Review:
One of the great joys of reading
books is to have a window into people’s external and internal world. I am Malala (2013) opens that window wide and enables the
readers to understand the context and global significance of her stand as a Pakistani
teenager for equal education rights for women and men.
Malala was raised within Islam by
parents who practiced their faith. Her father was a vocal advocate for freedom of
thought and an outspoken critic nationally of the Taliban, the Pakistani
military directors, and any cultural institution which violated people’s rights
and freedoms. He founded a school, which Malala attended, that provided equal
education for girls and boys.
Malala’s story weaves in current
events like the publication of Salmon Rusdie’s book The Satanic Verses, 9/11 in America, the War against Osama Bin Laden,
the Pakistani earthquake of 2005, the Islamization of Pakistan, etc. The reader
is enabled to see how those events, which affected the Pakistani people, have
reverberated around the world.
Before and since Malala was shot by
the Taliban for bringing “secularization into Islam” (in 2012 when she was 15),
she has had a global impact for equal education through her blog, her speeches,
her news interviews, her appearance at the United Nations, etc. She has been
called the “Pakistan’s Mother Theresa” and the “Daughter of the World” (I Am Malala, Malala Yousafzai, Little Brown and Company, 2013, pp.263,
310).
Malala and her family’s story gives
an important perspective on the issues engulfing the modern world through the rise
of militant Islam. I am Malala is an
important book for our time.
M.L.Codman-Wilson,
Ph.D., 2/26/14
Excerpts:
Her Upbringing
“For us girls, the doorway [to our school] was like a
magical entrance to our own special world” (p. 4). It was a school founded by Malala’s
father before she was born.
“When I was born people in our village commiserated with my
mother, and nobody congratulated my father…I was a girl [born] in a land where
rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away
behind a curtain. Their role in life is simply to prepare food and give birth
to children…I was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the greatest heroine of Afghanistan…In
Malalai, we Pashtuns have our very own Joan of Arc…[Pashtuns are proud people
of many tribes spit between Pakistan and Afghanistan]” (pp. 13, 14).
“I decided very early I would not be like…the older girls
who were expected to stay inside to cook and serve our brothers and fathers,…but
as I watched my brothers running across the roof flying their kites…I wondered
how free a daughter could ever be” (p. 26).
Malali’s father “thought there was nothing more important
than knowledge” (p. 41).
After he graduated from college he “started teaching at a well-known private
college. But the school was very strict and unimaginative. Neither the students
nor the teachers were supposed to have their own opinions…My father longed for the
freedom that would come with running his own school. He wanted to encourage
independent thought and hated the way the school he was in rewarded obedience
above open-mindedness and creativity” (pp.46-47). As an example of that open-mindedness, when Salmon
Rusdie’s book Satanic Verses was
banned by mullahs all over Pakistan and heated debates arose over it, “My
father also saw the book as offensive to Islam, but believed strongly in
freedom of speech. He thundered (in one debate) ‘Is Islam such a weak religion
that it cannot tolerate a book written against it? Not my Islam’” (p. 46).
As Malala began to think for herself, she was upset about
how girls were treated in Swat Valley. One custom called swara is when “a girl is given to another tribe to solve a feud…Why
should a girl’s life be ruined to settle a dispute she had nothing to do with?”
She also ‘shivered’ (p. 67) when her
father told her of the Taliban’s restrictions on women in Afghanistan. She
said, “I have problems with our Pashtunwali code – we’re supposed to take
revenge for wrongs done to us, but where does that end?” (p. 72).
When she discovered the poor children living on Rubbish
Mountain outside their city, she immediately wanted them to be given free education
in her father’s school. “Although the school was not really making money, [with
its 800 student total], my father gave away more than 100 free places…Giving
places to poor children didn’t just mean my father lost their fees. Some of the
richer parents took their children out of the school when they realized they
were sharing classrooms with sons and daughters of people who cleaned their
houses or stitched their clothes. They thought it was shameful for the children
to mix with those from poor families…I told my friends from school about the
rubbish dump children, and that we should help. [They refused.]…I knew the
government wouldn’t help, so I wrote a letter to God. ‘Dear God’ I wrote, ‘I
know you see everything, but there are so many things that maybe, sometimes,
things get missed. Particularly now with the bombings in Afghanistan. But I
don’t think you would be happy if you saw the children on my road living on a
rubbish dump. God, give me strength and courage, and make me perfect, because I
want to make this world perfect. Malala.’ The problem was I didn’t know how to
get it to him…We liked to put sacred texts in flowing waters. So I rolled it
up, tied it to a piece of wood, placed a dandelion on top and threw it into the
stream which flows into the Swat River. Surely God would find it there” (pp. 82, 83, 88, 89).
