October 3, 2024 • 35 mins
We live in troubling times where the dangerous echoes of history pound onto Canada's streets. Chants calling for the eradication of an entire population are not just words—they are a chilling reminder of humanity’s darkest chapters. My show this week confronts the reality of the genocide, both past and present, and explores how hate-filled rhetoric, left unchecked, can lead to unimaginable atrocities.
I want to understand more about genocide and why it is even possible. Why are some humans, and sadly some in power, wired that way? My guest today is Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. She is a Muslim and a survivor of the Bosnian genocide. Amra endured unimaginable horrors, losing loved ones and witnessing the brutality of ethnic cleansing. Despite this, she emerged not with hate but with a mission to combat intolerance and violence.
Amra made her way to America with no money nor any command of English. Today, Amra holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, where she focuses on education, conflict, and social justice. She specializes in the role of education in preventing violence and fostering social cohesion.
If applied in every home and classroom, what Amra has to say could save the human race and create a world of love, not hate.
To my Jewish friends, Shanah Tovah. You deserve peace and prosperity. This is your time, and I hope everyone's time for reflection, repentance, and renewal.
To purchase Amra's books or to learn more: https://www.sabicelrayess.org
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
You're about to hear from one of the most extraordinary people I've
ever chatted with, not just on the podcast, but
through my journey. She might have the answer for the
future of the human race. And to put her on that
pedestal, I have to tell you that as a young girl,
she had to deal with the tragedy of losing her older brother. As
(00:25):
a teenager, she had to deal with spending 1200
days on the wrong side of genocide and
all the horrors that came with it. Bosnian Muslims stood in the way of
ethnically clean Greater Serbia. So one of Serbia's key
military and political goals became the ethnic cleansing
of Bosnian Muslims. I was one of
(00:48):
those Muslims. She moved to the United States, had an extraordinary
academic career. She could have had the most wonderful world
on Wall Street because she's exceptional in mathematics.
But she's made it her life calling to look at what causes
us to hate each other. How can we get to a point where we
wanna eradicate not only how somebody believes that their faith,
(01:11):
we wanna eradicate their entire civilization.
She doesn't come at it from a context of religion. She comes at
it from humanity. And I really deeply wanted to hate men on
the hills who were bombing us daily. What what I really learned is
that it's a destructive feeling, and there's nothing that can be
achieved with hate. And so I learned to really
(01:33):
redirect negative energy that's targeting me
to something that's constructive. And she's written 2 books, The
Cat I Never Named and 3 Summers. And we're gonna go back and forth. The
Cat I Never Named was when she experienced her time living on the wrong side
of genocide as in Bosnia, and 3 Summers, her life
before. Her name is doctor Amra Sharvich
(01:56):
Eladias. She's an internationally recognized expert in genocide
studies, preventing radicalization, and promoting peace through education.
This is Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman
presented by RBC.
Amra, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Thank you so much, Tony, for inviting
(02:16):
me. I wanted to describe your early life in Bosnia before
the world began. Your dreams, aspirations, what was family life
like? Just to present the context that you were a child like anybody
else, thinking that the world was gonna be your oyster. Thank you for asking
that question. I actually rarely get, that
type of question. Most people are focused on my experience of
(02:38):
surviving the Bosnian genocide. But one of the reasons why I
chose to write 3 summer Summers is precisely,
related to what you had just asked. I wanted to
travel upstream in my own life and
revisit the three most magical summers of growing up
in Bosnia prior to the genocide itself to
(03:01):
really humanize those of us who survive,
what is the unimaginable,
and to really showcase that, a genocide
survivor is is a human being as anyone else and that
I was a young kid, hoping to change the
world one day, that I had hoped to be seen
(03:24):
as equal as any any other human being. I had a
beautiful family. My father himself,
lost his father who who fought fascism
against fascism during World War 2, who
grew up in my father, Mehmed, grew up in an orphanage,
didn't even have a pair of shoes, when he
(03:47):
walked into the orphanage for the first time.
And then my mom, who was an educator who loved
to, educate us about history and geography.
I had 2 brothers, Amar and Dino.
Dino is my younger brother, one of the main characters in 3 Summers.
And, unfortunately, we lost Amar.
(04:11):
I won't go into details of that story, but it is in 3 summers.
It is in fact the loss of my older brother, Amar, who was brilliant,
that ultimately compelled my parents to think
about bringing several cousins together to help me
overcome the grief. From that point on, I tell
the story of these three most magical summers
(04:34):
that helped me heal and helped me, transform
from a young 11 year old to a much more
mature teen in prewar Bosnia. And when you
talk about the cousins as coming
together and helping you through it, Do you ever get through it, or is
it more that at least there's people to help you kind of
(04:56):
shoulder what you're dealing with? Is it truly empathy that helps, or is it something
internally that you have to somehow figure out that I do have to carry
on? It is both. I think there's the role
of resilience within ourselves in
overcoming difficult moments in our lives, but that
resilience is not singular. It's not one dimensional. It
(05:17):
does involve community and family. And that's one of the
reasons why as a as a scholar now, I study what are the
protective factors, against hate and hate
fueled violence. And family and the the values that our
families instill in us are often,
what, becomes a source of that collective resilience.
(05:39):
And when I talk about family as those who will read 3 Summers will
get to know. And also my first book, The Cat I Never Named,
readers will get to know my family as a as a loving,
as a resilient, family, and as a large family.
In Bosnia, when we speak of family, we don't only think of our
parents and our siblings. We, we think of
(06:01):
every cousin in the world. And so when we have
a picnic as a family, that means 100 people show up,
whether you invited them or not. And so that there's that beauty
of community and family that I talk about in 3 summers.
And you mentioned the book, The Cat I Never Named, a true story of love,
war, and survival. You published it in 2020. It's a memoir of your real
(06:24):
life experiences. When you move on as this Muslim teenager,
you're starting to find who you are and then the Bosnian
genocide. And so how old were you when this horror unfolded? So I
was an older teen at that time. I was 16, 17,
18, you know, really growing up and,
becoming deeply self aware. In 3 summers as
(06:46):
a as a younger, teen, you actually as reader
never get to see, what it feels like
to to have your home bombed. And those
scenes are in in The Cat I Never Named. But in 3
Summers, one does get exposure to
my experience of hearing for the first time
(07:09):
hateful narratives and and sort of this transition
from being an innocent kid who is growing up and and
dealing with her body image of being 6 feet tall
at the age of 11, which is not comfortable,
to then by the end of 3rd summer realizing that I
am that other, that the humanized, that
(07:31):
subhuman that is about to be targeted, but still not
fully comprehending that genocide is about to happen
every day, living under the siege, not knowing if we're gonna survive or
not, not knowing, what comes next,
not only whether I'll be alive the next morning, but what comes
next in the next, in the next minute, in the next
(07:53):
hour of my life. And so it's it's a it's an intense experience.
It's a powerful book, and I was reading some of the critics
that said you held nothing back. Rape, torture, murder. You wanted the
world to know what was happening. Why did you feel
so compelled to share that? You know, when we talk about the most
extreme form of targeted violence, and when I say targeted violence, I
(08:16):
mean people being targeted for their identity, whatever that identity might be,
racially, ethnically, religiously, or some other element element of their
identity. Genocide is the most extreme form
of that type of hate fueled violence.
And I wanted people to understand, not
only how awful that experience
(08:39):
is, but also how, I
received it as a young girl, as a young human
being who gets to learn that I am
placed on a list to be potentially
taken into a rape camp or what it
means to for me to decide with my
(09:00):
mom, who at that point is already injured and deaf as
a teacher, to cross
the, what one might call, enemy lines and try to
buy food from those who were killing us. And you might wonder, why
would one ever, ever want to try to buy
food from those who are shooting at them? I mean, those are the
(09:23):
situations that are real, when one
is trying to survive. But I also wanna highlight
that in The Cat I Never Named, I wanted to
also showcase the community,
the love, amazing teachers,
amazing parents, and friends and family that
(09:45):
helped me survive, and really inspiring people
self reflection to think about if I hate someone or if I
feel a bias towards someone or or or if I stereotype
people, should we really be doing that? And Macy's
the cat who it plays quite a role in your survival story. And I I
wish the audience, because this is a podcast, can see the smile that just came
(10:07):
on your face. Talk to me about the bond you formed with her
and how in many ways she she symbolized
this the fact that you survived 1200 days of this
horror. So Mattsian Bosnian means kitty.
Therefore, the title, the cat that I never named, and I won't go into
details of symbolism of of the
(10:29):
title itself. But I'll share with you that, the
onset of the cat I never named, I end
up, meeting refugees who were coming
into my hometown, as my dad and I,
went, went into into the into the city.
In that moment, I begin to realize that something major is shifting and
(10:52):
happening, that something will be happening, to us not
quite understanding that my city is about to be besieged and that
we will be bombed and targeted. I encounter this
cat, that follows us back home, and
she adopts herself into our family. And I do share
that my family did not want to be responsible for
(11:14):
another living being in the midst of what we were facing,
but Matti didn't care. There are a number of days that we spent in a
neighbor's basement at the onset of the military siege of
my hometown of Bihej on a beautiful day in
June. My younger brother Dino and I decided to
leave the basement where we were hiding with a number of other
(11:36):
families from from bombs. My home did not have a basement.
And we didn't tell our parents, which, of course, I don't recommend any
kid to ever do. But we
left to go see Motsi because Motsi didn't wanna stay in the basement, and
she stayed in our home. We got there,
and we heard Motsi crying. And Dino and I called her.
(11:59):
I've never heard an animal make that kind of sound before. We thought she
was hurt. She wouldn't come to us. So Dino and I,
we were talking to 4 of my girlfriends who
invited us to walk around the neighborhood. We were very naive. We didn't know
that because bombing stopped for few minutes that
that we thought and hoped that that means the war is over.
