Humanity is a Chorus and the Earth is Ready for a New Song.
After September 11th, 2001, I left law school and dove into the rabbit hole of faith to understand how a religion I was told was peaceful, was producing people who were so terribly violent. This question in my heart took me on a path where I spent the next 22 years studying Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and of course Islam. I joined Golden Temple retreats in the hidden nooks of Beverly Hills where I experienced what it was like to be in a community dedicated to the practice of belonging. I spent a year in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan, becoming friends with mosque and convert communities in a country typically known for turning away from faith. I volunteered with local Islamic institutions in Southern California to see why new ideas never broke into our own communities. I spent a year studying the emotion of extremism across the spectrum of belief before launching preventing violent extremism programs across communities in the United States. There is a world of stories within these experiences that my Substack will unfold through intimate conversations with you, dear reader.
In all this, two key milestones stand out:
- In 2019, I predicted we were going to see heightened radicalization because of this growing hyper-focus on identity.
- In 2020, we all collectively saw our outer and inner…
