Malala Yousafzai : Teen Warrior Princess
Over the last couple of months, one name in particular that has come to be plastered across various magazine articles, televised news programmes and, most notably, the TIME magazine Person Of The Year cover, is that of Malala Yousafzai. And understandably so.
Who is Malala Yousafzai? She is a girl who will turn sixteen this July. She is a sophomore at her school in Mingora, Pakistan. She is an ordinary teenager. Only she isn’t.
To summarise all that one can learn about her from newspaper articles and the internet, Malala Yousafzai is a 15-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist, hailing from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In January 2009, Malala sent the first entry of her blog documenting her life under Taliban rule to BBC Urdu. This blog caused her to rise to a level of local as well as international fame. However, Malala’s passion for educational rights was not particularly shared by a certain dominant Islamic organisation. On the 9th of October, 2012, an assassination attempt by the Taliban was made on Malala’s life while she was returning home from a school exam in a makeshift school bus. The masked Taliban gunman shouted “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all”. On being identified, Malala was shot. The bullet that hit her went through her head, neck, and ended in her shoulder. Malala had been undergoing recovery treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in the United Kingdom for the past four months and was recently released.
From the astonishingly tender age of two and a half years, Malala grew to be increasingly surrounded by elements of education. By this time, she was already sitting in a classroom full of 10-year-olds, never exactly following what was happening, but never getting bored either. The issue of TIME magazine in which Malala was declared to be one out of five people shortlisted for Person of the Year, covered a story about her in which one of her schoolteachers stated that “she was an ordinary girl with extraordinary abilities, but she never had a feeling of being special.” It comes as no surprise, then, that a girl with so strong a sense of the need for education combined with such genuine humility, has today been glorified as a revolutionary figure in the dimension of girls’ education.
Today, Malala Yousafzai’s name stands as a symbol of girls’ rights, women empowerment and the irreplaceable requirement for education. Personally, I perceive her as a beacon of firm hope in society today. I ask you, how many 15-year-old girls – or girls of any age, for that matter – would be willing to battle the Herculean odds of their environment so daringly and proceed to stand for what they truly believe in? Not many, admittedly. In Malala’s case, we are talking about doing something as defiant as refusing to back down to a deadly organisation, to awaken people from their assumption that young girls could simply be deprived of a right as basic as that to education. At her age, she encompasses a combination of qualities that proves to be a rarity even among mature adults – depth, vision, passion, boldness, determination.
My insight apart, the whole world has been shaken by the breath-of-fresh-air phenomenon that is Malala Yousafzai. She has garnered attention from some of the world’s most prominent leaders – President Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Laura Bush, Gordon Brown and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who has announced that 10 November will be celebrated as Malala Day. She has also caught the eye of celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie who firmly believe in the goal that she is trying to accomplish – a guarantee of education as a fundamental right to all girls. She is the youngest person in history to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. There are dozens of online petitions that encourage people to lend their signature to a formal letter issued to the Nobel Prize committee, requesting that Malala be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Such is the strength of the communal admiration among various groups of people towards Malala Yousafzai.
This girl is a true pioneer in every sense of the term. She possesses a kind of strength that is way beyond her years. She has transcended every boundary set up in her nationwide radius to impart her vision and drive to girls and women all over the world. She is a truly brilliant example to look up to, appreciate and emulate. I could say that there need to be more of her kind and that she should serve as a guiding light to all young girls and women today, but I don’t think such statements would do justice to the REAL need of the hour – people who are inspired by her need to stand up and be their own Malalas.
To quote TIME magazine, “In trying and failing to kill Malala, the Taliban appear to have made a crucial mistake. They wanted to silence her. Instead, they amplified her voice.”
Always in favour of ending any piece of writing on a note of irony, Malala’s first name literally means “grief-stricken”. If anything, her name has only struck the world with wonder
Over the last couple of months, one name in particular that has come to be plastered across various magazine articles, televised news programmes and, most notably, the TIME magazine Person Of The Year cover, is that of Malala Yousafzai. And understandably so.
Who is Malala Yousafzai? She is a girl who will turn sixteen this July. She is a sophomore at her school in Mingora, Pakistan. She is an ordinary teenager. Only she isn’t.
To summarise all that one can learn about her from newspaper articles and the internet, Malala Yousafzai is a 15-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist, hailing from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In January 2009, Malala sent the first entry of her blog documenting her life under Taliban rule to BBC Urdu. This blog caused her to rise to a level of local as well as international fame. However, Malala’s passion for educational rights was not particularly shared by a certain dominant Islamic organisation. On the 9th of October, 2012, an assassination attempt by the Taliban was made on Malala’s life while she was returning home from a school exam in a makeshift school bus. The masked Taliban gunman shouted “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all”. On being identified, Malala was shot. The bullet that hit her went through her head, neck, and ended in her shoulder. Malala had been undergoing recovery treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in the United Kingdom for the past four months and was recently released.
From the astonishingly tender age of two and a half years, Malala grew to be increasingly surrounded by elements of education. By this time, she was already sitting in a classroom full of 10-year-olds, never exactly following what was happening, but never getting bored either. The issue of TIME magazine in which Malala was declared to be one out of five people shortlisted for Person of the Year, covered a story about her in which one of her schoolteachers stated that “she was an ordinary girl with extraordinary abilities, but she never had a feeling of being special.” It comes as no surprise, then, that a girl with so strong a sense of the need for education combined with such genuine humility, has today been glorified as a revolutionary figure in the dimension of girls’ education.
Today, Malala Yousafzai’s name stands as a symbol of girls’ rights, women empowerment and the irreplaceable requirement for education. Personally, I perceive her as a beacon of firm hope in society today. I ask you, how many 15-year-old girls – or girls of any age, for that matter – would be willing to battle the Herculean odds of their environment so daringly and proceed to stand for what they truly believe in? Not many, admittedly. In Malala’s case, we are talking about doing something as defiant as refusing to back down to a deadly organisation, to awaken people from their assumption that young girls could simply be deprived of a right as basic as that to education. At her age, she encompasses a combination of qualities that proves to be a rarity even among mature adults – depth, vision, passion, boldness, determination.
My insight apart, the whole world has been shaken by the breath-of-fresh-air phenomenon that is Malala Yousafzai. She has garnered attention from some of the world’s most prominent leaders – President Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Laura Bush, Gordon Brown and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who has announced that 10 November will be celebrated as Malala Day. She has also caught the eye of celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie who firmly believe in the goal that she is trying to accomplish – a guarantee of education as a fundamental right to all girls. She is the youngest person in history to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. There are dozens of online petitions that encourage people to lend their signature to a formal letter issued to the Nobel Prize committee, requesting that Malala be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Such is the strength of the communal admiration among various groups of people towards Malala Yousafzai.
This girl is a true pioneer in every sense of the term. She possesses a kind of strength that is way beyond her years. She has transcended every boundary set up in her nationwide radius to impart her vision and drive to girls and women all over the world. She is a truly brilliant example to look up to, appreciate and emulate. I could say that there need to be more of her kind and that she should serve as a guiding light to all young girls and women today, but I don’t think such statements would do justice to the REAL need of the hour – people who are inspired by her need to stand up and be their own Malalas.
To quote TIME magazine, “In trying and failing to kill Malala, the Taliban appear to have made a crucial mistake. They wanted to silence her. Instead, they amplified her voice.”
Always in favour of ending any piece of writing on a note of irony, Malala’s first name literally means “grief-stricken”. If anything, her name has only struck the world with wonder
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