(12:22):
So they asked us to hang out with them, walk around the
neighborhood. And, because of Monte, Dino and I
ran into 2 different directions to see her, to find her because we
thought she was injured. She was crying for help. And in
that moment, a bomb hit and blew up, to
pieces for my friends. I would
(12:45):
not be here. My life would have
ended on the 1st day of the siege of my city if
it were not for an animal. Do you ever think she was there for more
than just a stray cat that felt that she's your guardian angel? I mean, following
you home with your dad and being part of this whole giving you a beacon
of light, do you ever think that there's something much more to her than just
the fact that by accident you stumbled on a stray cat? As a professor, I
(13:06):
started my career at Columbia teaching statistics. So I'm a math
person. I'm a probability person. But there is something that I
cannot explain, and that is that this cat
saved my life a number of times. And I won't share each and every
story, but throughout The Cat I Never Named, she was
(13:29):
with me in the moments that were critical that
directed my decision making in a way that,
enabled me to be here today. I firmly believe
that if were if it were not for Mazzi,
my as you as you called her rightly called her guardian
angel, I would not be here today. How did you manage to
(13:52):
preserve your identity knowing that there are so many people
out there trying to eradicate it? It's not an easy endeavor
to be consistently on this journey of
trying to humanize yourself at the time when you
are being deeply dehumanized. You know, the
and genocide isn't only about destruction of of
(14:15):
people in a physical sense, but it's also about
destruction of religious heritage. 80% of mosques in
Bosnia were destroyed or damaged during the genocide. It is
also about destruction and targeting of schools and the libraries because
that is what the future of of, a
particular group that is being eradicated is or may
(14:37):
be. And so I do think that what helped me
humanize myself and retain my own sense of self and and
identity is actually writing the stories like The Cat I Never Named
in Three Summers. I didn't write The Cat I Never Named right
after genocide and the war. It took many years
of of really working on being able to
(14:59):
to verbalize one's own story. When I came to the United States, I
didn't speak English. I I spoke English only to the extent
of what I could teach myself while living
under those conditions. So you can imagine, you know,
a a a young girl memorizing English words from an
old dictionary that my dad used when he was trying to impress young
(15:22):
girls. He would meet on the coast of, Adriatic
Sea in Croatia when he was a college student. I mean, that was my source
of knowledge when it comes to English, and I was thrown really catapulted
into higher education system here, and I had to,
learn English on on the go. And so
it takes time to master the language, number 1.
(15:44):
Number 2, to really self reflect after
such, such a trauma on
who I wanted to be. And one big question that
anyone who is exposed to violence ask themselves is,
how do I interrupt this cycle of hate? What is it
that I can do? And for me, storytelling,
(16:07):
is a powerful way, to
humanize the others and and and that cycle. Talk to
me about your so in 2020, you wrote that book, you said, many years after.
Your dad had shared a lot of the orphanage and not having a pair
of shoes, and I I have to imagine a lot of that roared through you.
You did the same with your daughter. You had her very involved in writing the
(16:28):
book. And how how was that experience? Because the I
mean, it wasn't easy reading. It wasn't easy writing. Often when I engage in telling
my story and or or I'm invited to a conference or a
panel, I might be placed in a panel titled something
like Tough Topics. But when those of us who survive
difficult things in in our lives, for us, it's
(16:50):
it's just our life. It's who we are. I cannot
separate or overcome. In my view, there's no way
of overcoming something as traumatic as as
genocide. You just learn how to live with it because it is what
defines ultimately your future journey and trajectory. It's
not something that I can separate from who I am today. I
(17:12):
don't know who Amra would have been without that experience. And
so growing up, my kids, were exposed to
my stories of not having food. I've taught them
to value each and every piece of food. And, you know, sometimes
we would go to restaurant as you do in in, let's say, in New York
City where we live, And my kids would ask
(17:34):
to from restaurant to take the leftover, and there would be only 2
French fries in on the plate left. You know? And
someone who who is, who is a service person would would
come to us and say, do you really want to take home the
2 leftover bites of food? But it is because
I this has been a part of me. This has been
(17:56):
ingrained in me, and my kids understood that from early on. So
Dina, my younger daughter in particular, loves writing,
loves, loves reading, and she knew many
both of my girls, Dina and Janna, know most of the
stories that appear in The Cat I Never Name. And she
wanted to read them, and she would provide me with feedback and say,
(18:19):
mom, I think some of the details you shared with us
are not in this version. I think they would be valuable
for readers in America. And so she was really
critical in helping me
get through the process and guiding me on what she thought young adults
and and and teens in particular would would, find
(18:40):
appealing. So you talked about your math brain and orientation
towards statistics, but a lot of you also talk about during that time is your
poetry, that you found a way to escape into your
words. So it's interesting that you have both sides to your
brain. I wish I had my poems. My house was bombed on my
birthday. And I think during that bombing, a big
(19:02):
part of our house was destroyed. And that's where I lost,
many photos, many books. I
was unable to find, my poems,
which I actually had someone on a typewriter,
for me, write during the war and some of my
diaries were destroyed. And so, I wish I had
(19:26):
them. They were at the time my way of dealing with
the hate and violence and loss. So I would write poems about friends I had
lost, or I would write poems about emotions and feelings
and complexity of what it was to feel
subhuman and be treated as subhuman human in those days.
And how did the survivors, other survivors of other
(19:47):
experiences, react to your book? Were they happy that
those thoughts were coming out and you were making the world aware that
just what might be sensationalized on the news really is
about individual humans and circumstances? One of the groups
I was thinking the most when I was writing The Cat I Never Named
because there are so very few stories of our survival
(20:10):
of Bosnian genocide. It's a, you know, a fairly recent
genocide, the only the only genocide that transpired in
in Europe post, post holocaust.
So many of us are still alive, and many of
us have stories that are in us, but
many survivors find it very, very difficult
(20:33):
to write them, to express them. And it
is hard to know that one is
sharing the most vulnerable thoughts and experiences that
I had with the rest of the world, you know, someone who
might make fun of you or ridicule you or hurt you for
even sharing those, experiences. And so I didn't know what the reaction would
(20:55):
be. And I do have to say that I have
been overwhelmed with how
Americans and and readers around the world have welcomed my
story. The the response
has been incredibly positive.
And many survivors, in fact, I
(21:17):
published a scholarly paper analyzing,
thousands of messages that I had received from survivors,
who have said, I feel seen. I feel heard. I
feel you are telling my story. Daily, I
get emails from young kids who say
maybe their their parents are not even, survivors of Bosnian
(21:40):
genocide, but have survived atrocities elsewhere or
have experienced genocide in their lineage who say, it
is only now that I read the story that I can visualize and
feel what my parents or my grandparents
might have gone through. It has allowed me to build a conversation and a
deeper connection with them and understand their own behavior, why
(22:02):
they why they care about certain things and certain values
within our family. So you come to America armed with a few
words that your data taught you. From an academic point of view, you
go to some of the toughest universities. How how do you do that?
I'm always fascinated with somebody coming without the command of the language
that's being taught and find a way to command that language and the
(22:25):
same time become a stellar student. I was skinny,
deprived from food and humanization for
for years. So I was terrified of people in men in uniform in
particular. I was terrified of, immigration
process. And when I got to the immigration window, I
(22:45):
remember holding onto it with my hands because I
thought I was going to pass out out of fear. I did not think
that I would be welcomed, that there was a place, for
me in America. And the officer took a
long time to go through my paperwork
and, at the end, reached out with his hands. And I thought he's going to
(23:08):
send me back to Bosnia and say you don't belong here. But
instead, he with his fingertips, he touched my hands,
and he said, I'm sorry for what you have gone
through, ma'am. Welcome to the United States of America. You're safe
now. That was the moment where I fell in love with the
idea of America. And I, you know, my
(23:30):
1st semester, in college,
I, was taking a course on western
history of western civilization. And, one of the
first books I read was Leviathan by Hobbes. For anyone who's read
that book knows that it's written in old English. And then when I initially
opened it, I I, didn't understand a single
(23:52):
word. So I spent 3 months, translating,
the book, buying dictionaries. I bought the dictionary on my way
to America in Zagreb, Croatia, and I,
I started with straight a's in my first semester. In fact,
the professor of history who taught that class said, if you can
(24:12):
do this in your 1st semester, maybe you should do a PhD in history. And
I said, thank you, but no thank you. It is,
determination. I think anyone and everyone can do it. It's just a
question of decisions that we make in life and a choice that we
will we will succeed. It sounds like there's a lot of
doors that could have opened for you, including mathematics, which is, you know, one
(24:35):
of the most coveted anybody has a mathematics degree now is welcomed
by almost any of the firms focusing on the new economy, but you're really
seemed to shift. And I I unless I have it wrong and realize that you
might have a different role, and that is to talk about
genocide and do your part to see if we can end the cycle of
history repeating. And I'm curious when that
(24:58):
happened with you. Sounds to me like mathematics would have been a skip in the
park for you in terms of everything, but but really, you have a different calling.
You're absolutely right. My career right after college was on Wall
Street. I worked in in investment banking, leveraged buyouts,
leveraged finance, and then 911 happened.
And that was a turning point for me because as
(25:20):
a Muslim woman, I got to hear this
view of 1.8 or
9000000000 Muslims in the world are all terrorists.
And that was extremely painful for me,
to to receive. And it did,
raise a question for me. What is really my purpose?
