53. Meeting the Enemy with Deeyah Khan

Flipping Tables

Monte Mader

Society & Culture

5.0 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2026

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I feel very confident in saying that this is quite possibly the most important, powerful, and for me, inspiring interview I've ever done. This one is on the longer side but it is worth every minute. I could have done a series with Deeyah.

Deeyah Khan is a BAFTA– and two-time Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker known for her deeply empathetic and unflinching storytelling. Her work explores some of the most urgent and polarising issues of our time, including extremism, violence against women, racism, inequality, and social exclusion.

Over the course of her career, she has spent years engaging directly with individuals involved in violence and extremist movements. Her documentaries feature jihadists, convicted anti-abortion terrorists, as well as current and former white supremacists and armed militia groups in the United States. Through these encounters, she seeks to understand the human stories behind radicalisation and division.

In addition to her filmmaking, Deeyah is the founder of Fuuse, an independent media and arts production company. In 2016, she was appointed UNESCO’s first Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity.

Born in Norway to Muslim immigrant parents, Deeyah’s experience of navigating multiple cultures informs her creative vision. This perspective brings a distinctive emotional honesty and humanity to her work, shaping films that not only challenge audiences, but also foster connection, deeper understanding and dialogue.
I encountered Deeyah's work in her documentary "White Right: Meeting the Enemy" and it is TRULY transformative. She sat in rooms with white supremacists I'd be nervous to sit in and she did it with fierceness, determination, courage and love. And some of those men left the movement due to her influence. She is a rockstar and I can't wait to share this story with you.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Dia Khan is a BAFTA and two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker known for her deeply empathetic and unflinching storytelling.
0:08.1	Her work explores some of the most urgent and polarizing issues of our time, including extremism, violence against women, racism, inequality, and social exclusion.
0:17.3	Over the course of her career, she has spent years engaging directly with individuals involved in violence and extremist movements.
0:24.0	Her documentaries feature hijadists, convicted anti-abortion terrorists, as well as current and former white supremacists and armed militia groups in the United States.
0:33.1	Through these encounters, she seeks to understand the human stories behind the radicalization and division. In addition to her filmmaking, Dia is the founder of Fuse, an independent media and
0:42.3	arts production company, and in 2016, she was appointed to the UNESCO's first
0:46.2	goodwill ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity. Born in Norway to Muslim immigrant
0:50.7	parents, Dia's experience of navigating multiple cultures informs her creative vision. This perspective brings distinctive emotional honesty and humanity to her work,
0:59.4	shaping films that not only challenge audiences, but also foster connection, deeper understanding,
1:04.6	and dialogue. I found Dia, after seeing her film, meeting with the enemy, an interview and
1:09.8	very intense emotional experience about coming and meeting with the enemy, an interview and very intense emotional experience
1:12.0	about coming and meeting with white supremacist groups as a woman of color, as a Muslim, as an
1:17.1	immigrant, and really understanding the stories behind the radicalization, what happened at Charlottesville,
1:22.2	and how sometimes connection can lead people to change.
1:25.2	So much with what is wrong and scary in the world and so much
1:28.4	about our humanity that can teach us how to move past it today on flipping tables with Dia Khan.
1:39.7	So, Dia, welcome to flipping tables. I am so glad this worked out. We've been chatting for about five months now about getting you on the show, and I'm so happy to have you.
1:48.2	Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge, huge fan of you and who you are and how you speak and what you speak about. So it's a pleasure to be here.
1:59.8	And we are on this conversation with you being in Norway.
2:04.0	When I originally contacted you, you had moved here and we were talking just before recording
2:08.4	about you ended up leaving the US. Can you talk about that a little bit, how you're in Norway now?
2:13.8	Yeah. So I have lived and worked in the US for about 8 to 10 years on and off.
	...

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