Pray For Malala Yusafzai!

A fourteen year old girl, and she had the courage and the determination to take the dreaded Taliban head on. She started her crusade when she was just eleven and has been taking it forward unceasingly for the last three years. In one of its most cowardly and heinous crimes the Taliban attacked the school girl on October 9, 2012 shooting her in the head and in the neck in a definite bid to kill her. She is Malala Yusafzai from Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan.

Malala has been righteously fighting for the right to education and women’s rights. Feeling suffocated under the oppressive diktats of the Tehrik-i-Taliban in 2008 when the Taliban established its regime in Swat Malala wanted to express her anguish to the world. In was in early 2009 that she started writing in a blog for the BBC under a pseudonym and became an international voice. Later that year the Pakistan Army moved into Swat Valley and pushed the Taliban out. Malala and her family got displaced and separated, but afterwards they were reunited and Malala got back her school too. Malala decided then to disclose her real name in her blog writings thereby becoming a target for the Taliban who always justifies all its acts as necessary by its radical interpretations of the Islam. Intolerance for women along with hatred for India and the US has been the common sentiments of all the militant groups under the Taliban.

At the moment Malala is critical and struggling for life. One bullet has been extricated and the doctors say that next one or two days are going to be crucial.  On the auspicious Friday yesterday the whole of Pakistanheld prayers in the mosques for her recovery. Over fifty clerics of Pakistan have issued a Fatwa against the attackers and condemned the Taliban as misusing and misinterpreting the teachings of Islam. President Obama and the world have also condemned the crime as most cowardly and barbaric offering every possible help to Pakistan. Humanity’s enemy and the terror called Taliban said that they will attack Malala again if she survives.

Now is the time for all in Pakistanto come together condemning terror, intolerance and hatred and taking the country to a peaceful and harmonious future. People of India too must learn a few lessons from this as intolerance and divisive sentiments have been on the rise in India too. Taliban like forces of intolerance and oppression have been growing ominously in various pockets of India. Now is the time to say no to intolerance.

The crusading angel must survive and must carry on the movement against terror all across the globe creating in its wake millions of supporters for peace and harmony. Let us pray for the speedy recovery of Malala Yusafzai.