the world, for the West and the East, to see stability and to
see security and to see friendship and to see tolerance emerging from the Arab world, rather than the
images of violence and terrorism. Let us support these people. Let us stand for them. And let us give up
our narrow selfishness in order to embrace change, and in order to celebrate with the people of that
region a great future and hope and tolerance. The future has arrived, and the future is now. I thank you
very much.

(Applause)

Thank you very much.

(Applause)
Chris Anderson: I just have a couple of questions for you. Thank you for coming here. How would you
characterize the historical significance of what's happened? Is this a story-of-the-year, a story-of-the-
decade or something more?

Wadah Khanfar: Actually, this may be the biggest story that we have ever covered. We have covered
many wars. We have covered a lot of tragedies, a lot of problems, a lot of conflict zones, a lot of hot
spots in the region, because we were centered at the middle of it. But this is a story -- it is a great story;
it is beautiful. It is not something that you only cover because you have to cover a great incident. You
are witnessing change in history. You are witnessing the birth of a new era. And this is what the story's
all about.

CA: There are a lot of people in the West who are still skeptical, or think this may just be an intermediate
stage before much more alarming chaos. You really believe that if there are democratic elections in
Egypt now, that a government could emerge that espouses some of the values you've spoken about so
inspiringly?

WK: And people actually, after the collapse of the Hosni Mubarak regime, the youth who have organized
themselves in certain groups and councils, they are guarding the transformation and they are trying to
put it on a track in order to satisfy the values of democracy, but at the same time also to make it
reasonable and to make it rational, not to go out of order. In my opinion, these people are much more
wiser than, not only the political elite, even the intellectual elite, even opposition leaders including
political parties. At this moment in time, the youth in the Arab world are much more wiser and capable
of creating the change than the old -- including the political and cultural and ideological old regimes.

(Applause)

CA: We are not to get involved politically and interfere in that way. What should people here at TED,
here in the West, do if they want to connect or make a difference and they believe in what's happening
here?

WK: I think we have discovered a very important issue in the Arab world -- that people care, people care
about this great transformation. Mohamed Nanabhay who's sitting with us, the head of Aljazeera.net,
he told me that a 2,500 percent increase of accessing our website from various parts of the world. Fifty
percent of it is coming from America. Because we discovered that people care, and people would like to
know -- they are receiving the stream through our Internet. Unfortunately in the United States, we are
not covering but Washington D.C. at this moment in time for Al Jazeera English. But I can tell you, this is
the moment to celebrate through connecting ourselves with those people in the street and expressing
our support to them and expressing this kind of feeling, universal feeling, of supporting the weak and
the oppressed to create a much better future for all of us.

CA: Well Wadah, a group of members of the TED community, TEDxCairo, are meeting as we speak.
They've had some speakers there. I believe they've heard your talk. Thank you for inspiring them and for
inspiring all of us. Thank you so much.

(Applause)
 Pollster Dalia Mogahed shares surprising data on
Egyptian people's attitudes and hopes before the Arab
Spring -- with a special focus on the role of women in
sparking change.

My talk today is about something maybe a couple of you have already heard about. It's called the
Arab Spring. Anyone heard of it? 

(Applause) 

So in 2011, power shifted, from the few to the many, from oval offices to central squares, from
carefully guarded airwaves to open-source networks. But before Tahrir was a global symbol of
liberation, there were representative surveys already giving people a voice in quieter but still
powerful ways. 

I study Muslim societies around the world at Gallup. Since 2001, we've interviewed hundreds of
thousands of people -- young and old, men and women, educated and illiterate. My talk today
draws on this research to reveal why Arabs rose up and what they want now. 

Now this region's very diverse, and every country is unique. But those who revolted shared a
common set of grievances and have similar demands today. I'm going to focus a lot of my talk on
Egypt. It has nothing to do with the fact that I was born there, of course. But it's the largest Arab
country and it's also one with a great deal of influence. But I'm going to end by widening the lens
to the entire region to look at the mundane topics of Arab views of religion and politics and how
this impacts women, revealing some surprises along the way. 