(25:43):
And I recognized that because I had access to
education, I was able to achieve,
achieve what I had achieved at that point, but it was very
selfish approach to life. And that my purpose should
be to, 1, enable others to access education,
and 2, educate educate people
(26:06):
about various assumptions that we make about
one another that can lead to acts
of, violence and all kinds of forms of
extremism. So some some of my work today, and I would say really
all of my work today, is focused on
prevention of hate fueled violence, whether it's through storytelling
(26:28):
or, using, you know, quantitative methods to
analyze data as a scholar at Columbia and published
peer reviewed articles on that work. I've always said if we could
just realize that we're all one human race,
so much would disappear. But, you know, those who seek power, either
through religion or through profit, seems to continually tear
(26:51):
it apart. And I think it's just a handful of people. I might be so
naive, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. I might be so naive
to say somehow or other we let a handful of people
capture this power, and in doing so, we
suddenly have the narrative that 1,800,000,000 Muslims are
terrorists. Why does that happen, and is there anything we can
do to stop it from happening? Well, these are excellent questions. I'll
(27:14):
tell you that I asked myself those questions when I initially
started to work on understanding where does hate come from.
You know, how is it possible that let's take as an example,
mass shooting in Buffalo, New York where I worked with educators
only days after that shooting on violence and hate prevention.
It was scheduled, months prior to the shooting itself, but it
(27:38):
happened in that moment. Why is it that somebody can be,
a kid playing in a sandbox in 5th or 6th grade and then grow up
into someone at the age of 17 or 18 and be willing
to go into supermarket and target people simply for the color of
their skin? People actually don't begin to hate or
radicalize because they have this facile
(28:00):
desire to just kill or hurt or harm someone.
It usually starts with a lacking sense of,
belonging, feeling displaced, through narrative, through
curriculum, through storytelling in educational spaces
or in our mainstream society. So they don't
begin with the intent to harm someone else. They
(28:23):
begin with desire to to be seen, to be heard, to
have their grievances addressed. And just in the last few months,
we're actually preparing a paper for a study for publication right
now. We have analyzed, more than 518,000
student surveys from across 68 countries, all
western countries, to actually examine the importance
(28:47):
of and and link between access to civil liberties, access
to free speech, access to free expression
with one's sense of belonging. Because we know when people feel
a sense of belonging, they're happy in that community, and they wanna be part
of the community, and they're not thinking about inflicting
violence on anyone within their community. So if we can build a sense of
(29:09):
belonging for everybody, that means we can protect everyone
in our society from hate fueled violence. And what we found
is that across different immigrant backgrounds, whether someone is a
1st generation or 3rd or 4th generation, across
all 68 societies, the,
more of genuine dialogue, the more access to freedom of
(29:32):
expression we have, and the more we allow students
in our, educational spaces to express themselves
and in a nonviolent way address their grievances,
the more likely we are to to build a sense of belonging.
This is something that we haven't focused on, unfortunately,
(29:52):
in education. In media,
if if, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted
to, to be interviewed by some big,
news agency, I would have to come in with some kind of
scandalous news, right, to get the attention. But to
get the attention by saying, let's build community
(30:14):
is is is actually difficult. And I think our
society has been structured from education to media to
political narratives to to build itself on this
narrative of the other, of this narrative of of
us versus them because that narrative mobilizes
people's emotions. However, it mobilizes people's emotions in a
(30:36):
negative way. And I fear that. And I fear the silos
we've created on social media, we've created in social
spaces. Because if I don't like someone today, I don't have
to ever speak with them. And the only remaining spaces
where we can engage with someone who thinks differently than we do,
who has different experience than we do, is in,
(30:58):
education.
My whole podcast is about positivity and possibility to counter this
growing sense of negativity and impossibility. I don't have your
brain power or your data, but my intuition, we're very aligned. But I wanna start
with education. To have that kind of conversation,
(31:19):
do we not need different educators that are more facilitators, that are more
that that leave their biases at the front door and come into a classroom
and try to create this conversation and dialogue where everybody
feels they have a sense of belonging as opposed to being overpowered.
So one of the projects that I have developed that is research based,
evidence based on everything we're discussing is called reimagine
(31:43):
resilience. And and for those who are listening to us, they can go to
reimagineresilience.org. It is
a, it was a project seeded through,
an innovation research grant by the federal government,
by Center For Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the US
Department of Homeland Security, who have funded,
(32:06):
my effort to create a actually a professional training
program for educators and education professionals.
Now that has expanded, with us training
faith leaders, and really with my team taking a whole of
society approach. It is not only sufficient to
train educators on how do you better engage with your
(32:28):
students. It is not, sufficient to only raise awareness
around, how does hate emerge,
what does it mean to be making assumptions
about people, and and and how does that impact
your students' well-being and the well-being of the entire community in the
school? We need to work with all stakeholders
(32:51):
within the society. But I'm gonna be honest with you, there are
3,000,000, maybe 3,500,000,
educators in the United States. I have been in in
58 cities, 47 states, whether in person or virtually over
the last 2 years with this program, training thousands of educators.
But this is, to my knowledge, the only program that has
(33:13):
been very effective in changing people's
attitudes and mindsets in how they view
whoever is the other in their, in their world. So now
move to social media because I I view in the most simplistic
sense, social media monetizes by herding us
into castles where we exist with like minded people who like like minded
(33:35):
content, who validate each other, and learn to love
everything they do and hate what everybody else does. The middle ground
where society the the great societies were built, the renaissance as
we're built, has become a toxic moat. And I see it time and
time again that that, as you said, you and we'll talk about the media as
well, mass media. If it's not you're not at the
(33:57):
hairpin turn waiting for an accident, nobody wants to talk to you. How do
we push back against social media? Because I feel like I do
belong as a left wing or right wing, as a Republican or
Democrat. I really feel I belong there, but I part of my
conditions of belonging is I have to hate the other. So we work with young
kids. We work with adults. And and one of our studies has showed that
(34:18):
only 15% of students feel that they don't
have a need to learn information by going
to social media. Because in educational formal spaces,
if we're not trained or comfortable to discuss a particularly
tough topic, we just stay silent on it. But the problem
is that those who are curious to learn, if someone wants to
(34:41):
learn your story, they will go online and
seek information. And so the question for me, for for educators
often is we have a choice, and our choice is
between either instilling
capacities in our educators and training
educators and students to have constructive
(35:03):
nonviolent genuine dialogues across a range
of difficult topics in schools and giving
students actionable ways to address whatever
grievances they might have so that they build that sense of
empowerment and community and belonging across identity.
So we're not categorized into these singular groups that
(35:26):
are not really true representation of who we are. Identity isn't a
category. It's a story. It's my story. It's your story and so on.
So if we fail to do that, and I think we're failing to to
do that across higher education k through 12 institutions,
then it's only natural and expected that people
(35:46):
will gravitate towards social media because that is where they will seek
answers. And so for those who who
are, who might be afraid to engage in genuine
dialogue, educators often will say I don't have training or
I'm not well versed in certain topics and so on. The question
is, would we rather train our educators to be effective
(36:08):
in the classroom and build a community, or do we
prefer that children, young
adults, and students are actually, going to social
media and getting information from
from whoever, wherever, in a way that we we
don't really know if it's reliable or not. Reliable is one issue. The issue is
(36:30):
the algorithms that say if you happen to if this moth
was attracted to this flame, they're gonna make sure they turn on the flame and
bring more moss. Maybe I'm I'm just old, but I think radicalization's
happening on social media, not in the sense of maybe,
join my gang, but the more I can keep you within this
community of like minded people, the more I can monetize
(36:53):
monetize your time there. It's about a captive audience. The pathway to
radicalization can certainly happen online if
one encounters a recruiter online. We've seen that with the
number of individuals that we have interviewed who have said,
you know, I was silenced, not recognized, not respected
in in my classroom, in my school. And I found
(37:16):
someone who who educated me, quote unquote,
into thinking differently, who who has helped
me understand and rationalize my grievances
and so on. And so those bonds can be built online
and lead to radicalization. Do you think that religion
has taken advantage of that? That my sense of belonging
(37:39):
that I often might find in a mosque or a church, a
synagogue is also an opportunity to fashion a
way of thinking that isn't necessarily about a human
race, but much more about why Catholics are better than Jews
or Muslims are better than Christians? We're working on a number of projects within
the Interfaith Lab, which is another initiative that I established,
(38:01):
specifically because faith has been neglected in many
conversations that we've had. We make a lot of assumptions, and there's a lot of
misuse of faith related, narratives.
But when you distill many real
values, if you will, within faith narratives,
there's so much commonality across the different
(38:25):
faiths in terms of coexistence, tolerance,
respecting diversity. You know? I don't think we have
taken the faith related narratives into
consideration as a potentially powerful
mobilizing tool for bringing communities together.
I think faith has been misused has been misused through
(38:48):
history to mobilize fear, to
mobilize hate towards the other, but we have not
built resilience to hate by mobilizing positive
aspects, within different faiths. And I think that is something
that we need to do better. When I talk about whole society
approach, I think it's important to bring in faith leaders
(39:09):
who can inspire resilience to hate within their
own communities and say these are not the values that
represent our faith community, but also can then work
on building bridges across different faiths. A last one I will and then
I wanna move on, but because it's fascinating. I mean, I could talk to you
all day. It's politics. I have never seen politics at a
(39:31):
level where it's us versus them. Is
that just because that's all I'm seeing, or is that, you think, it's
really steeping into what democracy has become, which is about
the more I get you to hate the other person, the better my chances are
being elected and being in power? I'll give you, an historic
example of, understanding the rise and fall of
(39:52):
the Islamic empire. During the golden
age of Islam, there was this incredible
welcoming of all forms of knowledge. There is, there was
an institution called House of Wisdom in,
7th, 8th, 9th 9th century in, Baghdad,
present day Iraq. And, House of
(40:15):
Wisdom welcomed, scientists of all
backgrounds, all faith backgrounds. Didn't matter whether you were
Muslim, Jew, or Christian, you were
welcomed, to produce,
scholarship. And there was an immense focus
on advancement through understanding, through learning.
