Jihad: A Story of the Others

A Broadly Speaking event in collaboration with Global and Joint Program Studies at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General

The world has watched as thousands of young men and women abandon comfortable lives in the West to join the Islamic State, but as a new documentary shows, Westerners embracing jihad is nothing new.

Jihad: A Story of the Others, a film by Norwegian journalist and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Deeyah Khan, examines how generations of young people across Europe have fallen prey to transnational jihadist movements—from Chechnya to Burma to ISIS. Though jihadists from Europe and North America remain a minority, their numbers are increasing, and the percentage of female recruits has risen sharply. Is the allure of global jihad for citizens of developed, liberal democracies qualitatively different than it is for their counterparts living under authoritarianism?

Should this surge of Western jihadists be understood as a separate, and distinctly Western phenomenon? Some analysts argue that there has been an "infiltration" of the West by Islamic extremists, but could it mean that Western democracies are increasingly failing their most vulnerable citizens?

Join us for a screening of Jihad: A Story of the Others and a conversation with Deeyah Khan about our changing understanding of transnational jihadism and the new challenges of reporting extremism in an increasingly globalized world.

INTRODUCTION

Laila Bokhari @LailaBokhari
Deputy Minister, Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Norway

PARTICIPANTS

Deeyah Khan @Deeyah_Khan
Director, Jihad: A Story of the Others
Founder, Sister-Hood

Mohamad Bazzi @BazziNYU
Associate Professor of Journalism, Global and Joint Program Studies, New York University
Former Middle East Bureau Chief, Newsday