By nature, humans are social creatures with an innate need to belong. At what point did I as a human feel that I had a particular set identity? Did I choose it or was it imposed? Why did I hold onto it? How did it benefit me? And more importantly, was the identity I clung to innocent, or had I fallen into the trap-as so many of us have-of unassumingly donning a politicized identity that others had created?
 
I spent much of my life in an "identity crisis." I was born in the United States; my father was a Pakistani doctor, my mother was a nurse. We moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when I was small.

 
Although I called Saudi Arabia home, the Saudis themselves regarded me as an alien. As I grew older I discovered how imperfect the country I called home was in its treatment of women and in its prejudices.
 
My parents ensured my sister and I had a good Islamic education and upbringing. They were proud of us when we covered our hair to go to the Saudi Arabian International School in Riyadh. But ironically, although I lived in a country where covering head to toe was the law for women, within the confines of an American-run institution I was mocked and humiliated for being different. I went back to the U.S. for boarding school and was stuck with the label of "foreign student" for the next eight years.
 
The one identity that I had complete liberty to choose was that of my faith. . . .
 
In my recent self-searching, it occurred to me that when I had put the hijab on, I had not done so only from religious conviction. It was to take back control. Although clinging to Islam was spiritual survival, wearing the hijab at that time was a form of resistance for me. Do we cling to our identities because there is a benign need to belong, or is it an act of resistance due to historical trauma and insecurity?
 
For years it was comfortable for me to live within my shell of having only a Muslim identity. It was not until the Initiatives of Change Connecting Community Fellowship Program in the United States that I regained my sense of identity as a human and that I shared it with all of humanity." 

Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge now carries the title "Editor in Exile." In September of 2008, she was the second winner of the Global Shining Light Award in Norway, presented by the International Conference of Investigative Journalists for exposing how a government minister "used his power and connections to the President of the country to run roughshod over the media and the justice system." Less than four months later her husband of two months, the well known editor of the Leader newspaper, was brutally gunned down as he drove to work. Sonali was forced to flee the country, along with other members of her family-hence her unusual title.

A 1996 participant in the Caux Scholars Program, Sonali trained first as a lawyer and then shifted to journalism, believing "journalism is more fulfilling personally, and I am able to act according to my conscience and try to impact society." In a letter written at the end of January 2008, she said, "I am happy in my work and feel I can offer something to a country that is becoming more racist by the minute. It is hard to imagine how pugnaciously nationalist we are becoming, especially the politicians."

 
Sonali's husband, Lasantha Wickrematunge, knew that his life was in danger and in fact wrote a final editorial entitled "And Then They Came for Me," in which he said, "It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me."  

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Noorullah Delawari, an Afghani American who is founder and CEO of the Afghan Investment Support Agency, as well as Minister Adviser to President Karzai, says his long connection with Initiatives of Change helped him to take responsibility for his country-including the enormous task of restoring stability to the currency. He told his story at a meeting hosted by Initiatives of Change in McLean, Virginia, in October.

Noor was born to a well respected family in Afghanistan, and his father served as the Deputy Minister of Royal Court during King Zahir Shah. He encountered Moral Re-Armament (Initiatives of Change) while studying Economics and Finance in England in the late sixties. When he first went to the IofC center on Berkeley Square in London with some of his leftist friends, he was suspicious of what he was getting into, but his doubts were quickly dispelled by the genuineness, sense of purpose, and commitment of those he met there. One of them, George Williams, became a close friend, and when Noor asked him if he might help him find a place to celebrate his marriage to his wife, Setara, George arranged a reception in an IofC home in central London. Setara was the daughter of an Afghan man who had migrated to the U.S. in the early twenties and married an Italian American. She and Noor had met when she was working in Kabul.