October 13, 2012
No comments on Malala Yousufzai from Malaysian Ulamas
Huffington Post UK | By Felicity Morse
Schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai (left) was only 11 when the Taliban banned girls’ education in the Pakistan’s Swat valley in 2009.
More than 4,000 girls’ schools were razed to the ground by the Islamist militant group. Girls who attempted to study lived in fear of being kidnapped, having acid thrown in their faces or even being killed.
At a time when even political leaders were terrified of criticising the Taliban, an 11-year-old schoolgirl found the courage to speak out.
“The decision to ban girls from going to school was shocking for me and I decided to stand against the forces of backwardness,” she told news agency APP in January.
Malala began writing a blog for BBC Urdu, documenting what life was like in the Taliban-controlled state. Her courage was remarkable. In 2009 the militant group were committing brutal punishments for the most minor of infractions.
Beheadings were performed in public and the butchered bodies of male and female detractors thrown onto the streets. Although Malala initially blogged under the name Gul Makai, she later revealed her secret to her friends.
“They told me I was endangering my life, but they were happy that there was someone to speak up for them,” she told Newsline earlier this year.
Her simple language belies the veil of fear that hung over her daily life. “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you,’ ” she wrote in her BBC Urdu blog.
“I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”
The schoolgirl described how she and her classmates were told not to wear uniforms to school because it would make them targets for the Taliban.
Writing for the BBC she said she instead “decided to wear my favourite pink dress”. However even this was not permitted.
“During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taliban would object to it,” she wrote.
The reaction to Malala’s blog in Pakistan as well as internationally reveals how remarkable the schoolgirl’s actions were.
She was the first Pakistani girl to be nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, and though she did not win, she was awarded the first National Peace Award by the Pakistani government in December.
A ceasefire was signed between the Pakistan and the Taliban in 2009 and though conditions have undoubtedly improved, the Swat Valley continues to be a focus for pro-Taliban fundamentalists.
Malala has continued to campaign for girls’ right to education and revealed the full extent of the oppression of women under Taliban rule.In 2011, she described how women were forbidden from shopping and forced to wear the shuttlecock burka, a garment that covers the entire body with a fabric grill to allow women to see through. Malala wrote for the BBC in 2011:
“When the Taliban came to Swat they banned women from going to the market and they banned shopping, but they did not know that women, whether from the East or West love shopping.
“My mother also used to come to this market and one day she was scared by a Talib. The Talib said to her: ‘Why are you coming here and why are you not wearing the specific burka which we have told you to wear?’
“My mother rushed home because of the fear she felt.”
Malala has appeared on news channels, spoken to international media and 
continued to campaign for the rehabilitation schools damaged by the Taliban.
She has said she wants to “become an honest and hard-working politician” when she finishes her schooling. By reflecting the fears of many living in Pakistan and summoning the courage to speak out and be heard, Malala has become a symbol of hope for a region living in fear.
Her shooting has caused outrage in Pakistan despite the country’s violent history. The President of Pakistan has condemned the “cowardly” and “deplorable” act and activists have been vocal in calling for her recovery.
Doctors in Pakistan have managed to remove a bullet from Malala’s head and her condition is reportedly stable.
Let the girls receive education. It has been proven that when women in a society receive education, that society will be lifted from poverty.
Still entertaining implementing Hudud? It will start as Hudud but end up as the Taliban. As it is Malaysia is halfway there.
It is beyond belief why anyone would commit such an act on an innocent child and one can only pray that Malala will recover soon.
Yet one cannot help feeling that Malala is a victim not only of the crazed perpetrator but of those from the outside who think that a centuries-old culture can be changed through the barrel of a gun.
That part of the world was always peaceful and a threat to absolutely nobody. Yes, it is a tribal society with its own customs and rules – customs that not many agree with and even fewer try to understand. Leave them alone and they will evolve (at their own pace), but invade them and they all become Taliban who will resist every attempt by outsiders to tear apart their way of life.
During the Vietnam War, a US officer lamented that if only they could identify the Vietcong it would make their “job” that much easier. His forces could not… because the entire population was Vietcong and, as if to make their point, their military leaders would hold regular meetings in a delapidated coffee shop right next to a US operations centre.
And so it is with the Taliban.
Travel through the Khyber Pass and one can still see graves of young British soldiers who were sent there on an earlier folly….. Much later, the Russians fared little better… and now the US… When will outsiders learn?
God please save this child.
God please save this child.- Isa Manteqi
God cannot save this child. Only the American drones can save this girl’s life since the Taliban said they will kill her the next time if she survives… And the doctors in the US can save her life now.
