Malala Yousafzai: The Girl that Changed Pakistan
Malala Yousafzai drew the world’s attention when she was shot by Taliban militants on Oct. 9 on a school bus in northwestern Pakistan for speaking up for girls’ education.
The Islamist group said it targeted her because she promoted girls’ education and “Western thinking” and criticized the militant group’s behavior when it took over the scenic Swat Valley where she lived. The shooting sparked outrage in Pakistan and many other countries, and her story has captured global attention for the struggle for women’s rights in her homeland.In the year since that fateful day, Malala has undergone a recovery that is nothing short of miraculous. The bullet narrowly missed her brain, and doctors at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, where she was brought in a medically induced coma six days after the attack, marveled that she was able to stand within a week of her arrival.
Malala underwent multiple surgeries and spent nearly three months in the hospital (which specializes in treating wounded soldiers), though mercifully it was found she had suffered no major permanent neurological damage. The ordeal did, however, solidify her will:
“It feels like this life is not my life. It’s a second life. People have prayed to God to spare me and I was spared for a reason-to use my life for helping people.”
On 12 October 2012, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against the Taliban gunmen who tried to kill Malala Yousafzai. Islamic scholars from the Sunni Ittehad Council publicly denounced attempts by the Pakistani Taliban to mount religious justifications for the shooting of Malala Yousafzai and two of her classmates.
