One Child, One Pen, One Book

"When you were attacked it was shocking for me. I wished it would never happened and I had advised you before."
"Taliban believe that you were intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish Islamic system in Swat and your writings were provocative. You have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword, so they attacked you for your sword, not for your books or school."
"At the end, I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your hometown, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah [community] and reveal the conspiracy of tiny elite who want to enslave the whole humanity for their evil agendas in the name of new world order."
Adnan Rasheed, Pakistan Taliban commander

They were, after all, tribally related. Malala Yousafzai and Adnan Rasheed; both Pashtun, Pakistani, of the Yousafzai tribe. He experienced the shock of brotherly feelings at the news that a sister had been morbidly wounded. So he sat down to pen a four-page letter to the young girl who was fortunate to have survived a deadly attack; where medical intervention in the international arena saved her life. And has given her the opportunity to further her academic education in Britain.

Where she will have the freedom to select whatever area of the sciences, the arts and humanities, law and justice, philosophy and history she wishes to become more familiar with. She has already familiarized herself with the very basics of human rights, heritage, female empowerment and social studies. How many young women of 17 have addressed the United Nations? How many seventeen-year-olds have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls, celebrated her 16th birthday on Friday by demanding, in her first public speech since the attack, that world leaders provide free compulsory schooling for every child. (AP)

 

How many girls and young women have urged their peers to settle for nothing less than their own educated futures and that of others in a collective determination to find their way and assume their rightful place in the world? Now, a senior figure in the Pakistan Taliban, the very group that planned for her death because of her irritation factor in their narrative of withholding the power of education from girls and women, professes patience for her misguided and errant ways, urging a return to the study of the Koran, instead.

That instead is what Malala Yousafzai rebelled against. It was her informed choice as the child of mind-liberated parents, to study language, history, mathematics, science and whatever else struck her interest. As a Muslim, she could study the Koran in a separate part of her busy lifestyle. "One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution", she chanted in a poetic essay aimed at world leaders.