(40:37):
And there's a famous, hadith of prophet,
Muhammad, peace be upon him, that says,
seek knowledge even if it takes traveling to China. So there was this
idea that, really, knowledge is power, connection
human connection is power, and that led to the rise of
golden age of Islam. My favorite subject one of my favorite subjects
(41:00):
is math and algebra. Algebra is an Arabic word. Al
Khwarizmi was a mathematician in the house of wisdom who was the first to
solve some of these algebraic equations, and therefore,
the name the name algebra, optics,
engineering, and so on, but also translating and
(41:20):
preserving during the dark ages in Europe, translating
and preserving all of the ancient knowledge was a big
important aspect of advancing learning at that time in
the Islamic empire. And then there was a period
when there was a certain sense of self assurance and
confidence that, you know, we've reached the the top. We don't need
(41:43):
really this knowledge, what we need. There's a lot of empire got
large geographically, so we need actually to make sure people blindly
follow their leaders. So we're going to neglect some
of this focus on science and knowledge, and we'll
focus on more being inward looking, protecting the
power that we have. And that's where we saw a decline
(42:05):
in publications of books. We saw banning of books.
We saw a decline in scientific advancement. And so
looking at historic examples really signaled that any
time we become
limited by this view of us versus them
and the world becomes binary, and the world becomes about
(42:27):
banning the narratives or banning books or limiting
scientific progress. We saw what happened during COVID 19. People who
believed in this or not believed in that and believed in
science or didn't support science, I think
we are walking a very dangerous line.
(42:47):
When we come back, doctor Ambre Chadich Alireas
shares more of her thoughts on what we can do to make this
world a much better place. And then my 3
takeaways.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Investing in Canada? Well, that matters
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(43:11):
to combat climate change. 500,000,000 for future launch. A
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matters to RBC.
(43:33):
With this question of how does hate emerge, hate is
precursors to to violence. So when you have hate narratives that are
adopted in various spaces in our society, whether it's social
media, traditional media, educational spaces, formal,
informal spaces, Thanksgiving dinner tables, that
that feeds the actual act of violence. How do
(43:56):
you begin to change that narrative? You begin to
change it through, interventions in the classrooms.
You're listening to Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman
presented by RBC. Joining me today is doctor Amra
Sharvich Eladias. And instead of her heart filled
with hate because she was on the wrong side of the Bosnia genocide,
(44:19):
she's chosen to fill it with love and to use her intellectual
prowess in her platform to wake up the world and say
we're all part of 1 human race.
How do you respond to contemporary genocide denial?
Like, that didn't happen. This sense of just lifting
(44:39):
up a carpet and sweeping it under the rug. And in doing so,
we continue to go to this flywheel of history repeats.
I would say as a genocide survivor, I have
lost capacity to feel hate.
So even if someone denies my existence, my experience,
what I feel is deep sense of pain and sadness.
(45:03):
And I think of everything that could pain
one who has survived,
worst atrocities that humankind can inflict on itself,
the hardest is is denial. The hardest is denial
because it reinforces that pain of not being
(45:23):
seen, heard, or see or treated as a human being.
Just recently, just days ago, the United Nations
have passed the resolution acknowledging specifically Srebrensa
genocide, which was really a combination of the Bosnian,
genocide where the UN soldiers were present as
the, Serb forces entered, the
(45:46):
town of Srebrensa and executed almost,
all, men and boys under this
narrative of we need to fear these men. They are
subhuman, and we need to execute them all. I
think for those of us who speak out on our own experiences, it's
(46:06):
really important to for all of us to
demonstrate respect for those who have gone through hardships. And I'm not speaking here
just about my own experience, but experiences of millions of
other people who have been around the world targeted for who
they are. We have to offer a sense of respect
and and and view their credibility as
(46:28):
equal to our own. You know, as an American now, as
someone who's faculty member at Columbia, who is an author, who
is successful, I had the privilege of credibility, of being
invited to have a conversation with you. Millions of
others will never have that positionality. And so we
have to rethink that. Why is that why is that that some voices are
(46:50):
more credible than than others? And why why is it that we
dismiss some experiences versus others? I think each and
every human being should be respected for who they are and should
never go through what I had gone through or what so many are going going
through around the world as we speak now. Have you ever thought of the
soldiers that went in and executed people?
(47:13):
What their life is like afterwards looking back and thinking
about how they got caught up in a moment? Do we
know the impact of what happens when a mob
suddenly is unleashed? Bandura is a famous,
a famous psychologist who, who has studied how
is it that people can commit these kinds of atrocities
(47:35):
and and, moral disengagement.
And what we know at certain parts of the brain
that that, a signal empathy light
up when we when we engage with someone who we
think is part of our in group versus
those who are part who we perceive as part of the out group. So
(47:57):
we have the capacity as human beings to really turn
off this, sense of empathy for one another
when, we perceive a person as not belonging to our
in group. And I think that is what enables
ordinary people. These are ordinary people.
Teachers, professors, police officers,
(48:21):
army officers, neighbors. In 3
summers, I talk about my own uncle who was a Serb,
who was married to my aunt, who was a lieutenant
in, in Serbia's in former Yugoslavia's
army, which became de facto Serbia's army. So it was my
own uncle who partook, in
(48:43):
the army that ultimately committed genocide. And
so I talk about at the end of 3 summers what happened to
that, relationship, as we speak
now. So I think what we do know based on the data that it
is ordinary people who commit these
extraordinarily painful acts of violence when they morally
(49:05):
disengage from seeing the other as a human being, which is
why in a lot of my trainings, I talk about
typology of a hate fueled violence. And to me,
I see it as a tree. You know, the branches and the leaves
is the physical manifestation of violence that we witness,
whether it's killing of George Floyd as a black person on an American
(49:28):
street, or it's placing a girl like Amra into a
rape camp, in Bosnia in 19
nineties. But the actual source
or or or the root to that kind of behavior,
how is that possible? How do we do that? It is possible when
we engage in narratives of supremacy, dehumanization,
(49:50):
othering, marginalization, racism,
because those narratives portray, hypothetically
speaking, Amra as someone who is not a human
being. So if Amra is not a human being, that means that I can
kill Amra, that I can harm Amra, and that is
what individuals who commit those acts of violence tell themselves.
(50:12):
I'll tell you just quickly that I did engage in
research project, specifically working with former soldiers
who partook in the Bosnian genocide. And in
fact, I was asked to work on a project to help them reintegrate
into the society post war. At the time, I reserved,
the right to potentially withdraw, you know, if I felt that I could
(50:36):
not see them as human beings because I didn't really know. I
didn't know until I came face to face with some of these
individuals whether I would wanna help them or or,
quite frankly, harm them in some ways. And there was one soldier
who wanted to become a farmer.
He was not highly educated. He wanted to obtain a
(50:59):
cow through this particular reintegration program. I
tried to help him navigate the the system, and he
obtained this cow. And then he called the office
that I was in in Sarajevo, and he was
falling apart on the other line. And he
wanted to know why did I help him. How could I help
(51:20):
him? Because the things that he has done to people like
me, are are things that that give
him nightmares every night, and he cannot sleep. And me helping
him made it worse. So he wanted to understand
why was I kind to him when he was so inhumane to people like
me. And I told him, that is your burden to live with for the rest
(51:42):
of your life. It's not mine. And I'm glad that I
didn't feel sense of hate. If anything, I felt sense of
pity that that is the life you have to deal with.
You have to deal with yourself as a human being for the rest
of your life and examine your own actions. And
so I don't know if that's representative of many people. I think
(52:04):
most people continue to morally justify. You know, this
had to be done because of this goal, higher goal, because my
kind is better than your kind and those kinds of narratives. But
ultimately, everybody has to go at night to sleep and wonder, what
have I done to another human being, and am I okay with that? Just before
I end, I'll just share you this personal thought. Sometimes I try to rationalize
(52:28):
how horrific the human race is by believing we're just a
reality show of a master race. And this is all for ratings
because I just can't believe at times we
can commit these acts. And I sadly can't put myself in the shoes of either
the victim or the attacker because I just hurt so
much. And I just have to believe that this can't
(52:50):
possibly be happening. This must be just some fantastic video
game that some race has created, and every once in a while, people are getting
bored with it. They launch this thing because it's just I'm amazed that
people like you are on this planet that have survived it and can and can
speak with such passion. I always end my shows with
3 takeaways. And, again, the first one I'm gonna say is that for
(53:12):
people to take things personally, you have to personalize it. And that really is
narrative and storytelling. And what I learned from you is how important that
storytelling was for you to just survive those 1200 days with your
poetry. Later on to sort of compartmentalize it
with your daughter in terms of writing your first book. But also the stories can
go for or against us based on the narrative. Storytelling
(53:34):
and personalizing and feeling and seeing it is so important.
The second thing that I really took away is the importance of
belonging. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's one of the most important
motivations, but you've really put a lens to belonging
and how when somebody doesn't belong, they feel like they're standing
on shifting sand, or they're being bullied or attacked, or their
(53:57):
skin's not the right color, or their religion's not the right religion. And
how that through parenting and through education, there
is an opportunity to return to that house of wisdom that you talk
about. The third thing is those four words that
I think America's blessed with is when that person said to you, you are
safe now. And that you could now take everything
(54:19):
that you this context, this journey that you have,
and decide after 911 to say, this is my life's
cause. And I think you are in many ways, and I
don't wanna I don't wanna sound like I'm exaggerating or fawning over, but in many
ways, you're the house of wisdom from the 7th 8th century that you
are collecting all of these points of view. I'm working on
(54:42):
this project. I'm working on this interfaith project. I'm working. You're you're opening the door
to all these points of view, and I hope you're successful more than
anything else because I think you're the first path
forward that I feel optimistic that there's still hope for this, this
crazy thing we call ourselves as humans. Thank you so much for being so
generous and so kind. I think that I did not survive
(55:04):
genocide to serve my
myself, but really to serve humankind in whatever capacity
I can. I think every person that we can reach and touch, touch, and you
do that, Tony and I thank you for doing that,
is critically important because we all have a role to play. Being nice
to someone in a supermarket and asking them how
(55:26):
they're they or smiling at them, even
if we don't know where they come from and who they are can make
a difference in a person's life. So I hope that our
conversation can inspire people to be the best version of themselves.