Religion must be banned from the face of this earth.
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The Taliban and those who commit murder under the name of jihad should be severely punished. As for the girl, she should be in safe custody abroad. But first, let hope she survives the operation.–Din Merican
Let’s all pray to Allah for the full recovery of Malala. She was made the symbol of women’s liberation & right to education by the Pakistani Government but no security measure was provided to her by the authorities who certainly knew the threat she was living under. All Muslims were urged to “read” – (Iqraq) as stated in the Holy Quran, yet these misguided Talibans discouraged it. The burka is not mandated by Islam to be worn by women – their faces need not be covered at all. The so-called hudud as practised by the Talibans is not hudud at all – it is pure suppression of women who were liberated by the introduction of Islam. It is people like the Talibans that give Islam a bad name. No, it is not the kind of hudud that PAS is trying to implement.
Isa, you are right and you are also wrong in your observation. the outsiders are not guilty of commiting this crime.
it is similar to the suicide of the young arab man which started off the Arab Spring. that poor child acted out of sheer desperation to change their hopeless situation as women, to break out of the shackles put on by their oppressors.
the desire to change is the culprit here.
and it is really cheap to find fodder in this episode to criticise the outsiders especially the WEST!
sadly form is more important than substance in this land of Madu, Budu and Can do. May the Good Lord sees to Lil Malala a long and fruitful life ahead. Ameen.
Substantive? Yeah right.
Besides all the Talib’s yodelling and chanting their god is great, we have over here hypocritical rag-heads who insist that marrying under-aged girls is necessary and even a religious duty. A recent report that revealed that 6,000+ Malay girls aged 15 or less were married off, to prevent them from ‘sinning’ out of wedlock.
It would seem that emancipation of women are the highest form of treason or apostasy to their strange Patriarchal deity. Universal Suffrage is possible only if and when narrow literal religion and oppressive cultural practices are kept out of politics. But then, as Isa notes, these guys are ‘not evolved’.
Can anyone tell me about the existence of a Islamic Social Creed?
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CLF,
As far as I concerned, these Islamic guys must stop interfering in my life. They should learn to lead their own properly and not badger other Muslims. I have a direct reporting line to God. I don’t need these guys to tell me what to do or what to think or how to behave. I have my own social code: Be a decent human being and try to do good to others. That is a universal credo.–Din Merican
What can be done to ancient & primitive people living the life of tribalism, having been isolated for centuries in the remote mountains , they must surely have acquired this deep fear of life, that they hate themselves most….
And to protect themselves the only way is to ” eliminate ” everyone else who are unlike themselves, and feel re-assured that whilst all others are Infidels, their ways are the ways of righteousness…..
Will there ever be some heavenly grace for these who transgress but call themselves the ” chosen race “….
God please save this child — Isa Manteqi
PAS has been pleading for Divine Intervention, for God to come to Malaysia and save them from the three Cs namely corruption, cronyism and capitalism, when not dreaming of their 72 dark eyed beautiful maidens waiting for them at the Gates of Pardadise (along with Old Frank who says why not since he has nothing to lose). Well, God has been busy trying to make sense what has happened in Benghazi, Cairo and Damascus.
Isa Manteqi has bored us over the years with his doctrine of power sharing ignoring what God said some almost two thousand years ago behind the burning bush on top of a desert mountain, “Beware for I am a jealous God”. God is not about to share power. And right now He is busy.
“A recent report that revealed that 6,000+ Malay girls aged 15 or less were married off, to prevent them from ‘sinning’ out of wedlock. ” — CLF
Meaning one cannot rape one’s own wife?? She has to give way to Sir Lancelot who may at time suffers from an adrenalin rush the result of an overflow of testosterone at odd hours of the day?? Is that why Hamid Gurkha takes long lunch breaks on Fridays instead of going to the mosque??
“It is pure suppression of women who were liberated by the introduction of Islam” — Hussin
Excuse me? In my time and Dato’s time growing up, the girls wore mini skirts and showed their cleavages. They were never forced to cover their legs, let alone their hair. Remain in focus there. They grew up to be good wives and good mothers and good Muslims.
Are you saying with the crap churned out daily by both UMNO and PAS in the media especially since the Old Goat claiming to be spokesman for God that Malaysia is an Islamic state, that Malay girls and women are today more liberated than their predecessors? Muslim women remain second class citizens wherever they are. Even Mah Chot says she walks three paces behind her husband. I don’t think Datin walks even a pace behind Dato.
