We Are All Malala: World Rallies in Support of Courageous Wounded Pakistani Schoolgirl

Malala Yousafza,

the 14-year-old girl shot in the head yesterday by cowardly Taliban gunmen who attacked a bus filled with school girls in Peshawar, has become an international symbol of freedom for women and girls and the struggle against brutality and repression. Already a well-known activist in development and civil rights circles because of her bravery in opposing the Taliban in her native Pakistan as young but powerful voice for liberalism and the education of girls, Yousafzai was targeted for her leadership. The Taliban openly celebrated the nearly fatal attack on Malala, who remains in critical condition after surgery. Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan “confirmed by phone Tuesday that Ms. Yousafzai had been the target, calling her crusade for education rights an ‘obscenity,’” according to The New York Times. “She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Mr. Ehsan said, telling The Times that if she survived, militants would certainly try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson.” It’s a lesson alright – a lesson in courage and moral bravery, and a lesson in how an act of brutality can mobilize people tired of repression and brutality cloaked in religion and culture. Malala stood for education. She stood for progress and the advancement of her people. She stood for an ideal that values women and girls, and their equal place in human society. And though gravely wounded, she stands for those ideals today. Some days, Twitter can seem insubstantial and a simple waste of time. But in the reaction to the violence of men who would shoot a schoolgirl to ensure their own miserly and backward societal power, Twitter leaves a real document today. Here then, a piece of that document, proof that though she lies unconscious in a Peshawar hospital, Malali – named for a mythic Pashtun girl – is far more powerful than the thuggish man who shot her in a school bus.