Chatter that matters has been a presentation of RBC. It's
Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening. Let's chat soon.
You're about to hear from one of the most extraordinary people I've
ever chatted with, not just on the podcast, but
through my journey. She might have the answer for the
future of the human race. And to put her on that
pedestal, I have to tell you that as a young girl,
she had to deal with the tragedy of losing her older brother. As
(00:25):
a teenager, she had to deal with spending 1200
days on the wrong side of genocide and
all the horrors that came with it. Bosnian Muslims stood in the way of
ethnically clean Greater Serbia. So one of Serbia's key
military and political goals became the ethnic cleansing
of Bosnian Muslims. I was one of
(00:48):
those Muslims. She moved to the United States, had an extraordinary
academic career. She could have had the most wonderful world
on Wall Street because she's exceptional in mathematics.
But she's made it her life calling to look at what causes
us to hate each other. How can we get to a point where we
wanna eradicate not only how somebody believes that their faith,
(01:11):
we wanna eradicate their entire civilization.
She doesn't come at it from a context of religion. She comes at
it from humanity. And I really deeply wanted to hate men on
the hills who were bombing us daily. What what I really learned is
that it's a destructive feeling, and there's nothing that can be
achieved with hate. And so I learned to really
(01:33):
redirect negative energy that's targeting me
to something that's constructive. And she's written 2 books, The
Cat I Never Named and 3 Summers. And we're gonna go back and forth. The
Cat I Never Named was when she experienced her time living on the wrong side
of genocide as in Bosnia, and 3 Summers, her life
before. Her name is doctor Amra Sharvich
(01:56):
Eladias. She's an internationally recognized expert in genocide
studies, preventing radicalization, and promoting peace through education.
This is Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman
presented by RBC.
Amra, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Thank you so much, Tony, for inviting
(02:16):
me. I wanted to describe your early life in Bosnia before
the world began. Your dreams, aspirations, what was family life
like? Just to present the context that you were a child like anybody
else, thinking that the world was gonna be your oyster. Thank you for asking
that question. I actually rarely get, that
type of question. Most people are focused on my experience of
(02:38):
surviving the Bosnian genocide. But one of the reasons why I
chose to write 3 summer Summers is precisely,
related to what you had just asked. I wanted to
travel upstream in my own life and
revisit the three most magical summers of growing up
in Bosnia prior to the genocide itself to
(03:01):
really humanize those of us who survive,
what is the unimaginable,
and to really showcase that, a genocide
survivor is is a human being as anyone else and that
I was a young kid, hoping to change the
world one day, that I had hoped to be seen
(03:24):
as equal as any any other human being. I had a
beautiful family. My father himself,
lost his father who who fought fascism
against fascism during World War 2, who
grew up in my father, Mehmed, grew up in an orphanage,
didn't even have a pair of shoes, when he
(03:47):
walked into the orphanage for the first time.
And then my mom, who was an educator who loved
to, educate us about history and geography.
I had 2 brothers, Amar and Dino.
Dino is my younger brother, one of the main characters in 3 Summers.
And, unfortunately, we lost Amar.
(04:11):
I won't go into details of that story, but it is in 3 summers.
It is in fact the loss of my older brother, Amar, who was brilliant,
that ultimately compelled my parents to think
about bringing several cousins together to help me
overcome the grief. From that point on, I tell
the story of these three most magical summers
(04:34):
that helped me heal and helped me, transform
from a young 11 year old to a much more
mature teen in prewar Bosnia. And when you
talk about the cousins as coming
together and helping you through it, Do you ever get through it, or is
it more that at least there's people to help you kind of
(04:56):
shoulder what you're dealing with? Is it truly empathy that helps, or is it something
internally that you have to somehow figure out that I do have to carry
on? It is both. I think there's the role
of resilience within ourselves in
overcoming difficult moments in our lives, but that
resilience is not singular. It's not one dimensional. It
(05:17):
does involve community and family. And that's one of the
reasons why as a as a scholar now, I study what are the
protective factors, against hate and hate
fueled violence. And family and the the values that our
families instill in us are often,
what, becomes a source of that collective resilience.
(05:39):
And when I talk about family as those who will read 3 Summers will
get to know. And also my first book, The Cat I Never Named,
readers will get to know my family as a as a loving,
as a resilient, family, and as a large family.
In Bosnia, when we speak of family, we don't only think of our
parents and our siblings. We, we think of
(06:01):
every cousin in the world. And so when we have
a picnic as a family, that means 100 people show up,
whether you invited them or not. And so that there's that beauty
of community and family that I talk about in 3 summers.
And you mentioned the book, The Cat I Never Named, a true story of love,
war, and survival. You published it in 2020. It's a memoir of your real
(06:24):
life experiences. When you move on as this Muslim teenager,
you're starting to find who you are and then the Bosnian
genocide. And so how old were you when this horror unfolded? So I
was an older teen at that time. I was 16, 17,
18, you know, really growing up and,
becoming deeply self aware. In 3 summers as
(06:46):
a as a younger, teen, you actually as reader
never get to see, what it feels like
to to have your home bombed. And those
scenes are in in The Cat I Never Named. But in 3
Summers, one does get exposure to
my experience of hearing for the first time
(07:09):
hateful narratives and and sort of this transition
from being an innocent kid who is growing up and and
dealing with her body image of being 6 feet tall
at the age of 11, which is not comfortable,
to then by the end of 3rd summer realizing that I
am that other, that the humanized, that
(07:31):
subhuman that is about to be targeted, but still not
fully comprehending that genocide is about to happen
every day, living under the siege, not knowing if we're gonna survive or
not, not knowing, what comes next,
not only whether I'll be alive the next morning, but what comes
next in the next, in the next minute, in the next
(07:53):
hour of my life. And so it's it's a it's an intense experience.
It's a powerful book, and I was reading some of the critics
that said you held nothing back. Rape, torture, murder. You wanted the
world to know what was happening. Why did you feel
so compelled to share that? You know, when we talk about the most
extreme form of targeted violence, and when I say targeted violence, I
(08:16):
mean people being targeted for their identity, whatever that identity might be,
racially, ethnically, religiously, or some other element element of their
identity. Genocide is the most extreme form
of that type of hate fueled violence.
And I wanted people to understand, not
only how awful that experience
(08:39):
is, but also how, I
received it as a young girl, as a young human
being who gets to learn that I am
placed on a list to be potentially
taken into a rape camp or what it
means to for me to decide with my
(09:00):
mom, who at that point is already injured and deaf as
a teacher, to cross
the, what one might call, enemy lines and try to
buy food from those who were killing us. And you might wonder, why
would one ever, ever want to try to buy
food from those who are shooting at them? I mean, those are the
(09:23):
situations that are real, when one
is trying to survive. But I also wanna highlight
that in The Cat I Never Named, I wanted to
also showcase the community,
the love, amazing teachers,
amazing parents, and friends and family that
(09:45):
helped me survive, and really inspiring people
self reflection to think about if I hate someone or if I
feel a bias towards someone or or or if I stereotype
people, should we really be doing that? And Macy's
the cat who it plays quite a role in your survival story. And I I
wish the audience, because this is a podcast, can see the smile that just came
(10:07):
on your face. Talk to me about the bond you formed with her
and how in many ways she she symbolized
this the fact that you survived 1200 days of this
horror. So Mattsian Bosnian means kitty.
Therefore, the title, the cat that I never named, and I won't go into
details of symbolism of of the
(10:29):
title itself. But I'll share with you that, the
onset of the cat I never named, I end
up, meeting refugees who were coming
into my hometown, as my dad and I,
went, went into into the into the city.
In that moment, I begin to realize that something major is shifting and
(10:52):
happening, that something will be happening, to us not
quite understanding that my city is about to be besieged and that
we will be bombed and targeted. I encounter this
cat, that follows us back home, and
she adopts herself into our family. And I do share
that my family did not want to be responsible for
(11:14):
another living being in the midst of what we were facing,
but Matti didn't care. There are a number of days that we spent in a
neighbor's basement at the onset of the military siege of
my hometown of Bihej on a beautiful day in
June. My younger brother Dino and I decided to
leave the basement where we were hiding with a number of other
(11:36):
families from from bombs. My home did not have a basement.
And we didn't tell our parents, which, of course, I don't recommend any
kid to ever do. But we
left to go see Motsi because Motsi didn't wanna stay in the basement, and
she stayed in our home. We got there,
and we heard Motsi crying. And Dino and I called her.
(11:59):
I've never heard an animal make that kind of sound before. We thought she
was hurt. She wouldn't come to us. So Dino and I,
we were talking to 4 of my girlfriends who
invited us to walk around the neighborhood. We were very naive. We didn't know
that because bombing stopped for few minutes that
that we thought and hoped that that means the war is over.
