“Who is Malala?” He (the Terrorist) demanded. No one said anything, but all the girls looked at me…. That’s when he lifted a black pistol, I later learned (after she regained consciousness) it was a Colt 45, my friends said he fired three shorts. The first went through my left eye socket and out under my left shoulder…. The other two bullets hit the two girls next to me ( Shazia and Kainat Riaz).”
That’s Malala Yusuf in her 2013 co-authored with Christian Lamb, international best selling autobiography “I Am Malala Yusuf” telling the world (or rather answering the terrorists’ question) who she is and how a sadist lunatic shot her in the head while driving back home from school in a bus after exams, he shot her because she was campaigning for girl child education on the Swat valley in North Western Pakistan, something they forbade! She was in her mid teenage when she was shot by the a Taliban assassin.
However, there is more to her story as I unearth than mere Taliban violence. Here, I argue that she is a victim of religious extremism (just as our Chibok girls) and State/established terrorism orchestrated by the US and USSR during the Cold War. Though not a feminist or activist, I also argue that rather castigating her for what we deem as her “mistakes”, it is the duo evils of militant extremism and the interest-driven global politics that we should castigate. Truth be told, from Khawarij, Juhayman Otaibi, Alqaeeda, ISIS, Mai Tatsine, Boko Haram to ISWAP, the biggest threat Islam is facing is not some western conspiracy championed by America but fanatical extremism championed by barley literate fanatics and chauvinist divisionist. These two created more enemies to Islam, weaken Islam and victimize Muslims than anything else.
Who is Malala?
Malala Yusuf is born to a Muslim family in 1997 on the rural Swat valley of Pakistan. Her parents, especially her father encourages children education by building a network of schools in a place where they had to cope with threats from the Taliban as they wouldn’t tolerate the girl child education. Just like our sadist blood suckers here in the northeast, they don’t respect superior arguments but resort to violence, intimidation and threats; that was why they can’t stand a 15 year old girl, Malala, when she started campaigning for girls child Education on the valley, but rather shot her in the head!
Yes, a teen innocent rural girl was shot in head, her crime? She campaign for girls child education. As she said in her many interviews and her autobiography it never occurred to her that their sadism reach a stage where they would shoot a young girl of her age. However, they did shot her and issued a fatwa on her! A death penalty. Yet, she proved more Muslim than them as she publicly forgive them.
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Was she a Mukallafah (sane adult; non minor in Islam)? Were they in any position (read: clerical or established court authority) to issue a fatwa or execute one? Is it crime to campaign for education Islamically? If yes, does that warrant death penalty? Can a non established authority pronounce a legal sentence? Those questions can better be left to Islamic scholars. But what I know is that what they did is a transgression and a jungle justice that has no justification in Islam for Islam does not condemn those calling for girl child education to death. What ever evil Malala may become in our context, then those reckless jihadists are more sinister than her.
And Here is why!
I read Malala’s autobiography “I am Malala Yusuf” and watch her many interviews. My conclusion: those reckless “Jihadist” (or better lunatics) that shot her on the Swat Valley while she was advocating for girls child education did more harm to the Umma of Islam than her, if what she is doing is harmful. If she was really advocating for girls child education they had no right to shot her for girls child education is Islamic.
If she was doing something sinful, then they were not also judges to execute her. In the field of “enjoying the right and forbidding the wrong”, they were jurisprudentially wrong; for whatever wrong they thought she was doing was lesser compare to what she is doing now. They made her a celebrity and widen her audience. Think of it, a teenage girl shot and flew out to the UK having her medical bills and education taken care of, how vulnerable could she be to their values? There is lesser and greater evil, and if one knows in the course of preventing the lesser evil, the culprit would graduate to greater evil, then he should back up.
She was wrong for her childish advocacy against marriage. Alahmdulillah she outgrew it. I wish her happy marriage life. We should thank Allah that she is a live and Muslim. More Muslim than her shooters. We all outgrow our childishness. We may be a shame to share some of our previous stands on issues.
One should consider how many Malalas from Africa, Europe and Middle East were sent to early graves, how many Malalas were driven out of the religion by violent extremists? We should blame the people that made her popular, the ones that sent her to the West for hospitalization and “corrupt’ indoctrination, the ones that made her popularize her cause, I mean the terrorists.
The Cold War Politics
Here, I also argue that Malala Yusuf is one of the thousands victims of the Cold War’s proxy wars and state terrorism by the US and USSR enabled by pseudo Islamic Pakistani regimes, just as the Kashmiri’s calamity is the handiwork of British divided and rule and Syria suffering from the remnants of the Cold War.
The US sponsored the Mujahidin during the Afghan War with training, tactics, weapons and funds. The Frankenstein out of it is Alqaeeda. The frustrated Afghan students (Daliban) by under the Soviet Afghan client state founded the Taliban especially if we looking at the frustration-aggresion theory.
Both the Alqaeda and Taliban were creation of the Afghan War, a proxy of the Cold War. Malala was shot by an up shoot of these monsters created by the Cold War politics wrapped in religious extremism.
Thank God Malala miraculously survive and went on to study B.A Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University; emerged as a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Price Award (at 17, the youngest Laurent ever in 2014); gained international recognition; addressed the Canadian Parliament. May Allah continue to forgive our short comings and guide us to the straight path.
Anas lawal