The Taliban:
“The Taliban became the enemy of fine arts, culture, and our
history. They destroyed the Buddhas and the arts; they took over the emerald
mine, and used the money to buy their ugly weapons…They took over the police
force, they took over 59 villages in our valley. They burned all the TV’s and
computers. ‘The battle between the Pakistani military and the Taliban came
right into the swat. Many were killed.’ Then the Taliban began blowing up the
girls’ schools in the area, and killing anyone who didn’t practice the religion
exactly as they had prescribed. They targeted the NGO’s and 'no one came to
defend or protect the people of Swat…The Taliban bulldozed both the Pashtun
values and the values of Islam.’ I started writing a daily diary of life under
the Taliban. It went out under the BBC. I said, “Education is education, we
should learn everything and then choose which path to follow. Education is neither
Western nor Eastern; it is human” (pp. 124, 137, 153,154, 162).
When Malala’s name was one of two women’s name for killing
targeted by the Taliban because she was ‘spreading secularism,’ her father said,
“Maybe we should stop our campaigning, Jani, and go into hibernation for a time.”
“How can we do that?” I replied, “You were the one who said, if we believe in
something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply even if we
are dead. We can’t disown our campaign!” (p. 223-225).
The Shooting:
“Malala was 15 when she was shot in 2012. The army brought
in a helicopter, and she was airlifted to Peshawar. As the helicopter flew over
Malala’s home, the women there to comfort her mother heard it and rushed up
onto the roof. ’It must be Malala,’ they said as they watched the helicopter
overhead. ‘My mother took her scarf off her head, an extremely rare gesture for
Pashtun women, and lifted it up to the sky, holding it in both hands as if it
were an offering. ‘God, I entrust her to YOU.’ We didn’t accept security guards
– You are our protector. She was under Your care and You are bound to bring her
back” (pp. 249- 250).
One British doctor from Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital just
happened to be in Pakistan at the time of the shooting. She was instrumental in
getting Malala moved to a safer hospital in Rawalpindi, but Malala’s situation started
to deteriorate dangerously. Just in time she was air-lifted to Dr. Fiona’s
hospital in Birmingham. Later, when the
doctor googled Malala on the internet, she said, “If anything had happened to
her it would have been blamed on the white women doctor. If she would have
died, I would have killed Pakistan’s Mother Theresa” (p. 263).
Malala’s case was known internationally. Abroad there was a
great outcry. But within Pakistan the reaction was mixed. Conspiracy theories
abounded. Some called her ‘an American stooge hobnobbing with U.S. military authority;’
another claimed ‘she was targeted because she criticized the growing of beards’…Some
people were saying her father had shot her, or that she wasn’t shot at all and
the family had staged it so that they could live overseas” (pp. 265, 298).
Malala’s Summary
Remarks:
“We human beings don’t realize how great God is. He has
given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us
with two lips to talk and express our feeling, two eyes which see a world of
color and beauties, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work
for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance and two ears to hear the
words of love. As I found with my ear (which was shattered through the gun
shot), no one knows how much power they have in each and every organ until they
lose one. I thank Allah for the hard working doctors, for my recovery and for
sending us to this world where we may struggle for our survival. Some people
choose good ways, and some choose bad ways. One person’s bullet hit me. It
swelled my brain, stole my hearing and cut the nerve of my left face in the
space of a second. And after that one second there were millions of people
praying for my life and talented doctors who gave me my body back. I was a good
girl. In my heart I had only the desire to help people. It wasn’t about the
awards or the money, I always prayed to God, ‘I want to help people and please
help me to do that’” (pp.
300, 301).
“I love my God. I thank my Allah. I talk to him all day. He
is the greatest. God has made me as tall as the sky…by giving me this height to
reach people, he’s also given me great responsibilities. Peace in every home,
every street, every village – this is my dream. Education for every boy and
every girl in the world. To sit down in a chair and read my books with all my
friends at school is my right. To see each and every human being with a smile
of happiness is my wish.
I am Malala, my world has changed but I have not” (p. 312).