(12:22):
So they asked us to hang out with them, walk around the
neighborhood. And, because of Monte, Dino and I
ran into 2 different directions to see her, to find her because we
thought she was injured. She was crying for help. And in
that moment, a bomb hit and blew up, to
pieces for my friends. I would
(12:45):
not be here. My life would have
ended on the 1st day of the siege of my city if
it were not for an animal. Do you ever think she was there for more
than just a stray cat that felt that she's your guardian angel? I mean, following
you home with your dad and being part of this whole giving you a beacon
of light, do you ever think that there's something much more to her than just
the fact that by accident you stumbled on a stray cat? As a professor, I
(13:06):
started my career at Columbia teaching statistics. So I'm a math
person. I'm a probability person. But there is something that I
cannot explain, and that is that this cat
saved my life a number of times. And I won't share each and every
story, but throughout The Cat I Never Named, she was
(13:29):
with me in the moments that were critical that
directed my decision making in a way that,
enabled me to be here today. I firmly believe
that if were if it were not for Mazzi,
my as you as you called her rightly called her guardian
angel, I would not be here today. How did you manage to
(13:52):
preserve your identity knowing that there are so many people
out there trying to eradicate it? It's not an easy endeavor
to be consistently on this journey of
trying to humanize yourself at the time when you
are being deeply dehumanized. You know, the
and genocide isn't only about destruction of of
(14:15):
people in a physical sense, but it's also about
destruction of religious heritage. 80% of mosques in
Bosnia were destroyed or damaged during the genocide. It is
also about destruction and targeting of schools and the libraries because
that is what the future of of, a
particular group that is being eradicated is or may
(14:37):
be. And so I do think that what helped me
humanize myself and retain my own sense of self and and
identity is actually writing the stories like The Cat I Never Named
in Three Summers. I didn't write The Cat I Never Named right
after genocide and the war. It took many years
of of really working on being able to
(14:59):
to verbalize one's own story. When I came to the United States, I
didn't speak English. I I spoke English only to the extent
of what I could teach myself while living
under those conditions. So you can imagine, you know,
a a a young girl memorizing English words from an
old dictionary that my dad used when he was trying to impress young
(15:22):
girls. He would meet on the coast of, Adriatic
Sea in Croatia when he was a college student. I mean, that was my source
of knowledge when it comes to English, and I was thrown really catapulted
into higher education system here, and I had to,
learn English on on the go. And so
it takes time to master the language, number 1.
(15:44):
Number 2, to really self reflect after
such, such a trauma on
who I wanted to be. And one big question that
anyone who is exposed to violence ask themselves is,
how do I interrupt this cycle of hate? What is it
that I can do? And for me, storytelling,
(16:07):
is a powerful way, to
humanize the others and and and that cycle. Talk to
me about your so in 2020, you wrote that book, you said, many years after.
Your dad had shared a lot of the orphanage and not having a pair
of shoes, and I I have to imagine a lot of that roared through you.
You did the same with your daughter. You had her very involved in writing the
(16:28):
book. And how how was that experience? Because the I
mean, it wasn't easy reading. It wasn't easy writing. Often when I engage in telling
my story and or or I'm invited to a conference or a
panel, I might be placed in a panel titled something
like Tough Topics. But when those of us who survive
difficult things in in our lives, for us, it's
(16:50):
it's just our life. It's who we are. I cannot
separate or overcome. In my view, there's no way
of overcoming something as traumatic as as
genocide. You just learn how to live with it because it is what
defines ultimately your future journey and trajectory. It's
not something that I can separate from who I am today. I
(17:12):
don't know who Amra would have been without that experience. And
so growing up, my kids, were exposed to
my stories of not having food. I've taught them
to value each and every piece of food. And, you know, sometimes
we would go to restaurant as you do in in, let's say, in New York
City where we live, And my kids would ask
(17:34):
to from restaurant to take the leftover, and there would be only 2
French fries in on the plate left. You know? And
someone who who is, who is a service person would would
come to us and say, do you really want to take home the
2 leftover bites of food? But it is because
I this has been a part of me. This has been
(17:56):
ingrained in me, and my kids understood that from early on. So
Dina, my younger daughter in particular, loves writing,
loves, loves reading, and she knew many
both of my girls, Dina and Janna, know most of the
stories that appear in The Cat I Never Name. And she
wanted to read them, and she would provide me with feedback and say,
(18:19):
mom, I think some of the details you shared with us
are not in this version. I think they would be valuable
for readers in America. And so she was really
critical in helping me
get through the process and guiding me on what she thought young adults
and and and teens in particular would would, find
(18:40):
appealing. So you talked about your math brain and orientation
towards statistics, but a lot of you also talk about during that time is your
poetry, that you found a way to escape into your
words. So it's interesting that you have both sides to your
brain. I wish I had my poems. My house was bombed on my
birthday. And I think during that bombing, a big
(19:02):
part of our house was destroyed. And that's where I lost,
many photos, many books. I
was unable to find, my poems,
which I actually had someone on a typewriter,
for me, write during the war and some of my
diaries were destroyed. And so, I wish I had
(19:26):
them. They were at the time my way of dealing with
the hate and violence and loss. So I would write poems about friends I had
lost, or I would write poems about emotions and feelings
and complexity of what it was to feel
subhuman and be treated as subhuman human in those days.
And how did the survivors, other survivors of other
(19:47):
experiences, react to your book? Were they happy that
those thoughts were coming out and you were making the world aware that
just what might be sensationalized on the news really is
about individual humans and circumstances? One of the groups
I was thinking the most when I was writing The Cat I Never Named
because there are so very few stories of our survival
(20:10):
of Bosnian genocide. It's a, you know, a fairly recent
genocide, the only the only genocide that transpired in
in Europe post, post holocaust.
So many of us are still alive, and many of
us have stories that are in us, but
many survivors find it very, very difficult
(20:33):
to write them, to express them. And it
is hard to know that one is
sharing the most vulnerable thoughts and experiences that
I had with the rest of the world, you know, someone who
might make fun of you or ridicule you or hurt you for
even sharing those, experiences. And so I didn't know what the reaction would
(20:55):
be. And I do have to say that I have
been overwhelmed with how
Americans and and readers around the world have welcomed my
story. The the response
has been incredibly positive.
And many survivors, in fact, I
(21:17):
published a scholarly paper analyzing,
thousands of messages that I had received from survivors,
who have said, I feel seen. I feel heard. I
feel you are telling my story. Daily, I
get emails from young kids who say
maybe their their parents are not even, survivors of Bosnian
(21:40):
genocide, but have survived atrocities elsewhere or
have experienced genocide in their lineage who say, it
is only now that I read the story that I can visualize and
feel what my parents or my grandparents
might have gone through. It has allowed me to build a conversation and a
deeper connection with them and understand their own behavior, why
(22:02):
they why they care about certain things and certain values
within our family. So you come to America armed with a few
words that your data taught you. From an academic point of view, you
go to some of the toughest universities. How how do you do that?
I'm always fascinated with somebody coming without the command of the language
that's being taught and find a way to command that language and the
(22:25):
same time become a stellar student. I was skinny,
deprived from food and humanization for
for years. So I was terrified of people in men in uniform in
particular. I was terrified of, immigration
process. And when I got to the immigration window, I
(22:45):
remember holding onto it with my hands because I
thought I was going to pass out out of fear. I did not think
that I would be welcomed, that there was a place, for
me in America. And the officer took a
long time to go through my paperwork
and, at the end, reached out with his hands. And I thought he's going to
(23:08):
send me back to Bosnia and say you don't belong here. But
instead, he with his fingertips, he touched my hands,
and he said, I'm sorry for what you have gone
through, ma'am. Welcome to the United States of America. You're safe
now. That was the moment where I fell in love with the
idea of America. And I, you know, my
(23:30):
1st semester, in college,
I, was taking a course on western
history of western civilization. And, one of the
first books I read was Leviathan by Hobbes. For anyone who's read
that book knows that it's written in old English. And then when I initially
opened it, I I, didn't understand a single
(23:52):
word. So I spent 3 months, translating,
the book, buying dictionaries. I bought the dictionary on my way
to America in Zagreb, Croatia, and I,
I started with straight a's in my first semester. In fact,
the professor of history who taught that class said, if you can
(24:12):
do this in your 1st semester, maybe you should do a PhD in history. And
I said, thank you, but no thank you. It is,
determination. I think anyone and everyone can do it. It's just a
question of decisions that we make in life and a choice that we
will we will succeed. It sounds like there's a lot of
doors that could have opened for you, including mathematics, which is, you know, one
(24:35):
of the most coveted anybody has a mathematics degree now is welcomed
by almost any of the firms focusing on the new economy, but you're really
seemed to shift. And I I unless I have it wrong and realize that you
might have a different role, and that is to talk about
genocide and do your part to see if we can end the cycle of
history repeating. And I'm curious when that
(24:58):
happened with you. Sounds to me like mathematics would have been a skip in the
park for you in terms of everything, but but really, you have a different calling.
You're absolutely right. My career right after college was on Wall
Street. I worked in in investment banking, leveraged buyouts,
leveraged finance, and then 911 happened.
And that was a turning point for me because as
(25:20):
a Muslim woman, I got to hear this
view of 1.8 or
9000000000 Muslims in the world are all terrorists.
And that was extremely painful for me,
to to receive. And it did,
raise a question for me. What is really my purpose?
(25:43):
And I recognized that because I had access to
education, I was able to achieve,
achieve what I had achieved at that point, but it was very
selfish approach to life. And that my purpose should
be to, 1, enable others to access education,
and 2, educate educate people
(26:06):
about various assumptions that we make about
one another that can lead to acts
of, violence and all kinds of forms of
extremism. So some some of my work today, and I would say really
all of my work today, is focused on
prevention of hate fueled violence, whether it's through storytelling
(26:28):
or, using, you know, quantitative methods to
analyze data as a scholar at Columbia and published
peer reviewed articles on that work. I've always said if we could
just realize that we're all one human race,
so much would disappear. But, you know, those who seek power, either
through religion or through profit, seems to continually tear
(26:51):
it apart. And I think it's just a handful of people. I might be so
naive, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. I might be so naive
to say somehow or other we let a handful of people
capture this power, and in doing so, we
suddenly have the narrative that 1,800,000,000 Muslims are
terrorists. Why does that happen, and is there anything we can
do to stop it from happening? Well, these are excellent questions. I'll
(27:14):
tell you that I asked myself those questions when I initially
started to work on understanding where does hate come from.
