What makes an entire nation, even the entire world rally around a person?<\/p>\n
It takes a hero.\u00a0 Not because they think of themselves as a hero, but because they find the courage to stand up against something that makes no sense to them.\u00a0 In this case, Malala Yousufzai, a fourteen year old Pakistani girl making good on a personal commitment to get an education, no matter what the cost.\u00a0 The rest of the world looks at their actions, listens to their words, and aspires to be like them.<\/p>\n
It also takes a villain performing a cowardly, hateful and inhumane act.\u00a0 It takes a group, like the Taliban, that through some twisted logic believes itself to be right, and superior to all creation.\u00a0 It takes a few of these cowards to walk into a school bus, identify our hero, and shoot her in the head.<\/p>\n
But our hero survives.\u00a0 If this is not divine intervention, what is?<\/p>\n
Over the last few weeks, since this heinous act by the Taliban, all sides of the political spectrum in Pakistan has spoken and acted in unison against this heinous act.\u00a0 Talk about a rainbow coalition.\u00a0 Then the support has spread outside the boundaries of Pakistan.\u00a0 The US, the UN, the EU and other countries and organizations have come together in support of Malala Yousufzai and against the Taliban.<\/p>\n
This little girl, now fourteen, was eleven when she was blogging against the Taliban\u2019s policies \u2013 atrocious then, and atrocious now \u2013 against educating women.<\/p>\n
For her courage, last year she became the first-ever recipient of the Pakistan national peace award.\u00a0\u00a0 In addition, KidsRights Foundation, an advocacy group, also nominated her for the International Children\u2019s Peace Prize.<\/p>\n
She was becoming an international symbol of hope, a peaceful and powerful young voice against the insanity of the Taliban mind.\u00a0 So they did what their warped logic dictated.<\/p>\n
Now, further demonstrating their utter lack of humanity, they have renewed their vow to kill Malala, whose precious life a community of doctors in Pakistan and the UK are trying to save, and for whom entire nations are holding prayers.<\/p>\n
What do you say to people whose minds function like this?\u00a0 Is it even worth sitting down with them?<\/p>\n
One can only hope that the news reports about the Pakistani government catching hundreds of the people involved in this tragedy are actually true, and that the responsible people will actually be brought to justice.<\/p>\n
One can even try to find the silver lining in this difficult chapter of the life of this precocious fourteen year old girl, and pray that this be the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back, causing the Muslim world wakes up to openly acknowledge that the religion the Taliban claim to profess has nothing to do with Islam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What makes an entire nation, even the entire world rally around a person? It takes a hero.\u00a0 Not because they think of themselves as a hero, but because they find the courage to stand up against something that makes no sense to them.\u00a0 In this case, Malala Yousufzai, a fourteen year old Pakistani girl making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zulfiqarblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}