So after analyzing mounds of data, what we discovered was this: Unemployment and poverty

alone did not lead to the Arab revolts of 2011. If an act of desperation by a Tunisian fruit
vendor sparked these revolutions, it was the difference between what Arabs experienced and
what they expected that provided the fuel. 

To tell you what I mean, consider this trend in Egypt. On paper the country was doing great. In
fact, it attracted accolades from multinational organizations because of its economic growth. But
under the surface was a very different reality. In 2010, right before the revolution, even though
GDP per capita had been growing at five percent for several years, Egyptians had never felt
worse about their lives. 

Now this is very unusual, because globally we find that, not surprisingly, people feel better as
their country gets richer. And that's because they have better job opportunities and their state
offers better social services. But it was exactly the opposite in Egypt. As the country got more
well-off, unemployment actually rose and people's satisfaction with things like housing and
education plummeted. But it wasn't just anger at economic injustice. It was also people's deep
longing for freedom. Contrary to the clash of civilizations theory, Arabs didn't despise Western
liberty, they desired it. 

As early as 2001, we asked Arabs, and Muslims in general around the world, what they admired
most about the West. Among the most frequent responses was liberty and justice. In their own
words to an open-ended question we heard, "Their political system is transparent and it's
following democracy in its true sense." Another said it was "liberty and freedom and being open-
minded with each other." Majorities as high as 90 percent and greater in Egypt, Indonesia and
Iran told us in 2005 that if they were to write a new constitution for a theoretical new
country that they would guarantee freedom of speech as a fundamental right, especially in
Egypt. Eighty-eight percent said moving toward greater democracy would help Muslims
progress -- the highest percentage of any country we surveyed. 

But pressed up against these democratic aspirations was a very different day-to-day

experience, especially in Egypt. While aspiring to democracy the most, they were the least likely
population in the world to say that they had actually voiced their opinion to a public official in
the last month -- at only four percent. So while economic development made a few people rich, it
left many more worse off. As people felt less and less free, they also felt less and less provided
for. So rather than viewing their former regimes as generous if overprotective fathers, they
viewed them as essentially prison wardens. 

So now that Egyptians have ended Mubarak's 30-year rule, they potentially could be an example
for the region. If Egypt is to succeed at building a society based on the rule of law, it could be a
model. If, however, the core issues that propelled the revolution aren't addressed, the
consequences could be catastrophic -- not just for Egypt, but for the entire region. 

The signs don't look good, some have said. Islamists, not the young liberals that sparked the
revolution, won the majority in Parliament. The military council has cracked down on civil
society and protests and the country's economy continues to suffer. Evaluating Egypt on this
basis alone, however, ignores the real revolution. Because Egyptians are more optimistic than
they have been in years, far less divided on religious-secular lines than we would think and
poised for the demands of democracy. 

Whether they support Islamists or liberals, Egyptians' priorities for this government are
identical, and they are jobs, stability and education, not moral policing. But most of all, for the
first time in decades, they expect to be active participants, not spectators, in the affairs of their
country. 

I was meeting with a group of newly-elected parliamentarians from Egypt and Tunisia a couple
of weeks ago. And what really struck me about them was that they weren't only optimistic, but
they kind of struck me as nervous, for lack of a better word. One said to me, "Our people used to
gather in cafes to watch football" -- or soccer, as we say in America -- "and now they gather to
watch Parliament." (Laughter) "They're really watching us, and we can't help but worry that
we're not going to live up to their expectations." And what really struck me is that less than 24
months ago, it was the people that were nervous about being watched by their government. 
And the reason that they're expecting a lot is because they have a new-found hope for the
future. So right before the revolution we said that Egyptians had never felt worse about their
lives, but not only that, they thought their future would be no better. What really changed after
the ouster of Mubarak wasn't that life got easier. It actually got harder. But people's expectations
for their future went up significantly. And this hope, this optimism, endured a year of turbulent
transition. 

