Friday, 12 October 2012

The Price Of Bravery

In the land that education forgot, where rumour, myth and mayhem rule the streets, a lone voice cries out ..... "give me an education .... a female is a human being" .... only for a the sharp crack of a bullet to silence that shout. Distantly the cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great), could be heard echoing from the surrounding hills ..... In a new low, even for a culture that seems to be able to plumb obscenely new depths of low every day, the lone voice that was silenced was that of teen-aged female peace and education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who first came to public attention in 2009, by writing a diary for BBC Urdu about life under Taliban militants who had taken control of the valley ....

Malala Yousafzai - Shot By Pakistan's Taliban

Her offence, apart from speaking publicly about her 'dream of a future Pakistan where education would prevail', was to be a woman who spoke up, where the men stayed quiet.

"No-one has the right to attack a school girl just because of political differences. The attackers give Islam a bad name" tweeted Pakistan's Geo News anchor Hamid Mir... well I've got news for you Mr TV news anchorman .... its already got a bad name, and it gets worse every day. Its laughable that anyone, let alone what passes for an 'educated fool', in the land of the pure, can describe the religious doctrine of the Taliban as 'political differences', and is as good a barometer as to why Pakistan is a failed state, as any other.

The architects of the mindset that breeds men like the gunman and his fellows (and there are millions in that and other lands where the same culture prevails, who would silently agree with the silencing a female voice), are not the recent leaders, but can be traced right back to the original decision to partition India into lands where the way of life would be Sharia inspired.

This already maladjusted state, was then easily pushed on to the course its now on by Gen Zia-ul-Haq .... now it will never be turned around. It would have to completely secularise in order to do so .... that's never going to happen as its state is currently constituted. Ironically, if this little girls wishes had prevailed (and lets be honest, if Pakistan spent its money on Book not bullets), then this country could have been successful despite its skewed nature, but its didn't, and now it never can ....

So what education there is outside of the middle-class enclaves is provided by the rote teaching of the Quran by religious zealots, who churn out men with the mind set of the gunmen by the millions every year .... the Pakistan state has belatedly offered a $100,000 reward for capture of the gunmen who shot the teenage activist but ..... killing a child's dream is all they can ever do.

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.