No one is born a terrorist, but the route to become one is surprisingly easy. We need to listen to those who have been there, and those who have made their way back, if we want to stop others from taking their first steps down this same path into darkness.
Interpretation
Understanding the roots of terrorism requires listening to those who have experienced it.
This quote emphasizes that individuals are not inherently born as terrorists; rather, it is a culmination of experiences and circumstances that can lead them down a dangerous path. Deeyah Khan urges society to learn from the stories of those who have engaged in terrorism and later returned, advocating that such insights are crucial for preventing others from embarking on a similar trajectory towards violence and extremism.
In practice
In a community talk on combating extremism.
I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.
Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?
Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them.
In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night.
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