You are highly likely to have heard of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani who is an activist for education, especially girls. Yousafzai was already advocating for girl’s education at the age of 11 and at the age of 15 in October 2012 was shot in the head by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban) on her way home from school.
Yousafzai’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai is an education activist who inspired his daughter with his work in education. After surviving the attempt on her life, with surgery being carried out at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education.
After her recovery Yousafzai continued to fight for girls’ education, and in 2013 she co-authored with Christina Lamb the international best seller “I Am Malala”.
In her book Yousafzai details her life in the Swat Valley in Pakistan and her father opening schools to educate all children and provide children from poor families with a free education. In 2004, after the September 11 attacks in the US, drone strikes were carried out in response and the political landscape in Pakistan began to change and the TTP grew in power.
During this time Yousafzai began to write a blog for the BBC entitled ‘Gul Mukai’ (“Cornflower” in Pashtu) while her father continued his outspoken stance on education. In 2009, the TTP closed all schools in the Swat Valley.
In August 2009, the Pakistan army had defeated the TTP and schools reopened and she gave a public speech in Islamabad while her father spoke out publicly about the TTP. Yousafzai began to receive prizes for her activism in 2011 and also started to receive death threats. Although worried, Yousafzai studied hard for her exams and on the school bus on the way home after finishing them on October 9, two men stopped her bus and climbed aboard. One shouts “Who is Malala?” and shot three bullets.
One of the bullets hit Yousafzai in the left eye and travelled to her shoulder. She was rushed by helicopter to the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar and then airlifted to a military hospital in Rawalpindi and then to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
Yousafzai was released from hospital in January 2013 and stayed in Birmingham to continue her education and fight for girl’s education so that she would be known not as “the girl who was shot by the Taliban” but as “the girl who fought for education”.
Yousafzai spoke before the United Nations on her 16th birthday in July 2013, and had an audience with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace. In September 2013, she spoke at Harvard University, and in October, she met with US President Barack Obama and his family; during that meeting, she confronted him on his use of drone strikes in Pakistan. In December, she addressed the Oxford Union. In July 2014, Yousafzai spoke at the Girl Summit in London.
In December 2014, Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. At age seventeen, she became the youngest person to be named a Nobel laureate.
Despite everything she has been through Yousafzai refuses to let the people who tried to kill her stop her fighting for what she believes to be right and founded the Malala Foundation with her father in 2014 to help girls worldwide receive an education.
Reading this book leaves you in awe of this young girl who took on the might of the TTP and fought for what she believed to be right and still does, despite the TTP threatening to try and assassinate her again.
As Yousafzai said, “So, yes, the Taliban have shot me. But they can only shoot a body. They cannot shoot my dreams; they cannot kill my beliefs and they cannot stop my campaign to see every girl and every boy in school.”
She also said, “I told myself, Malala, you have already faced death. This is your second life. Don’t be afraid – if you are afraid, you can’t move forward.”
Such bravery, such dedication – could you be like her? Probably not, but if you fight for what you believe in, for everyone’s right to be educated or to be free from persecution, you can do it.
So, when you are sitting in your classroom, bored with the lesson or hating going to school every day, remember Malala and girls like her and what they had to endure to go to school.
Yousafzai should be your role model over entertainers, footballers and the like.
Sources: Wikipedia, BBC and “I am Malala”.
This photo taken in my living room yesterday shows Malala’s book prominently displayed in my bookcase.
– Photo: Lesley Wells
