In April 2022, I spoke at the Global Counterterrorism Institute’s panel talk on “Women in Extremism” and asked the question of whether women’s rights as the West has interpreted them, interfere with women’s needs. Did the drive to push a ‘strong independent woman’ annex a woman from her innate and intuitive need for connection?

“This is the only prayer I know. This is the only prayer that only I know. This is my prayer, in the tongue of my embodiment. A language only I know.” — Shireen Qudosi. A practice in embodiment through non-linear movement that is as sacred as any inherited prayer.

The cave, a geological cavity, is allegorical code for going inward. The underworld is a state of creation and dreams, the weaving together of things, of attachment and detachment. Ushered by forms of silence, descent into the underworld cuts the fantasy that tethers us to world outside. The outer world that determines what is ‘normal’ is created by the same systems that have taught us to see the underworld as dark and fearful, systems that have pushed humanity further away from a true homecoming.

My own ability to invoke beautiful and more powerful questions over time is linked to the vast isolation that is a graveyard of the deconstructed self. Questions like, why are we experiencing the most chaotic outburst of religious fanaticism today during the most innovative period in modern history? Or, how can we look to past Islamic civilizations as a torch for moving out of this darkness? And, how can we use the tapestry of Islam’s origin story to weave a new narrative?

It all begins with an idea. If we’re winning the war against terror — if we’re doing this right — more come. If we don’t find a way to fold people back into our values and civilization then we’re fueling more civilizational rifts. A growing multi-generational population even more vulnerable to extreme terror and radicalization, caught in the rift of having no identity, no belonging, no future, no choice, no hope.