In this day and age, most teenage girls don’t endanger their lives when they say “I want to get my education, and I want to become a doctor.” But Malala Yousafzai, 14, knew she was putting her life on the line when she said it. Today, she is at the Combined Military Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, under an induced coma, fighting to recover from a bullet wound near her spine.

On Oct. 9, the van in which Malala and some of her classmates were returning home from school was attacked by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) followers who shot her and another girl after identifying them. The dastardly act has invited global condemnation and united the Pakistani public in a way not seen in recent times. Not only have the president and prime minister condemned the act, leaders of all political parties, including Islamic parties and scholars, have come out against it.

Pakistani-Americans note that the protests are not the garden-variety unruly mobs of incensed citizens burning buses and shops and monuments either because they are against America or against some perceived insult to Islam; rather people are registering their opposition to terrorism through meetings in small groups, vigils, speaking out on talk shows and generally keeping the peace, like most countries run by democratically elected leaders. The regional governor, Masood Kausar, said authorities had identified the attackers and a Rs. 10 million bounty had been placed on their heads, Reuters reported.

“The security agencies are closely working with each other and they have a lot of information about the perpetrators. We hope our security agencies will soon capture them and bring to justice,” Kausar was quoted as saying.
From the age of 11, after the Taliban took over Pakistan’s Swat Valley in 2007 and closed down girls’ schools until they were driven out in 2009, Malala kept a diary and blogged for the BBC about life under the Taliban and beyond her hometown of Mingora in the idyllic Swat Valley.

Attack Condemned
President Obama called it “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic” as well as “barbaric” and “cowardly” and offered assistance in the form of air ambulance and medical treatment, if needed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking coincidentally at an event for a group of visiting Girl Scouts to mark the first International Day of the Girl Child on Oct. 10, started her speech with Malala in mind. The girl who spoke out for the rights of girls to get an education, Clinton said, was now in hospital, attacked and shot by extremists “who don’t want girls to have an education and don’t want girls to speak for themselves and don’t want girls to become leaders, who are, for a variety of reasons, threatened by that kind of empowerment.”

In Pakistan, it is ironic that the spokesman for the banned TTP, Ehsanullah Ehsan, used his democratic right to talk to media by phone and express his group’s “rationale” for killing Malala, but won’t let Malala say what she wants to by the same token.

“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Ehsan is quoted saying in The Lahore Times, and threatened that if she survived this attack, they would try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson,” he added for effect. In a note sent to Pakistani media, Ehsan argues that Malala was against the Shariah and led a campaign against it, so even if she was a child and a female, TTP was bound by that same Shariah to kill her (See Box of TTP letter).

Pakistani leaders have condemned the attack saying the attackers were neither Muslims nor Pakistanis. The newspaper, The News, in an editorial movingly said, “Malala Yousafzai is in critical condition today, and so is Pakistan. ... We are infected with the cancer of extremism, and unless it is cut out we will slide ever further into the bestiality that this latest atrocity exemplifies.”

Western media has noted how clergy in Pakistan has remained largely silent on the incident. But Shahid Ahmed Khan, a Democratic political activist in Boston and former finance director for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign, said he was heartened by some of the statements by religious leaders like the Jamaat-e-Islami party’s Munawar Hasan and Liaqat Baloch, who, according to The Lahore Times, “also strongly condemned” the attack.

Fifty Muslim scholars issued a fatwa on the Taliban, the Dawn reported. The Taliban were misguided and their mindset was driven by ignorance, said the fatwa issued by the Sunni Ittehad Council on Oct. 11.

“Islam does not stop women from acquiring education and by attacking Malala the Taliban have crossed the limits of Islam,” the fatwa said. “Prophet Muhammad had regarded the sanctity of Muslim’s life and property more important than the sanctity of the Kaaba. ... Murder of one innocent human being is equivalent to murder of entire humanity.”
But in the same breath, the Islamic scholars added that United States was the enemy of Islam and Pakistan; any kind of cooperation with the U.S. was not in compliance with the Shariah, Dawn reported.

“The anti-American sentiment is pretty much everywhere I go,” Khan told News India Times about what he sees on trips to his home country. “It is unbelievable how much the United States is doing for Pakistan – projects in energy, infrastructure and education. But the sentiment on the street is different even though the lines for visas at the American Embassy are so long.”

Nawaz Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), condemned the attack and called Malala the pride of the country and its “Ambassador of Peace” and offered to pay for her medical expenses abroad if needed, Lahore Times reported.

A Family’s Fears
A CNN report said Malala’s family had secured the necessary paperwork to take her to the United Kingdom or the United Arab Emirates for further medical treatment. The chief minister of Pakistani Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, referred to Malala as a “daughter” and said criminals behind the attack could neither be Muslims nor Pakistanis, Lahore Times said.
Pakistani radio stations and newspapers are flooded with calls and public reaction against the terrorist attack on a child, according to various newspaper reports. Twitter was abuzz, blogs on Malala proliferated and requests to make Malala your photo on Facebook for a day soared. Some wrote tongue-in-cheek letters to Malala hoping she would read them when she awakes. In an Oct 11 blog post on Dawn, titled “A Letter to Malala,” Sheikh Peer Karancheewala writes, “Today, our brave brothers are very happy as this is the greatest victory that they have won since Russia lost in Afghanistan. They told me that you are learning to read and write, which was a great threat to Islam and that you are working to promote secular ideology.”

