This TED Talk features peace advocates Azim Kamisa and Plus Felix, recorded live at TED Women 2017.

We humans have many defining moments in our lives. Sometimes these moments are joyous and sometimes they are heartbreaking tragic.

But at these defining moments, if we are able to make the right choice,

we literally manifest a miracle in us and others.

My only son Tarek, a university student, a kind, generous, a good writer, good photographer,

had aspirations to work for National Geographic, engaged to a beautiful lady,

worked as a pizza delivery man on Fridays and Saturdays.

He was lured to a bogus address by a youth gang,

and in a gang initiation, a 14-year-old shot and killed him.

The sudden, senseless death of an innocent, unarmed human being. The overwhelming grief of a family. The total

confusion is you try to absorb a new hideous reality. Needless to say, it brought my life

to a crashing halt. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do

is to call his mother who lived in a different city.

How do you tell her mother she's never going to see her son again,

or hear him laugh, or give him a hug?

I practice as a Sufi Muslim.

I meditate two hours a day. And sometimes in deep trauma and deep

tragedy, there is a spark of clarity. So what I downloaded in my meditation is that there were

victims at both ends of the gun. It's easy to see that my son was a victim of the 14-year-old,

a little bit complicated to see that he was a victim of American society.

And that begs the question, well, who is American society?

Well, it's you and me, because I don't believe that society just happenstance.

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