July 12th each year is MALALA DAY
Did you know that July 12th each year is MALALA DAY?
On 12 July 2013, Malala Yousafzai's 16th birthday, she spoke at the UN to call for worldwide access to education. It was her first public speech since being shot by a Taliban gunman. The UN dubbed the event "Malala Day."
Malala Yousafzai is the youngest – and probably the most famous - Nobel Peace Prize winner (2014) ….. perhaps after Nelson Mandela. Who else can you name? For Americans, and probably for nobody else, Barack Obama and Al Gore may come to mind, or the war criminal Henry Kissinger whose nomination (together with a Vietnamese diplomat who turned down the offer because of the horrors of perpetrated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) devalued the Nobel. As a teacher of peace studies, I am more invested than most people in Nobel Peace Prize winners. How many people, for instance, can name the seven African laureats?
It is 9 years since Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Pashtun Taliban gunman on 9th October 2012, as she was coming home from school in the official school bus. This took place in the Swat Valley, of of the most beautiful places in the world, occupied mainly by Pashtun farmers. She was born in the Swat Valley.
The Swat Valley is reckoned to be one of the world’s most beautiful places.
BBC Radio 4 has a series called Desert Island Disks, that I enjoy hearing. The conceit is that an invited celebrity selects the eight essential pieces of music that (s)he would take with them to a Desert Island, and explains the significance in their life of each piece the choose. Malala was one of the most interesting invitees I have heard. This is because I am interested in her story, in her work for peace, and because I have a long interest in Central Asia, its politics, people and culture. Michelle and I were married in Afghanistan.
Malala is now in her early twenties, with a degree in PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) from Oxford University and a Foundation that she runs with her father Ziauddin. Laura Laverne is the current host of Desert Island Disks, and it is she who leads the conversation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000s84r
“What is different in my story,” said Malala, “is that my father did not stop me from speaking out. He believed that girls with education could become change-makers. Like me, he is also an activist, and he was a feminist when the word was unknown. The family tree had no women on it. So my father took a pen and wrote my name on it. During my father’s childhood, my sisters were treated less well than he was and he felt it was unjust. So I would say to my father: ‘Thank you for not clipping my wings, and letting me fly.’
““We need to encourage girls that their voice matters. I think there are hundreds and thousands of Malalas out there.”
“I am bossy at home ….. but in a good way. Boys need lectures. So I am helping my younger brothers by being bossy. Going back to the time of the Taliban in Swat Valley: on 15 Jan 2009 my father closed his school because the Taliban wrote on the wall that education was evil and they would blow up the school. I went to school secretly, hiding my school books. I was also writing a secret blog for the BBC. If anyone knew that, I would be in danger.”
As it turns out, she was in great danger. Because Malala Yousafzai was an outspoken schoolgirl promoting girls’ education, she became a symbol of everything that the Taliban hated. A Taliban gunman come onto the school bus and shot Malala in the head. Only after the brouhaha of this incident, did the Pakistan army finally move into Swat and take back control of the Valley from the Taliban.
She has no memory of the incident. Malala was flown to Birmingham, England where the hospital has a military trauma surgical unit. She was in a medically-induced coma for a week, and woke up in Brum. Her Brummie accent is so funny, that the programme is worth hearing just for that! It turns out during the interview, that Malala is a fan of cricket, and of old British comedy sitcoms. Who knew?
Malala’s eight choices for Music:
“Rang” Sufi chanting by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan & Amjad Sabri
“Where the waters meet” Patari Fanoos | Zohaib Kazi: 80-year-old Pashtun lady Zarsange singing “Different waters flow together ….” Zarsanga is called ‘the nightinagle of Peshawer.’ The 80 year old is a Tamgha-E-Imtiaz Winner legend lost to tides of time before Zohaib Kazi travelled to Peshawer to record a breath-taking track that fused her magical vocals with modern music.
