If our country’s current struggles have got you down, this video should put a smile on your face. Terrorism often seems like a huge, unsolvable problem, with forceful attempts to stop it only leading to more violence and, in the long run, more terrorists.
But Noor Huda Ismail, who works to reintegrate former terrorists into society through his Food 4 Peace initiative, shows that there is another way, one that has a real shot at leading to lasting peace.
In this inspiring talk, given at TEDx WanChai in Hong Kong, Noor explains how is humanistic approach to terrorists, while incredibly frustrating at times, can ultimately be successful.
Noor has a special connection to terrorism in Indonesia: his former Muslim boarding school roommate was involved in the 2002 Bali Bombing, while three of his other former schoolmates carried out suicide attacks in Indonesia, Syria and Iraq.
To understand why some of his friends had become terrorists and to prevent more from converting, he founded the lnstitute for lnternational Peace Building in lndonesia (Yayasan Prasasti Perdamaian), an Indonesian NGO working with released ex-terrorists to help them re-integrate into society, winning the Ashoka Award in 2013 for his contributions.
As you’ll hear in his witty and engaging TED talk, Noor’s efforts failed many times, but he never gave up in his struggle to redeem the humanity in the people most of society had written off as irredeemable.
Prior to his work with Yayasan Prasati Perdamaian, Noor studied International Security at St. Andrews University and went to work for the Southeast Asia bureau of the Washington Post, where he interviewed hundreds of jailed terrorists in prisons across lndonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Yemen and the “no man’s land” areas in Syrian borders. Noor even visited military camps and safe houses.
Today, to amplify his grassroots peace initiatives, Noor works closely with Google Ideas in New York on the global campaign for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), reaching out to survivors and perpetrators of terrorist attacks from lslamic, Christian and Catholic extremists to ethno nationalists, gang members, anarchists, neo-Nazi, Jewish and white supremacy activists.
