Speaking on the day designated Malala Day by the United Nations, the teenager said Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, had promised that for the first time he would meet parents of the missing students, who have been held in captivity by Boko Haram since April. Malala turned 17 last week, and celebrated her birthday with some of the girls who escaped the mass abduction in Chibok, a village in the militants’ heartland of Borno state.
Boko Haram, whose contempt for western cultural influences is reflected in its name – Hausa for “Western education is forbidden” – is a growing threat to Nigeria as a whole, beyond its north-eastern enclave. In a video released this weekend, the militants’ leader, Abubakar Shekau, claimed responsibility for a 25 June double bomb blast in a Lagos fuel depot which, if confirmed, would be the first time the sect has hit the coastal hub a thousand miles to the south-west.
Shortly after boarding her school bus in 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by aTaliban gunman. In a parallel atrocity, Nigeria’s Taliban-inspired insurgents kidnapped more than 300 teenaged girls during a night-time attack on their dormitory in April. The Chibok school had opened specially to allow them to take their exams, as many in the state had closed after Boko Haram had torched dozens of others.
In a speech that was sometimes interrupted by outbursts of applause, Malala also touched upon India’s rape crisis, and children forced out of the school on both sides of the conflict in Gaza and Syria. She later said it was “unfortunate” that Nigeria spent only 1.5% of its annual budget on education. “Education is the best weapon through which we can fight poverty, ignorance and terrorism,” she added.
The comments provoked a presidential spokesman to defend the Jonathan administration, saying it had spent more than any other on education.
“Dear brothers and sisters, my message to the honourable President Mr Goodluck Jonathan is that he should realise that people have elected him and it is his responsibility to listen to his people who are asking ‘bring back our girls’,” Malala said, prompting a standing ovation.
Two senior security officials and a diplomat told the Guardian that they believed the Lagos blast was likely from a car bomb and a suicide bomber. But the female suicide bomber appeared to have botched the attempt, which caused no casualties. Police officials said it was caused by an accident in the crowded fuel depot, which has previously recorded explosions.
“A bomb went off in Lagos. I ordered [the bomber] who went and detonated it,” Shekau said in the video, which shows him surrounded by gunmen.
Officials believe Boko Haram has been trying for some time to break out of its northern enclaves, but has been limited by a lack of resources and supporters in the south, though generations of Muslims and Christians have migrated there for economic opportunities.
“The idea that they only want to revive a northern, Islamic enclave is false. They don’t see themselves as being geographically confined to the north – this is an ideological battle to them and it’s not dictated by geography,” a security official said.
Security sources have long pointed to the group’s inability to gain a foothold in the south, and some believe the Lagos bomb may have been the work of a group or individual inspired by Boko Haram. Shekau has been known to claim responsibility for attacks suspected to be the work of another Islamist group or a criminal gang, and in the video he gets the name of the Lagos state governor wrong.
Origional Post here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/14/mamala-yousafzai-support-nigerian-girls-abducted-boko-haram
Has Malala Become a Puppet of the West?
Humaira Awais Shadid, a leading campaigner for women’s rights in Pakistan, argues that Malala Yousafzai is being used by the West to criticize Islam.
One of Pakistan’s leading women’s rights campaigners says Malala Yousafzai is a victim of the West.
Humaira Awais Shahid, a former politician, Harvard fellow, and newspaper editor, said the schoolgirl has been badly damaged by Britain and America, who are taking advantage of her survival story. Malala is now a hate-figure in certain quarters in Pakistan while some secular Westerners have used her traumatic experience in the Swat Valley as an avenue to criticize Islam.
“The myth that the West projects as her saviour is something that hurt Malala’s case; it took away from the story and damaged the victim,” Shahid told The Daily Beast.
The teenager was shot in the head by Taliban fighters who objected to her campaign to improve girls’ education in northern Pakistan. She was flown to Britain for medical treatment and subsequently became a spokeswoman for the plight of poorly educated women, addressing the United Nations and being awarded the European Parliament’s highest honour for human rights campaigners.
As she rose to prominence, many in Pakistan portrayed Malala as an American stooge who was interfering in domestic politics and criticizing conservative Islamic traditions. “Malala has been accused of being more loyal to the West,” Shahid said. “Stuck in this war of what Pakistan is, and what the West wants to project of Pakistan, Malala suffers … The way the West projects it, it damages the victim.”
The former Punjabi legislator said Malala was a devout Muslim with no interest in promoting a secular democracy in Pakistan. “The West wants to gain from Malala’s real story, an agenda that suits them or the policies they want,” she said. “It’s like a mass media frenzy—and then you see the whole question of secularization. This is not the issue of Pakistan—our constitution starts with the name of almighty, Allah, talks about in accordance with the scriptures and the principles of Islam—so what are you talking about?”
For Shahid, whose memoir, Devotion and Defiance,was published last month, there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the West about the wishes of Pakistani women. Yes, they want better access to education, more protection from violence and the freedom to lead independent lives. But that does not mean rejecting Islam’s central role in the country’s culture—instead, they want a generation of conservative, neo-feudal leaders, who are twisting the words of the Koran, to be cast out of the political mainstream.
“Our folklore, our old traditions, our music, our art, our poetry is all about celebration of the creator and creation—our love is a root to love of the creator, this is very different to your societies,” she said. “Our issue is injustice; our issue is poverty; our issue is corrupt governments; our issue is a lack of accountability. Please help us on that. Our issue is not secularization.”
Shahid argues that it’s ironic for Islam to get the blame when even the Prophet Mohammad’s wife was a trader and equal partner—“she was the one who proposed!” She said ambitious conservative political leaders had used a grotesque version of Islam to aid their careers. “They have become the emblem of Islamic Puritanism—they have reduced Islam to the sexual morality of women; 70 percent of Sharia is about money, economic matters—they have made it 70 percent about women.”
On the subject of puritanical approaches, Shahid raises the Salem witch hunts in the U.S.—“there hasn’t been a more tragic event in the history of women”—and cites modern American crime statistics to suggest that all societies struggle with violence against women. “One in every five women in America is sexually assaulted,” she said. “And let’s not forget that O.J. Simpson got away. I’m talking about the champion of human rights, I’m talking about a judicial system that’s much better than ours, and O.J. Simpson got away.”
Sitting in London in a vivid purple headscarf, Shahid recoiled as she recounted her personal experience of Pakistan’s endemic violence against women. As a reporter for a newspaper in Punjab, she covered dozens of cases of acid attacks and domestic violence. After one incident in which a woman had been catastrophically injured in a stove burning, Shahid confronted the family responsible around the hospital bed. They claimed it was an accident and the victim was too horrifically burned to speak. Shahid quietly asked her to lift a finger if foul play had been at work. Slowly a single digit was raised.
“She was in so much pain, but she was thinking about her children. The helplessness in her face,” Shahid said. “There were so many that were dying of stove burns at the time.”
These horrific domestic murders appeared to have risen sharply in recent decades as dowries, a custom borrowed from India, became more prevalent in Pakistan. Once the dowry has been cashed, there is no financial reason to keep the wife around. Indeed it may be possible to secure another.
“The unfortunate part is that Islam does not allow dowries—this is coming from Hindu culture. It should be totally banned,” she said. “The woman is a commodity to make money—the dowry becomes a business transaction.”
Reflecting mournfully, she said, “How could I not do what I do?”
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
Somebody definitely is behind Malala. All that she is saying and doing cannot be simply from a 17 year old young lady.