“Never say ‘never” by Justin Bieber featuring Jaden Smith
“hum dekhenge” = “We will see …. truth will prevail” sung by Iqbal Bano.
https://www.rekhta.org/nazms/va-yabqaa-vajh-o-rabbik-hum-dekhenge-ham-dekhenge-faiz-ahmad-faiz-nazms
In the year 1985, a General Zia-ul-Haq decree prohibited women from wearing sarees. Pakistan’s world-renowned singer Iqbal Bano, clad in a black saree, protested against the decree singing this nazm of Faiz Ahmed Faiz in front of a crowd 50,000 strong in a Lahore stadium. The stadium echoed with chants of ‘Inqilaab Zindabad’.
“All I ask of you” from Phantom of the Opera, by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“Kaari kaari” = “dark dark” Kari Kari Ankhiyan Se Kake Kalakari - कारी कारी ... in Urdu from the movie Pink: a song about injustice, and the compromises that all women have to make in their life.
“Love always comes a surprise” from animation Madagascar 3 sung by Peter Asher
“Bibi shirina” = “a brave girl” sung by Sadar Ali Takkar …. telling Pathan girls that education is their right. It was played at her Nobel Prize ceremony.
I especially love this song, because it sounds like the music we heard and enjoyed during the peaceful and happy days of pre-war Afghanistan when we lived there 1970-1973. Such a rich and happy time, which was also when I married Michelle in the British Embassy in Kabul, which had beautiful gardens filled with roses and embellished with grass tennis courts where we were allowed to play. Later it became the Pakistan Embassy. Today it is nothing but a sad, shattered wreck, rumored to be littered with land mines. How could any movement be proud of its beliefs, when they are so nihilistic? Who could ever love the Taliban?
A NOTE ABOUT THE TALIBAN:
The Taliban are conservative Pashtuns or Pakhtuns. They hate Malala because her stand in favour of women goes against the fundamental tenets of the Pakhtunwali, the code of honor of the Pashtuns. As I used to tell my students, “In Afghanistan there are three religions: Honour, Hospitality and Islam. And the greatest of these is Honour.” The reason that women are kept hidden behind the walls of Pashtun fortified houses kala is that they control the honour of the clan. If their face, or even their hair is seen by a stranger, the clans honour would be harmed and a blood feud would follow. Of course, it is also a question of men keeping control of women, and of Pashtun fathers having absolute right of life and death over his women.
I was once told by an Afghan: “We worship our mothers. After all, I only have one mother, whereas I can always buy another wife.”
Malala stands against the inferior position of women. If Malala returns to Pakistan, she risks assassination. Yet she dreams of becoming President of Pakistan, perhaps in 30 or 40 years’ time….. Conservatives, and Islamic fundamentalists, describe her ideology as "anti-Pakistan" and "anti-Islam" …. but that is a deliberate confusion of Islam with Pakhtun values. The Holy Koran, the Book of Islam says nothing that puts women in an inferior position. Taliban philosophy is based on a rigid and conservative application of Pakhtunwali and has nothing to do with Sharia, the law of Islam.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Catholic Church did the same as Salafist Sunni Muslim Clerics, by keeping the Bible written in an unknown mystic language (Latin) and allowing only male priests to interpret the texts. Taliban clerics ensure that Classical Arabic remains the language of Islam: they forbid translations and insist that their interpretation is the right one. These semi-literate mullahs are mocked by serious Islamic scholars; but the Taliban have firearms. Translating the Bible into European languages led to centuries of bloodshed and the burning of men and women and holy books. Islam is fighting similar battles, and Pakistan is on the frontline.
The Malala Fund supports girls’ education: https://malala.org/
Malala Yousafzai's memoir I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb, was published in October 2013 by Little, Brown and Company in the US and by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK.
A children's edition of the memoir was published in 2014 under the title I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World.
Yousafzai authored a picture book, Malala's Magic Pencil, which was illustrated by Kerascoët and published on 17 October 2017