Malala needs no Nobel peace prize

‘WHO IS Malala?’’ asked the Taliban gunman who boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in October 2012.

Today the question would be redundant. The whole world knows who Malala Yousafzai is. She is the schoolgirl he shot at point blank range for daring to challenge the attempt by Muslim extremists to deny girls in the valley near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border an education. Seldom, if ever, has an attempt to silence a critic backfired so badly.

Malala, then 15 years old, now 16, survived the shooting and went from being a hero to her peers in Pakistan to being a hero to the world.

Her book, I am Malala, has just been published; she is the youngest person ever to be nominated for the Nobel peace prize; she has been honoured by the European Union; she has addressed the United Nations; and she has been courted by prime ministers and presidents.

Oddly, the Nobel peace prize committee decided last week not to award her its prize. In what ranks as one of its stranger decisions, it gave the honour instead to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the body responsible for overseeing the international convention on chemical weapons. It is a worthy recipient whose inspectors are presently cataloguing Syria’s chemical weapons in the midst of a civil war. But it is hard to see how the efforts of paid professionals outshine those of a teenage girl who, through an online diary, daily challenged the misogynists attempting to plunge her country back into the Middle Ages.

However, Malala has no need of awards to raise her profile. She has platforms aplenty.

The message she is delivering from them is compelling:

Education is a universal right; Girls should not be denied the opportunity to achieve their potential simply because of their gender.

More impressive still is Malala’s demeanour. Despite undergoing a terrifying attempt on her life, despite the continuing threats from the Taliban, despite the fame and adulation that have subsequently come her way, she remains unbowed, unbroken and unaffected. She is the picture of normal – a teenage girl excited about the possibilities ahead.

Most impressive of all is the absence of bitterness. Asked by Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, what she thought when she first learned of Taliban threats to her life, she said her initial plan if ‘‘the Talib’’ – as she personifies the Taliban – came to kill her was to ‘‘take a shoe and hit him’’.

But then she reconsidered: ‘‘If you hit a Talib with a shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that harshly, you must fight others through peace and through dialogue and education.’’

None of the 125 past winners of the Nobel peace prize could have put it better.

Malala Yousafzai’s lustre is not diminished by being overlooked for the prize.

The prize’s lustre is reduced by not having her on its honour roll.