On the 9th October
2012, 15 year-old Malala Yousafzai boarded a school bus in the Swat
Valley of north-west Pakistan - a region once dubbed as the "Switzerland of
Asia". Moments later, a masked gunman boarded, called out
Malala by name and shot her in the head, neck and shoulder.
Malala Yousafzai's story is one that has touched the hearts of millions
of people both at home and around the world. In 2009, shortly after the Taliban seized control of Swat, Malala began blogging for BBC
Urdu, documenting the growing oppression of life under the Taliban's
rulership of severe Sharia law. The
militants enacted various laws that included banning girls from going to school
because it was "un-Islamic". Thousands
of girls were suddenly deprived their basic freedom to learn
and hundreds of school and college students were mercilessly slaughtered
by the Taliban.
In today's world, roughly 80% of global
conflicts are caused by religious differences. The reason the Taliban
enforced such unjust measures - where refusal to comply often led to public
execution - is because of their warped understanding of their scriptures;
in this case, the Koran.
However, it is not only in areas over which extremist organisations rule
that infringement of one's religious or personal freedoms can be seen. Amidst the recent Winter Olympics in the Republic
of Korea, 25 year-old Ms. Ji-In Gu was suffocated to death for having
refused to renounce her religious beliefs and convert to beliefs ascribed to by
so-called 'Christian pastors' through the coercive conversion
programme. There remains within Korea alone 1200 victims of coercive conversion, yet the
government remains silent. The prohibition of
women's education is as much an abuse of human rights as is one's deprivation
of religious freedom. Everyone should have the right to freely exercise the
two.
On 28th March 2018, Malala returned to home soil
for the first time in five years, where she was welcomed with open arms by her family, friends and the majority of
Pakistanis. Having used her popularity to campaign for girls'
education on a global level, becoming the youngest person to win the Nobel
Peace Prize and, now 21, studying at Oxford University, she is keeping the
flame of hope alive in the face of a continuous domineering male mindset and an
example to us all.
For a more detailed account of Malala's story and return
https://goo.gl/XMPKp9
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