Some women facing 'honour' crimes require relocation far outside the reaches of their extended families and changes of identity to escape detection.
— Deeyah Khan
Within a life that seems uncomfortably scripted by family and community pressures, hyper-religiosity can provide a way to break with parental expectations and flee from parental control.
Some Muslim children, both male and female, have little choice in who to marry, what to study, what their careers will be, and who they can socialise with. Their lives are constrained under the expectations of family 'honour.'
We need to be able to guarantee the safety of all artists and activists for human rights so that it no longer takes extraordinary courage to call for a better world - so that every person with the ability to imagine peace, equality, progress, and justice can express their dreams and hopes without fear.
We need more courageous individuals who will defy the structures of power, whether political, economic, or intimate, but we also need it to be safe for people to feel their power and to be able to express their ideas and imagine without fear.
'Honour'-based violence is a form of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a broad category.
Many Muslim parents are authoritarian, which leaves young men and women with limited spaces to express themselves. Self-expression and autonomy are regarded as symptoms of 'Westernisation.'
Muslim women can save the world from ISIS.
Making people fear the expression of their own power is a very effective way of disempowering them. It is not just those who feel the frustration of being silenced: it also encompasses every person who has no idea of their own power to realise their visions because they have not seen this in action in their communities.
The thing is, what most people don't understand is that there are so many of us growing up in Europe who are not free to be ourselves. We're not allowed to be who we are. We are not free to marry or to be in relationships with people that we choose. We can't even pick our own career. This is the norm in the Muslim heartlands of Europe.
There is no psychiatric pattern which can predict who becomes an extremist - but they are all frustrated with their reality.
The Trump phenomenon shows us how much fear of Muslims there is out there and how easily it can be exploited.
Self-expression should not be a challenge that demands extraordinary talent but should be a right accessible to all.