Malala’s cousin, Azizulhassan Yousafzai, interviewed on the Canadian radio program “As it Happens,” revealed that the two heroes Malala looks up to are her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, and Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister who was assassinated. Ziauddin Yousafzai, who ran a girls’ school, is quoted saying in the Calgary Herald that the Taliban had threatened Malala many times but he had refused the protection of security forces because, “The tradition here does not allow a female to have men close by,” and that his daughter’s freedom and desire to learn would have been curbed. “I never imagined that this could happen because Malala is a young innocent girl,” he told Calgary Herald. “She would frequently say ‘I am satisfied. I am doing good work for my people so nobody can do anything to me.’ “

Ahmed Shah, chairman of the Swat Private Schools Association told the Herald that Malala planned to start a fund for poor girls so they could return to school. Her classmate Brekhna Rahim told the paper that Malala wanted to have enough money and build schools in every village for girls in Swat.

Azizulhassan Yousafzai was as much in a quandary as to what the family will do once Malala leaves hospital. “If she survives, I assure you they will attack again,” he told “As it Happens.” “They want to kill our whole family – her father, her brother, her mother. The Taliban are like a crazy bull – they can never be stopped.”

Show of Support
“The great thing is that the nation is together,” Shahid Ahmed Khan said. “The religious community is talking as well. I saw a lot of statements from muftis and others.” He said he was expecting huge rallies in Pakistan but instead there are small meetings probably because any crowded place like a mosque or other site might attract bomb attacks. “These people (militants) are not afraid of killing inside mosques. People are afraid to go to such religious areas.”

Globally, Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis have been stirred by this event. At a concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, Madonna dedicated her song “Human Nature” to Malala, The Hollywood Reporter wrote. In a shout-out to the 18,000 strong audience, the singer said it was time for a “serious chat.”

“This made me cry -- the 14-year-old schoolgirl who wrote a blog about going to school. The Taliban stopped her bus and shot her. Do you realize how sick that is?” Madonna is quoted as saying in the Hollywood Reporter.

Pakistani-Canadian Murtaza Haider in an Oct. 11 blog post on Dawn, called Malala fearless. He wrote, “While I write to express my disgust with the extremists from the safe confines of a Canadian suburb, Malala and her father stood their ground in Mingora even when the city fell to the Taliban. And while the Taliban destroyed girls’ schools in the Swat region, Malala, then only 11 years old, emerged as the most articulate and forceful voice for education in Pakistan.”
However, Wasiullah Khan, chancellor of East West University in Chicago, places the blame for violence in the region to foreign interference. Founded in 1980, East West University is a private, non-profit college with 700-1,000 students enrolled. He told News India Times that he condemns Malala’s shooting but believes the presence of foreign troops in the region leads to such incidents.

He contends such incidents did not occur before Russian involvement in Afghanistan and the later American and NATO presence there. Also, he believes every religion has a “small fringe” of people against modernity like the Amish in the U.S., Hindu fundamentalists, or orthodox Christians. “They don’t want any modernization. Once NATO forces leave, such incidents will stop,” he said.

Going into Afghanistan and Iraq was unwise Wasi Khan, a Republican, who also belongs to Malala’s large Yousafzai tribe but dropped his long and difficult-to-pronounce name in America, told News India Times. “We Americans never learn, even from the Vietnam experience. Why sacrifice so many American lives?” he questions. “We have no business ‘reforming’ people there. The Taliban are resisting all foreigners and their influence.” And while many Pakistanis may be against the attack on Malala, there are many who are against U.S. drone attacks.

Shahid Ahmed Khan and other South Asian-Americans were scheduled to meet in Boston to discuss what, if anything, they could do to help the Yousafzai family, but he admitted he was not sure what they could do. “It is always a question mark when you offer asylum. Is it the person, the immediate family, or the uncles and aunts as well,” he said. On the official level, offering asylum to Malala and her family is a conundrum for Washington, which is in the untenable position of not appearing too helpful or things may backfire.

Tipping Point
Asra Nomani, an Indian-American journalist, some of whose relatives moved to Pakistan after India’s partition in 1947, hopes Malala’s shooting will be the tipping point for Pakistanis wanting to take their country back.

“Today, 65 years after Pakistan’s birth, the shots fired by Pakistani militants against Malala reveal a very clear truth: Pakistan is in a civil war. The nation has to make a choice whether it is going to crush the militants and ideologues that justify the shooting of a schoolgirl — or allow them to destroy its future, symbolized by Malala,” Nomani writes in The Daily Beast.

Responding to questions from News India Times, Nomani, whose close friend and fellow journalist Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was brutally assassinated in Pakistan, says she thinks this can be the tipping point, and she hopes it will be.

“The assassination of a young girl on a school bus just outrages the sensibilities of any human being with common sense. The ordinary Pakistani has to reject the religious indoctrination that has been a part of that society since the 1977 dictatorship of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq,” Nomani said, referring to a former president of the country.

“The ordinary Pakistani has to use common sense to defeat the strict, rigid, inhumane interpretation put forward by the Wahabi and Deobandi interpretation of Islam,” she exhorted, referring to the strain of Islam that grew in a region of India. “It’s when we reject this interpretation of Islam that we will celebrate the human dignity of all people -- women, Shias, minorities, ourselves -- and improve our own lives.”

Many Pakistanis may hold the same beliefs but are unable to control the environment now surrounding them. “The government of Pakistan has got to stop supporting the militants. It’s that plain and simple. The culture of denial has got to end. And then I think we can also have peace in South Asia,” Nomani said.