Having had his YouTube videos viewed over 100 million times, as well as being the creator of the famous web series Diary of a Badman, Humza Arshad MBE is one of the most popular British online comedians and an advocate for tackling youth violence, something currently haunting the streets of our communities.

Multiple factors, like peer pressure or poverty, lead to the creation of gangs, where young people engage in criminal activity.

Where there are gangs, there’s also violence; this has led to thousands of knife crime offences in England and Wales each year, with not only the victims being affected, but their friends and family also.

Arshad is no exception to this; in 2007, his cousin was stabbed by a group of teenage boys, and it’s now his quest to stop that from happening to others.

He’s done multiple talks and workshops across secondary schools to educate young people on the roots and repercussions of youth violence, pre-empting them from getting drawn into the circle as well.

Arshad has also spread his messages on preventing violence through social media, one prominent example being the short film HATE, which explores the origins of hate crime and violence.

This story allows viewers to see both perspectives: firstly, through the effect of the assault on the victim’s family, but also through the perpetrator themselves and their influencers.

What Arshad conveys is that hatred stems from both sides, and that we should focus on cracking down on the origins of this hatred to stop it altogether.

One of the ways this is done is through walking in the shoes of the assailant themselves. When asked about why he presented the attacker’s motives and influences in his short film, Arshad explained that it is a way of “humanising the perpetrator” as it “helps [those affected] understand why they’ve done it”. The police have described this process as “restorative justice” and it has helped many families of victims reconcile with their offenders.

Yet how is doing this helpful, especially when we feel as if the perpetrator doesn’t deserve to be empathised with at all?

We never know the background of the offender – perhaps they grew up in environments normalising violence, or they have been influenced by the discriminatory thoughts of others.

Being aware of the perpetrator’s reasons behind their intention paints an image of their identity and demonstrates that the crime is not entirely their fault, but society’s also.

This allows us, like Arshad, to tackle the problems within our community, but to also find some inner peace within ourselves by being able to forgive them just a little more.

If we manage to forgive, we also free ourselves of hatred and get out of the darkness, allowing us to heal quicker and carry on.

Arshad walks a similar path too, as he continues to try to understand the boys who attacked his cousin 15 years ago. By building upon his own self-healing, the work he has done has started to heal society as well.