Some nights before, I had a terrible nightmare. I saw a woman standing in front of a building located in the middle of an uninhabited deserted landscape. From her face, she looked frightened as if something ominous was about to happen. Before she could grasp the meaning of this, I witnessed a group of men with sharp weapons in their hands, running towards her, attempting to kill her. She ran for her life, perhaps let out a few screams too. But before I could analyse what would happen next, I was awakened by sheer terror of this dreadful dream in the middle of the night.
While still struggling to resolve the vision, an incident which I had read about before struck my mind. It was the attack on Malala Yousafzai, about how a Taliban gunman had shot her in the head, and wounded two of her friends too while she was going home from school, injuring all the three girls in a bus in October 9th 2012. The gunman shouted, “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all.’’ She was immediately shot in the head, the bullet pierced through her neck and shoulders, lodging near her spine. She had undergone intensive care initially at a hospital in Peshawar, and later on was flown to Birmingham, UK for further treatment. The details of the attack were provided by the other two girls, Kainat and Shazia, after their medical conditions improved. Why did the assassin do this? Because Malala Yousafzai spoke up for the rights and education of women, not only in Pakistan but all over the world? Or is it because of the Taliban’s nasty, meaningless, pathological misogyny?
Malala Yousafzai is a sixteen-year-old girl, from the town of Mingora, in the Swat District of Pakistan’s northwestern province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. She is well known as a blogger and also for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley where the Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. I ask again: Why? On her sixteenth birthday, July 12th 2013, Malala delivered a defiant speech in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. She said, “I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I’m here to speak up for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Talibans and all the extremists. I don’t even hate the Talib who shot me.” She continued saying, “The extremists were and they are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women; the power of the voices of women frightens them. Because they were, and they are afraid of change, afraid of equality, which we will bring into our society. The terrorists are misusing the names of Islam and the Pashtun society just for their own personal benefits.”“We realise the importance of light, when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice, when we are silenced. In the same way, when we were in Swat, North of Pakistan, we realised the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns. The voice saying, that pen is mightier than the sword, was true.” – Malala, 12th July 2013, UN speech.
Former British Prime Minister and current U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown launched a United Nations petition in Yousafzai’s name, demanding all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015. Malala the age of 11-12, wrote a blog under pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. She won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and is also the youngest nominee in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. She continues to inspire many and improvise the past, fighting for the liberation of women through education. Her family support in this is immense. Her achievements remain astounding to the world and her bravery, praiseworthy in a world filled with obstacles. She is compassionate and remains adamant about what she believes in. The depth of her fearlessness is unfathomable, especially after seeing that she did not walk away from the noble cause she is working for when people like Adnan Rasheed, a Pakistani Taliban sent her discouraging letters, menacing her to back off, wrongly accusing her of promoting a ‘smearing campaign’ and giving invalid reasons to walk away from what she believes is right. Even after being attacked and continuously threatened, she stays resolute and determined. How many of us are ready to take a bullet and swing between life and death hanging by the string of fear and uncertainty just to stick to what we believe in?
Deep inside, we all need to ignite that fire of fearlessness within us, to make this world a peaceful place to live in. In the dark, filthy corners of our societies, dwells an ugly monster called ‘misogyny’. Women’s welfare, security and empowerment are doors which are unlocked by education; women are the other half of our society and what they think matters. For a happier society we need more educated and confident women and that is a weapon to tackle poverty. The freedom of thinking, with no one to govern how to think, and what to wear and what to do, is priceless. There is no substitute for education, a basic right which we all inherit when we take birth. They struggle to achieve equality and peace, they die, and the struggling of the next generation begins. If it is all about struggling, when shall our society reap the benefits of such struggle?Source: the star (magazine) 26.07.13