One reason that there's this optimism is because, contrary to what many people have said, most
Egyptians think things really have changed in many ways. So while Egyptians were known for
their single-digit turnout in elections before the revolution, the last election had around 70
percent voter turnout -- men and women. Where scarcely a quarter believed in the honesty of
elections in 2010 -- I'm surprised it was a quarter -- 90 percent thought that this last election was
honest. Now why this matters is because we discovered a link between people's faith in their
democratic process and their faith that oppressed people can change their situation through
peaceful means alone. 

(Applause) 

Now I know what some of you are thinking. The Egyptian people, and many other Arabs who've
revolted and are in transition, have very high expectations of the government. They're just
victims of a long-time autocracy, expecting a paternal state to solve all their problems. But this
conclusion would ignore a tectonic shift taking place in Egypt far from the cameras in Tahrir
Square. And that is Egyptians' elevated expectations are placed first on themselves. 

In the country once known for its passive resignation, where, as bad as things got, only four
percent expressed their opinion to a public official, today 90 percent tell us that if there's a
problem in their community, it's up to them to fix it. (Applause) And three-fourths believe they
not only have the responsibility, but the power to make change. 

And this empowerment also applies to women, whose role in the revolts cannot be

underestimated. They were doctors and dissidents, artists and organizers. A full third of those
who braved tanks and tear gas to ask or to demand liberty and justice in Egypt were women. 

(Applause) 

Now people have raised some real concerns about what the rise of Islamist parties means for
women. What we've found about the role of religion in law and the role of religion in society is
that there's no female consensus. We found that women in one country look more like the men in
that country than their female counterparts across the border. Now what this suggests is that how
women view religion's role in society is shaped more by their own country's culture and
context than one monolithic view that religion is simply bad for women. Where women agree,
however, is on their own role, and that it must be central and active. 

And here is where we see the greatest gender difference within a country -- on the issue of
women's rights. Now how men feel about women's rights matters to the future of this
region. Because we discovered a link between men's support for women's employment and how
many women are actually employed in professional fields in that country. 

So the question becomes, What drives men's support for women's rights? What about men's
views of religion and law? [Does] a man's opinion of the role of religion in politics shape their
view of women's rights? The answer is no. We found absolutely no correlation, no impact
whatsoever, between these two variables. What drives men's support for women's employment is
men's employment, their level of education as well as a high score on their country's U.N.
Human Development Index. What this means is that human development, not secularization, is
what's key to women's empowerment in the transforming Middle East. 

And the transformation continues. From Wall Street to Mohammed Mahmoud Street, it has
never been more important to understand the aspirations of ordinary people. 

Thank you. 

(Applause) 

When you look at Muslim scholar Dalia Mogahed, what do

you see: A woman of faith? A scholar, a mom, a sister? Or an
oppressed, brainwashed, potential terrorist? In this personal,
powerful talk

What do you think when you look at me? A woman of faith? An expert? Maybe even a sister. Or
oppressed, brainwashed, a terrorist. Or just an airport security line delay. That one's actually true.

(Laughter)

If some of your perceptions were negative, I don't really blame you. That's just how the media has been
portraying people who look like me. One study found that 80 percent of news coverage about Islam and
Muslims is negative. And studies show that Americans say that most don't know a Muslim. I guess
people don't talk to their Uber drivers.

(Laughter)
Well, for those of you who have never met a Muslim, it's great to meet you. Let me tell you who I am.
I'm a mom, a coffee lover -- double espresso, cream on the side. I'm an introvert. I'm a wannabe fitness
fanatic. And I'm a practicing, spiritual Muslim. But not like Lady Gaga says, because baby, I wasn't born
this way. It was a choice.

When I was 17, I decided to come out. No, not as a gay person like some of my friends, but as a Muslim,
and decided to start wearing the hijab, my head covering. My feminist friends were aghast: "Why are
you oppressing yourself?" The funny thing was, it was actually at that time a feminist declaration of
independence from the pressure I felt as a 17-year-old, to conform to a perfect and unattainable
standard of beauty. I didn't just passively accept the faith of my parents. I wrestled with the Quran. I
read and reflected and questioned and doubted and, ultimately, believed. My relationship with God -- it
was not love at first sight. It was a trust and a slow surrender that deepened with every reading of the
Quran. Its rhythmic beauty sometimes moves me to tears. I see myself in it. I feel that God knows me.
Have you ever felt like someone sees you, completely understands you and yet loves you anyway?
That's how it feels.

