As I researched my book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism, and spoke with people in countries from Afghanistan to Mali, I discovered that just as the personal is political, the political is always personal. This has been the case in my own life as well, and it’s why I made the decision to begin my TED Talk, When people of Muslim heritage challenge fundamentalism, with a personal story from June 1993, set against then escalating violence by non-state fundamentalist armed groups in Algeria.
