The Taliban say they would try again to murder Malala Yousafzai
I'd just finished writing my last post, about civility on the internet, when I saw something which puts that problem into perspective.
According to ABC news, The Pakistan Taliban's official spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told ABC News that if they could, the Taliban would try again to kill a schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, now sixteen, who they previously shot on a bus on her way to school.
Malala was 11 years old when she took a stand against the Taliban, who had issued an edict that all girls' schools should be closed. She began advocating the right to go to school, writing an anonymous blog for the BBC and appearing in a New York Times documentary. Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, ran a girls' school, and for this had been threatened with death by the Taliban.
Last year a Taleban gunman boarded the school bus which was taking Malala home, asked for her by name, and shot her three times in the head. Fortunately the bullets narrowly missed her brain.
Shahidullah Shahid told ABC News that "If we found her again then we would definitely try to kill her and will feel proud on her death."
He claimed that this was not for promoting education for girls but for attacking Islam.
The spectre of grown men trying to assassinate a little girl is grotesque beyond measure. Shahidullah Shahid and his fellow Islamist extremists have done far more damage to the good name of Islam than Malala could have done if everything they said about her were true, which it isn't.
According to ABC news, The Pakistan Taliban's official spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told ABC News that if they could, the Taliban would try again to kill a schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, now sixteen, who they previously shot on a bus on her way to school.
Malala was 11 years old when she took a stand against the Taliban, who had issued an edict that all girls' schools should be closed. She began advocating the right to go to school, writing an anonymous blog for the BBC and appearing in a New York Times documentary. Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, ran a girls' school, and for this had been threatened with death by the Taliban.
Last year a Taleban gunman boarded the school bus which was taking Malala home, asked for her by name, and shot her three times in the head. Fortunately the bullets narrowly missed her brain.
Shahidullah Shahid told ABC News that "If we found her again then we would definitely try to kill her and will feel proud on her death."
He claimed that this was not for promoting education for girls but for attacking Islam.
The spectre of grown men trying to assassinate a little girl is grotesque beyond measure. Shahidullah Shahid and his fellow Islamist extremists have done far more damage to the good name of Islam than Malala could have done if everything they said about her were true, which it isn't.
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