And so later, I got married, and like all good Egyptians, started my career as an engineer.

(Laughter)

I later had a child, after getting married, and I was living essentially the Egyptian-American dream.

And then that terrible morning of September, 2001. I think a lot of you probably remember exactly
where you were that morning. I was sitting in my kitchen finishing breakfast, and I look up on the screen
and see the words "Breaking News." There was smoke, airplanes flying into buildings, people jumping
out of buildings. What was this? An accident? A malfunction? My shock quickly turned to outrage. Who
would do this? And I switch the channel and I hear,

"... Muslim terrorist ...," "... in the name of Islam ...," "... Middle-Eastern descent ...," "... jihad ...," "... we
should bomb Mecca." Oh my God.

Not only had my country been attacked, but in a flash, somebody else's actions had turned me from a
citizen to a suspect.
That same day, we had to drive across Middle America to move to a new city to start grad school. And I
remember sitting in the passenger seat as we drove in silence, crouched as low as I could go in my seat,
for the first time in my life, afraid for anyone to know I was a Muslim.

We moved into our apartment that night in a new town in what felt like a completely different world.
And then I was hearing and seeing and reading warnings from national Muslim organizations saying
things like, "Be alert," "Be aware," "Stay in well-lit areas," "Don't congregate."

I stayed inside all week. And then it was Friday that same week, the day that Muslims congregate for
worship. And again the warnings were, "Don't go that first Friday, it could be a target." And I was
watching the news, wall-to-wall coverage. Emotions were so raw, understandably, and I was also
hearing about attacks on Muslims, or people who were perceived to be Muslim, being pulled out and
beaten in the street. Mosques were actually firebombed. And I thought, we should just stay home.

And yet, something didn't feel right. Because those people who attacked our country attacked our
country. I get it that people were angry at the terrorists. Guess what? So was I. And so to have to explain
yourself all the time isn't easy. I don't mind questions. I love questions. It's the accusations that are
tough.

Today we hear people actually saying things like, "There's a problem in this country, and it's called
Muslims. When are we going to get rid of them?" So, some people want to ban Muslims and close down
mosques. They talk about my community kind of like we're a tumor in the body of America. And the only
question is, are we malignant or benign? You know, a malignant tumor you extract altogether, and a
benign tumor you just keep under surveillance.

The choices don't make sense, because it's the wrong question. Muslims, like all other Americans, aren't
a tumor in the body of America, we're a vital organ.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)
Muslims are inventors and teachers, first responders and Olympic athletes.

Now, is closing down mosques going to make America safer? It might free up some parking spots, but it
will not end terrorism. Going to a mosque regularly is actually linked to having more tolerant views of
people of other faiths and greater civic engagement. And as one police chief in the Washington, DC area
recently told me, people don't actually get radicalized at mosques. They get radicalized in their
basement or bedroom, in front of a computer. And what you find about the radicalization process is it
starts online, but the first thing that happens is the person gets cut off from their community, from even
their family, so that the extremist group can brainwash them into believing that they, the terrorists, are
the true Muslims, and everyone else who abhors their behavior and ideology are sellouts or apostates.
So if we want to prevent radicalization, we have to keep people going to the mosque.

Now, some will still argue Islam is a violent religion. After all, a group like ISIS bases its brutality on the
Quran. Now, as a Muslim, as a mother, as a human being, I think we need to do everything we can to
stop a group like ISIS. But we would be giving in to their narrative if we cast them as representatives of a
faith of 1.6 billion people.

(Applause)

Thank you.

ISIS has as much to do with Islam as the Ku Klux Klan has to do with Christianity.

(Applause)

Both groups claim to base their ideology on their holy book. But when you look at them, they're not
motivated by what they read in their holy book. It's their brutality that makes them read these things
into the scripture.