Unless of course by ‘liberated’ you mean your wife has no choice but to allow you to take three other wives below the age of 16, do your cooking. wash your clothes, socks and underwear, be available to you every time and anytime for sex in the afternoons on Fridays. When God says to you, “Here I give you Minah to be your companion so that you are not alone” it does not mean you make her your toy.
______________
Bean,
Dr. Kamisiah and I walk beside each other. In my book, she enjoys the same rights as I which our constitution gives. She is a professional person with independent means.
The Quran does not mandate Muslim women to wear the tudung. But our Ulamaks (pronounced ular, mak!) and religious functionaries are insulting Malay woman folk and the sad truth is that the women obey them. We even have an Obedient Housewives Club which teaches women to be sex workers to their husbands. And its President wears a tudung and sometimes asks her hubby to use a tudung,I presume.–Din Merican
Please do not bring Pakistan Politics to malaysia. The Taliban is their creation now the chicken has come home to roost.
Ask her husband to “use a tudung”? When it rains, it pours? JAWI approved tudung? Kathy insists she never wore a tudung – nor make anybody wear a tudung. Not even a batek colored edible tudung.
The problem is not with any religion per se, it’s always been with the concept of majority.
The fact remains that arguments wrt Man’s inhumanity to Man as a result of faith is as fallacious as saying Evolution is the consequence of Reality. The concept of democracy in the modern sense of the word is always tied with Western thought. Our morality, altruism, socio-cultural and economic mores reflect basic creeds that all religions teach.
Isa brought up a very cogent point in letting those with ‘less’ modernity evolve in their own particular fashion, without interference from the outside world. However, the ‘barbarity’ of such primitive societies are not the result of lack, but excess of control and the fear of losing that control. The most convenient excuse always religion, if not tribe or class or any other aspect human difference including gender.
The reason i asked about an Islamic Social Creed is that it goes a long way to emancipate all those oppressed. It requires something tangible (ie a Creed, or something to that effect) that the unthinking masses can adhere to, besides the Scripture, archaic Jurisprudence and Traditions, for this to come about. Right now, every Mad Mullah has a right to declare his own facetious fatwa. Thus the repeated tragedies, as in this case of destroying the life of a young girl.
Bean’s argument about Islam being incompatible with modern Democracy is true, in the sense that it’s always about the Tyranny of the Majority.
While many will argue that the Scriptures already provide the original ‘checks and balances’ – it never does. The reason is obvious – Bull-headed Literalness and selective interpretation. It took the Christians until the end of the 19th century to come out with a sort of code of conduct that enabled Emancipation of Women in the early 20th century. An example of how such ‘Social Creeds’ can be found as part of the Catholic and Episcopalian-Methodist doctrines.
In the macro-historical context, ‘primitiveness of society’ is not due to anarchy, but the opposite – meaning excessive, despotic and authoritarian control along with the desperate need to conform and make uniform. Truly primitive societies are much more egalitarian than what we have today, even in the most advanced ‘democracies’. So much so, that the rabid Socialists actually don’t know what they are talking about.
Religion is between us and God and only God knows what is in our hearts and mind and what we have done right and wrong. That is for God and only Him to judge us… no other humans no matter how bushy is his goatee or how well-knitted is his kopiak or how well he pronounced some Arabic verses has an iota of right over another human how he / she lives and how he/she relate with God… fcuk off religious bigots, go screw yourself and leave peace-loving God-fearing Malaysians alone…
”The fact remains that arguments wrt Man’s inhumanity to Man as a result of faith is as fallacious as saying Evolution is the consequence of Reality”. – CLF
nobody is blaming religion as the sole cause of man’s inhumanity to man but we are saying religion should have no say in the running of a government/country. one can’t ignore the fact that wars of faith (crusades) had claimed more lives than wars out of greed and wantomness. the poor child was shot by someone who assumed that he is doing it in defense of his faith.
democracy being an invention of the west (England ~1290?), the transistion from absolute Monarchy to ‘people power’ with the help of the Church, is naturally incompatible with islam.
yes, for me evolution isn’t the consequence of reality but a reality in itself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
MR.BEAN : You have overlooked the OTHER topic with which I have bored you… Socialism.
Both power sharing and Socialism will prevail… mark my word.
Modern democracy?… are we talking about the democracy which is in a self-destruct mode?
power sharing – like Mugabe’s sharing power with Tsvangirai and Mutambara?
No! Like the experiment in power-sharing that has just got off the ground in Myanmar.
And let us not forget that it was power sharing that gave such a peaceful start to our country.