You know, how is it possible that let's take as an example,
mass shooting in Buffalo, New York where I worked with educators
only days after that shooting on violence and hate prevention.
It was scheduled, months prior to the shooting itself, but it
(27:38):
happened in that moment. Why is it that somebody can be,
a kid playing in a sandbox in 5th or 6th grade and then grow up
into someone at the age of 17 or 18 and be willing
to go into supermarket and target people simply for the color of
their skin? People actually don't begin to hate or
radicalize because they have this facile
(28:00):
desire to just kill or hurt or harm someone.
It usually starts with a lacking sense of,
belonging, feeling displaced, through narrative, through
curriculum, through storytelling in educational spaces
or in our mainstream society. So they don't
begin with the intent to harm someone else. They
(28:23):
begin with desire to to be seen, to be heard, to
have their grievances addressed. And just in the last few months,
we're actually preparing a paper for a study for publication right
now. We have analyzed, more than 518,000
student surveys from across 68 countries, all
western countries, to actually examine the importance
(28:47):
of and and link between access to civil liberties, access
to free speech, access to free expression
with one's sense of belonging. Because we know when people feel
a sense of belonging, they're happy in that community, and they wanna be part
of the community, and they're not thinking about inflicting
violence on anyone within their community. So if we can build a sense of
(29:09):
belonging for everybody, that means we can protect everyone
in our society from hate fueled violence. And what we found
is that across different immigrant backgrounds, whether someone is a
1st generation or 3rd or 4th generation, across
all 68 societies, the,
more of genuine dialogue, the more access to freedom of
(29:32):
expression we have, and the more we allow students
in our, educational spaces to express themselves
and in a nonviolent way address their grievances,
the more likely we are to to build a sense of belonging.
This is something that we haven't focused on, unfortunately,
(29:52):
in education. In media,
if if, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted
to, to be interviewed by some big,
news agency, I would have to come in with some kind of
scandalous news, right, to get the attention. But to
get the attention by saying, let's build community
(30:14):
is is is actually difficult. And I think our
society has been structured from education to media to
political narratives to to build itself on this
narrative of the other, of this narrative of of
us versus them because that narrative mobilizes
people's emotions. However, it mobilizes people's emotions in a
(30:36):
negative way. And I fear that. And I fear the silos
we've created on social media, we've created in social
spaces. Because if I don't like someone today, I don't have
to ever speak with them. And the only remaining spaces
where we can engage with someone who thinks differently than we do,
who has different experience than we do, is in,
(30:58):
education.
My whole podcast is about positivity and possibility to counter this
growing sense of negativity and impossibility. I don't have your
brain power or your data, but my intuition, we're very aligned. But I wanna start
with education. To have that kind of conversation,
(31:19):
do we not need different educators that are more facilitators, that are more
that that leave their biases at the front door and come into a classroom
and try to create this conversation and dialogue where everybody
feels they have a sense of belonging as opposed to being overpowered.
So one of the projects that I have developed that is research based,
evidence based on everything we're discussing is called reimagine
(31:43):
resilience. And and for those who are listening to us, they can go to
reimagineresilience.org. It is
a, it was a project seeded through,
an innovation research grant by the federal government,
by Center For Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the US
Department of Homeland Security, who have funded,
(32:06):
my effort to create a actually a professional training
program for educators and education professionals.
Now that has expanded, with us training
faith leaders, and really with my team taking a whole of
society approach. It is not only sufficient to
train educators on how do you better engage with your
(32:28):
students. It is not, sufficient to only raise awareness
around, how does hate emerge,
what does it mean to be making assumptions
about people, and and and how does that impact
your students' well-being and the well-being of the entire community in the
school? We need to work with all stakeholders
(32:51):
within the society. But I'm gonna be honest with you, there are
3,000,000, maybe 3,500,000,
educators in the United States. I have been in in
58 cities, 47 states, whether in person or virtually over
the last 2 years with this program, training thousands of educators.
But this is, to my knowledge, the only program that has
(33:13):
been very effective in changing people's
attitudes and mindsets in how they view
whoever is the other in their, in their world. So now
move to social media because I I view in the most simplistic
sense, social media monetizes by herding us
into castles where we exist with like minded people who like like minded
(33:35):
content, who validate each other, and learn to love
everything they do and hate what everybody else does. The middle ground
where society the the great societies were built, the renaissance as
we're built, has become a toxic moat. And I see it time and
time again that that, as you said, you and we'll talk about the media as
well, mass media. If it's not you're not at the
(33:57):
hairpin turn waiting for an accident, nobody wants to talk to you. How do
we push back against social media? Because I feel like I do
belong as a left wing or right wing, as a Republican or
Democrat. I really feel I belong there, but I part of my
conditions of belonging is I have to hate the other. So we work with young
kids. We work with adults. And and one of our studies has showed that
(34:18):
only 15% of students feel that they don't
have a need to learn information by going
to social media. Because in educational formal spaces,
if we're not trained or comfortable to discuss a particularly
tough topic, we just stay silent on it. But the problem
is that those who are curious to learn, if someone wants to
(34:41):
learn your story, they will go online and
seek information. And so the question for me, for for educators
often is we have a choice, and our choice is
between either instilling
capacities in our educators and training
educators and students to have constructive
(35:03):
nonviolent genuine dialogues across a range
of difficult topics in schools and giving
students actionable ways to address whatever
grievances they might have so that they build that sense of
empowerment and community and belonging across identity.
So we're not categorized into these singular groups that
(35:26):
are not really true representation of who we are. Identity isn't a
category. It's a story. It's my story. It's your story and so on.
So if we fail to do that, and I think we're failing to to
do that across higher education k through 12 institutions,
then it's only natural and expected that people
(35:46):
will gravitate towards social media because that is where they will seek
answers. And so for those who who
are, who might be afraid to engage in genuine
dialogue, educators often will say I don't have training or
I'm not well versed in certain topics and so on. The question
is, would we rather train our educators to be effective
(36:08):
in the classroom and build a community, or do we
prefer that children, young
adults, and students are actually, going to social
media and getting information from
from whoever, wherever, in a way that we we
don't really know if it's reliable or not. Reliable is one issue. The issue is
(36:30):
the algorithms that say if you happen to if this moth
was attracted to this flame, they're gonna make sure they turn on the flame and
bring more moss. Maybe I'm I'm just old, but I think radicalization's
happening on social media, not in the sense of maybe,
join my gang, but the more I can keep you within this
community of like minded people, the more I can monetize
(36:53):
monetize your time there. It's about a captive audience. The pathway to
radicalization can certainly happen online if
one encounters a recruiter online. We've seen that with the
number of individuals that we have interviewed who have said,
you know, I was silenced, not recognized, not respected
in in my classroom, in my school. And I found
(37:16):
someone who who educated me, quote unquote,
into thinking differently, who who has helped
me understand and rationalize my grievances
and so on. And so those bonds can be built online
and lead to radicalization. Do you think that religion
has taken advantage of that? That my sense of belonging
(37:39):
that I often might find in a mosque or a church, a
synagogue is also an opportunity to fashion a
way of thinking that isn't necessarily about a human
race, but much more about why Catholics are better than Jews
or Muslims are better than Christians? We're working on a number of projects within
the Interfaith Lab, which is another initiative that I established,
(38:01):
specifically because faith has been neglected in many
conversations that we've had. We make a lot of assumptions, and there's a lot of
misuse of faith related, narratives.
But when you distill many real
values, if you will, within faith narratives,
there's so much commonality across the different
(38:25):
faiths in terms of coexistence, tolerance,
respecting diversity. You know? I don't think we have
taken the faith related narratives into
consideration as a potentially powerful
mobilizing tool for bringing communities together.
I think faith has been misused has been misused through
(38:48):
history to mobilize fear, to
mobilize hate towards the other, but we have not
built resilience to hate by mobilizing positive
aspects, within different faiths. And I think that is something
that we need to do better. When I talk about whole society
approach, I think it's important to bring in faith leaders
(39:09):
who can inspire resilience to hate within their
own communities and say these are not the values that
represent our faith community, but also can then work
on building bridges across different faiths. A last one I will and then
I wanna move on, but because it's fascinating. I mean, I could talk to you
all day. It's politics. I have never seen politics at a
(39:31):
level where it's us versus them. Is
that just because that's all I'm seeing, or is that, you think, it's
really steeping into what democracy has become, which is about
the more I get you to hate the other person, the better my chances are
being elected and being in power? I'll give you, an historic
example of, understanding the rise and fall of
(39:52):
the Islamic empire. During the golden
age of Islam, there was this incredible
welcoming of all forms of knowledge. There is, there was
an institution called House of Wisdom in,
7th, 8th, 9th 9th century in, Baghdad,
present day Iraq. And, House of
(40:15):
Wisdom welcomed, scientists of all
backgrounds, all faith backgrounds. Didn't matter whether you were
Muslim, Jew, or Christian, you were
welcomed, to produce,
scholarship. And there was an immense focus
on advancement through understanding, through learning.
(40:37):
And there's a famous, hadith of prophet,
Muhammad, peace be upon him, that says,
seek knowledge even if it takes traveling to China. So there was this
idea that, really, knowledge is power, connection
human connection is power, and that led to the rise of
golden age of Islam. My favorite subject one of my favorite subjects
(41:00):
is math and algebra. Algebra is an Arabic word. Al
Khwarizmi was a mathematician in the house of wisdom who was the first to
solve some of these algebraic equations, and therefore,
the name the name algebra, optics,
engineering, and so on, but also translating and
(41:20):
preserving during the dark ages in Europe, translating
and preserving all of the ancient knowledge was a big
important aspect of advancing learning at that time in
the Islamic empire. And then there was a period
when there was a certain sense of self assurance and
confidence that, you know, we've reached the the top. We don't need
(41:43):
really this knowledge, what we need. There's a lot of empire got
large geographically, so we need actually to make sure people blindly
follow their leaders. So we're going to neglect some
of this focus on science and knowledge, and we'll
focus on more being inward looking, protecting the
power that we have. And that's where we saw a decline
(42:05):
in publications of books. We saw banning of books.
