The Shooting of Malala Yousufzai
On the 9th of October 2012 an Islamic extremist wearing a
fake police uniform shot 14 year old Malala Yousufzai in the head and leg as
she waited to return home on her school bus, several other young girls were
also injured in the attack. After the attack Malala was airlifted to hospital
where doctors managed to stabilise her condition because the the bullet had
miraculously missed her brain.
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| Malala Yousufzai |
Malala was only 11 when she started documenting how
difficult it was to get an education in Pakistan. At first she documented the
atrocities committed by the Taliban as they occupied her native Swat Valley
between 2007 and 2009 but she soon focused her writing upon the subject of
female education in Pakistan. In 2011 she became the first ever recipient of
Pakistan's National Peace Prize for her campaign for female education rights.
Here are a few of her most famous quotes:
"I dreamt of
a country where education would prevail."
"I don't mind
if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education. And I am
afraid of no one."
"Sometimes I
imagine I'm going along and the Taliban stop me. I take my sandal and hit them
in the face and say what you're doing is wrong. Education is our right, don't
take it from us... So even if (God let this not happen) they kill me, I'll
first say to them, what you're doing is wrong."
In the wake of the shooting, the vast majority of Pakistanis
have united in condemnation. Government officials, media personalities and
religious leaders have all spoken out against the attack and praised Malala's
bravery.
Talk show host Hamid Mir said: "I can see the whole
nation's head bowed in shame today. I want to ask those who shot a girl who
only wanted to go to school: Do you think you are Muslims?"
This question, to me, is of fundamental importance. What
kind of warped belief system would provide a person justification to shoot
children? What kind of morality was the attacker attempting to defend as he
decided to shoot a child in the head? How on Earth could he have believed that
Allah would have approved of such a brutal attack?
Given that the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims have united
in condemnation of this attack, it is quite clear that the Taliban
interpretation of Islam is at odds with everyone else's. That in the minds of
most Pakistanis, the Taliban are not genuine Muslims. It is a great shame to
see so many shouty atheist ranters using this disgusting attack as an
invitation to wade into the debate with their divisive "Islam is
evil", "all religions are evil" diatribes, especially given that
the vast majority of Muslims, people of other faiths and people of none are
united in condemnation of this kind of barbarism.
At a moment where voices of moderation within the Muslim
faith have a wonderful opportunity to present their interpretation of Islam;
that it is an ideology of peace, tolerance and scholarship, the atheist ranters
would prefer to use the actions of the very worst religious extremists as an
excuse to launch the kind of offensive, ill-informed and generalisation laden
diatribes they specialise in, and drown out the voices of moderation with their
intolerant ranting.
The Taliban are degenerates who completely disregard the
elements of Islam that contradict their agenda, they preach a message of hate,
intolerance and anti-intellectualism. However Islam was once a religion of
tolerance and scholarship.
The Islamic caliphate of Córdoba famously allowed Christians
and Jews to freely practice their religions, which contrasts strongly with the
religious intolerance, persecution and widespread use of torture by the
Catholic regime that replaced Moorish rule in Spain. During the great age of
Islam, Islamic scholars preserved and translated countless Greek works of
philosophy and mathematics, they invented algebra and became the first
civilisation in history to comprehend irrational numbers.
Many millions of Muslims still believe that peace, tolerance
and scholarship are the most vital aspects of their faith, but it suits the
narratives of imperialist warmongers and intolerant atheists alike to
characterise all Muslims as backwards, education hating and murderous fanatics.
However the widespread condemnation of the attack on Malala Yousufzai by
Muslims from across Pakistan and the World demonstrate the falsity of this
simplistic narrative.
In order to understand the assassination attempt against
Malala Yousufzai, it is important to understand how the Taliban came to be
operating in Pakistan in the first place.
1. Before the "War on Terrorism" there were no
Taliban in Pakistan.
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| Matt Herring |
3. US drone strikes have killed countless innocent people in
the tribal belt of Pakistan.
4. The tribal belt suffers high levels of illiteracy and
poor education, meaning that the victims of such attacks are easily manipulated
by religious extremists. When the Pakistani state and "western
forces" are killing innocent people, it should be easy for us to see how
fanatics present themselves as the only people fighting on the side of the
victims.
It should now be beyond question that the single clearest
consequence of the "war on terrorism" has been the effect of stirring
up and popularising Islamic fanaticism. This is as clear in the tribal belt of
Pakistan as it was in post-invasion Iraq. When the only exposure to "the
West" that uneducated and illiterate people get, is drone strikes,
overwhelming military force and civilian massacres, it shouldn't take a great
deal of empathy to understand why they would want to fight back against these
violent and murderous "Western forces". Islamic fanatics like the
Taliban thrive on suffering and ignorance, which makes it all the more obvious
why they are so fundamentally opposed to female education. If they succeed in
preventing half of the population from even attending primary level schools,
they succeed in maintaining the culture of ignorance that they need in order to
thrive.
The fact that the Taliban's morality relies so heavily upon
the denial of education demonstrates the pathetic weakness of their faith. That
they are so afraid of allowing the education of children is clear evidence that
they believe that their "morality" is so fragile that it can be
destroyed simply by allowing children to learn. The bravery of Malala Yousufzai
in standing up to these religious fanatics contrasts sharply with their moral
cowardice, that allows them to believe that they must kill children in order to
avoid the eradication of their feeble "morality".
It is quite remarkable that so-called followers of the
Prophet Mohamed would stoop to assassination attempts against a child that
defends their right to an education, especially given that Mohamed once said
that “the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr”.
Through her scholarship and her campaign for education
rights Malala Yousufzai has demonstrated that her work is more sacred than the
violence of the Taliban and that at the age of only 14 she is already more of a
Muslim than they ever will be. Not only that but through her fearlessness she
has demonstrated that she is prepared to become a martyr in defence of women's
right to education.
Once she recovers from the attack and hears of the Taliban's
threats to try to kill her again, I'm sure this brave young woman will say
"let them try". At 14 she is wise enough to know that by attempting
to make her a martyr to womens' education rights, the Taliban is actually
inflicting infinitely more damage to their warped fundamentalist ideology than
they would have done by simply leaving her alone.
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