Recently, a prominent imam told me a story that really took me aback. He said that a girl came to him
because she was thinking of going to join ISIS. And I was really surprised and asked him, had she been in
contact with a radical religious leader? And he said the problem was quite the opposite, that every cleric
that she had talked to had shut her down and said that her rage, her sense of injustice in the world, was
just going to get her in trouble. And so with nowhere to channel and make sense of this anger, she was a
prime target to be exploited by extremists promising her a solution. What this imam did was to connect
her back to God and to her community. He didn't shame her for her rage -- instead, he gave her
constructive ways to make real change in the world. What she learned at that mosque prevented her
from going to join ISIS.

I've told you a little bit about how Islamophobia affects me and my family. But how does it impact
ordinary Americans? How does it impact everyone else? How does consuming fear 24 hours a day affect
the health of our democracy, the health of our free thought?

Well, one study -- actually, several studies in neuroscience -- show that when we're afraid, at least three
things happen. We become more accepting of authoritarianism, conformity and prejudice. One study
showed that when subjects were exposed to news stories that were negative about Muslims, they
became more accepting of military attacks on Muslim countries and policies that curtail the rights of
American Muslims.

Now, this isn't just academic. When you look at when anti-Muslim sentiment spiked between 2001 and
2013, it happened three times, but it wasn't around terrorist attacks. It was in the run up to the Iraq War
and during two election cycles. So Islamophobia isn't just the natural response to Muslim terrorism as I
would have expected. It can actually be a tool of public manipulation, eroding the very foundation of a
free society, which is rational and well-informed citizens. Muslims are like canaries in the coal mine. We
might be the first to feel it, but the toxic air of fear is harming us all.

(Applause)

And assigning collective guilt isn't just about having to explain yourself all the time. Deah and his wife
Yusor were a young married couple living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they both went to school.
Deah was an athlete. He was in dental school, talented, promising ... And his sister would tell me that he
was the sweetest, most generous human being she knew. She was visiting him there and he showed her
his resume, and she was amazed. She said, "When did my baby brother become such an accomplished
young man?" Just a few weeks after Suzanne's visit to her brother and his new wife, their neighbor,
Craig Stephen Hicks, murdered them, as well as Yusor's sister, Razan, who was visiting for the afternoon,
in their apartment, execution style, after posting anti-Muslim statements on his Facebook page. He shot
Deah eight times. So bigotry isn't just immoral, it can even be lethal.

So, back to my story. What happened after 9/11? Did we go to the mosque or did we play it safe and
stay home? Well, we talked it over, and it might seem like a small decision, but to us, it was about what
kind of America we wanted to leave for our kids: one that would control us by fear or one where we
were practicing our religion freely. So we decided to go to the mosque. And we put my son in his car
seat, buckled him in, and we drove silently, intensely, to the mosque. I took him out, I took off my shoes,
I walked into the prayer hall and what I saw made me stop. The place was completely full. And then the
imam made an announcement, thanking and welcoming our guests, because half the congregation were
Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, people of faith and no faith, who had come not to attack us, but to
stand in solidarity with us.

(Applause)

I just break down at this time. These people were there because they chose courage and compassion
over panic and prejudice.

What will you choose? What will you choose at this time of fear and bigotry? Will you play it safe? Or
will you join those who say we are better than that?

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you so much.

Helen Walters: So Dalia, you seem to have struck a chord. But I wonder, what would you say to those
who might argue that you're giving a TED Talk, you're clearly a deep thinker, you work at a fancy think
tank, you're an exception, you're not the rule. What would you say to those people?

Dalia Mogahed: I would say, don't let this stage distract you, I'm completely ordinary. I'm not an
exception. My story is not unusual. I am as ordinary as they come. When you look at Muslims around
the world -- and I've done this, I've done the largest study ever done on Muslims around the world --
people want ordinary things. They want prosperity for their family, they want jobs and they want to live
in peace. So I am not in any way an exception. When you meet people who seem like an exception to
the rule, oftentimes it's that the rule is broken, not that they're an exception to it.

HW: Thank you so much. Dalia Mogahed.

(Applause)