We saw a decline in scientific advancement. And so
looking at historic examples really signaled that any
time we become
limited by this view of us versus them
and the world becomes binary, and the world becomes about
(42:27):
banning the narratives or banning books or limiting
scientific progress. We saw what happened during COVID 19. People who
believed in this or not believed in that and believed in
science or didn't support science, I think
we are walking a very dangerous line.
(42:47):
When we come back, doctor Ambre Chadich Alireas
shares more of her thoughts on what we can do to make this
world a much better place. And then my 3
takeaways.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Investing in Canada? Well, that matters
to RBC. $500,000,000,000 in sustainable financing
(43:11):
to combat climate change. 500,000,000 for future launch. A
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health, and so much more. Investing in Canada, well, that
matters to RBC.
(43:33):
With this question of how does hate emerge, hate is
precursors to to violence. So when you have hate narratives that are
adopted in various spaces in our society, whether it's social
media, traditional media, educational spaces, formal,
informal spaces, Thanksgiving dinner tables, that
that feeds the actual act of violence. How do
(43:56):
you begin to change that narrative? You begin to
change it through, interventions in the classrooms.
You're listening to Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman
presented by RBC. Joining me today is doctor Amra
Sharvich Eladias. And instead of her heart filled
with hate because she was on the wrong side of the Bosnia genocide,
(44:19):
she's chosen to fill it with love and to use her intellectual
prowess in her platform to wake up the world and say
we're all part of 1 human race.
How do you respond to contemporary genocide denial?
Like, that didn't happen. This sense of just lifting
(44:39):
up a carpet and sweeping it under the rug. And in doing so,
we continue to go to this flywheel of history repeats.
I would say as a genocide survivor, I have
lost capacity to feel hate.
So even if someone denies my existence, my experience,
what I feel is deep sense of pain and sadness.
(45:03):
And I think of everything that could pain
one who has survived,
worst atrocities that humankind can inflict on itself,
the hardest is is denial. The hardest is denial
because it reinforces that pain of not being
(45:23):
seen, heard, or see or treated as a human being.
Just recently, just days ago, the United Nations
have passed the resolution acknowledging specifically Srebrensa
genocide, which was really a combination of the Bosnian,
genocide where the UN soldiers were present as
the, Serb forces entered, the
(45:46):
town of Srebrensa and executed almost,
all, men and boys under this
narrative of we need to fear these men. They are
subhuman, and we need to execute them all. I
think for those of us who speak out on our own experiences, it's
(46:06):
really important to for all of us to
demonstrate respect for those who have gone through hardships. And I'm not speaking here
just about my own experience, but experiences of millions of
other people who have been around the world targeted for who
they are. We have to offer a sense of respect
and and and view their credibility as
(46:28):
equal to our own. You know, as an American now, as
someone who's faculty member at Columbia, who is an author, who
is successful, I had the privilege of credibility, of being
invited to have a conversation with you. Millions of
others will never have that positionality. And so we
have to rethink that. Why is that why is that that some voices are
(46:50):
more credible than than others? And why why is it that we
dismiss some experiences versus others? I think each and
every human being should be respected for who they are and should
never go through what I had gone through or what so many are going going
through around the world as we speak now. Have you ever thought of the
soldiers that went in and executed people?
(47:13):
What their life is like afterwards looking back and thinking
about how they got caught up in a moment? Do we
know the impact of what happens when a mob
suddenly is unleashed? Bandura is a famous,
a famous psychologist who, who has studied how
is it that people can commit these kinds of atrocities
(47:35):
and and, moral disengagement.
And what we know at certain parts of the brain
that that, a signal empathy light
up when we when we engage with someone who we
think is part of our in group versus
those who are part who we perceive as part of the out group. So
(47:57):
we have the capacity as human beings to really turn
off this, sense of empathy for one another
when, we perceive a person as not belonging to our
in group. And I think that is what enables
ordinary people. These are ordinary people.
Teachers, professors, police officers,
(48:21):
army officers, neighbors. In 3
summers, I talk about my own uncle who was a Serb,
who was married to my aunt, who was a lieutenant
in, in Serbia's in former Yugoslavia's
army, which became de facto Serbia's army. So it was my
own uncle who partook, in
(48:43):
the army that ultimately committed genocide. And
so I talk about at the end of 3 summers what happened to
that, relationship, as we speak
now. So I think what we do know based on the data that it
is ordinary people who commit these
extraordinarily painful acts of violence when they morally
(49:05):
disengage from seeing the other as a human being, which is
why in a lot of my trainings, I talk about
typology of a hate fueled violence. And to me,
I see it as a tree. You know, the branches and the leaves
is the physical manifestation of violence that we witness,
whether it's killing of George Floyd as a black person on an American
(49:28):
street, or it's placing a girl like Amra into a
rape camp, in Bosnia in 19
nineties. But the actual source
or or or the root to that kind of behavior,
how is that possible? How do we do that? It is possible when
we engage in narratives of supremacy, dehumanization,
(49:50):
othering, marginalization, racism,
because those narratives portray, hypothetically
speaking, Amra as someone who is not a human
being. So if Amra is not a human being, that means that I can
kill Amra, that I can harm Amra, and that is
what individuals who commit those acts of violence tell themselves.
(50:12):
I'll tell you just quickly that I did engage in
research project, specifically working with former soldiers
who partook in the Bosnian genocide. And in
fact, I was asked to work on a project to help them reintegrate
into the society post war. At the time, I reserved,
the right to potentially withdraw, you know, if I felt that I could
(50:36):
not see them as human beings because I didn't really know. I
didn't know until I came face to face with some of these
individuals whether I would wanna help them or or,
quite frankly, harm them in some ways. And there was one soldier
who wanted to become a farmer.
He was not highly educated. He wanted to obtain a
(50:59):
cow through this particular reintegration program. I
tried to help him navigate the the system, and he
obtained this cow. And then he called the office
that I was in in Sarajevo, and he was
falling apart on the other line. And he
wanted to know why did I help him. How could I help
(51:20):
him? Because the things that he has done to people like
me, are are things that that give
him nightmares every night, and he cannot sleep. And me helping
him made it worse. So he wanted to understand
why was I kind to him when he was so inhumane to people like
me. And I told him, that is your burden to live with for the rest
(51:42):
of your life. It's not mine. And I'm glad that I
didn't feel sense of hate. If anything, I felt sense of
pity that that is the life you have to deal with.
You have to deal with yourself as a human being for the rest
of your life and examine your own actions. And
so I don't know if that's representative of many people. I think
(52:04):
most people continue to morally justify. You know, this
had to be done because of this goal, higher goal, because my
kind is better than your kind and those kinds of narratives. But
ultimately, everybody has to go at night to sleep and wonder, what
have I done to another human being, and am I okay with that? Just before
I end, I'll just share you this personal thought. Sometimes I try to rationalize
(52:28):
how horrific the human race is by believing we're just a
reality show of a master race. And this is all for ratings
because I just can't believe at times we
can commit these acts. And I sadly can't put myself in the shoes of either
the victim or the attacker because I just hurt so
much. And I just have to believe that this can't
(52:50):
possibly be happening. This must be just some fantastic video
game that some race has created, and every once in a while, people are getting
bored with it. They launch this thing because it's just I'm amazed that
people like you are on this planet that have survived it and can and can
speak with such passion. I always end my shows with
3 takeaways. And, again, the first one I'm gonna say is that for
(53:12):
people to take things personally, you have to personalize it. And that really is
narrative and storytelling. And what I learned from you is how important that
storytelling was for you to just survive those 1200 days with your
poetry. Later on to sort of compartmentalize it
with your daughter in terms of writing your first book. But also the stories can
go for or against us based on the narrative. Storytelling
(53:34):
and personalizing and feeling and seeing it is so important.
The second thing that I really took away is the importance of
belonging. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's one of the most important
motivations, but you've really put a lens to belonging
and how when somebody doesn't belong, they feel like they're standing
on shifting sand, or they're being bullied or attacked, or their
(53:57):
skin's not the right color, or their religion's not the right religion. And
how that through parenting and through education, there
is an opportunity to return to that house of wisdom that you talk
about. The third thing is those four words that
I think America's blessed with is when that person said to you, you are
safe now. And that you could now take everything
(54:19):
that you this context, this journey that you have,
and decide after 911 to say, this is my life's
cause. And I think you are in many ways, and I
don't wanna I don't wanna sound like I'm exaggerating or fawning over, but in many
ways, you're the house of wisdom from the 7th 8th century that you
are collecting all of these points of view. I'm working on
(54:42):
this project. I'm working on this interfaith project. I'm working. You're you're opening the door
to all these points of view, and I hope you're successful more than
anything else because I think you're the first path
forward that I feel optimistic that there's still hope for this, this
crazy thing we call ourselves as humans. Thank you so much for being so
generous and so kind. I think that I did not survive
(55:04):
genocide to serve my
myself, but really to serve humankind in whatever capacity
I can. I think every person that we can reach and touch, touch, and you
do that, Tony and I thank you for doing that,
is critically important because we all have a role to play. Being nice
to someone in a supermarket and asking them how
(55:26):
they're they or smiling at them, even
if we don't know where they come from and who they are can make
a difference in a person's life. So I hope that our
conversation can inspire people to be the best version of themselves.
Chatter that matters has been a presentation of RBC. It's
Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening. Let's chat soon.
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