A terrible shooting, a young survivor and an iconic inspiration
Malala Yousafzai was returning home on a bus in the Swat district of Pakistan when a Taliban gunman opened fire, hitting her and two of her friends.
The 15-year-old was shot in the head in the attack on October 9, 2012, but thankfully survived.
Her crime, in the eyes of the religious zealots of the Taliban, had been to speak up in favour of girls’ education.
The Taliban, who had taken control of the Swat district, decreed that instead of attending school, girls should stay home and learn how to cook for their brothers and fathers.
Malala’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai was himself an education activist, and had set up schools which taught girls.
When Malala was old enough to begin to understand that at a certain age girls were prohibited from attending school, he inspired her to speak out.
In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym, Gul Makai, for the BBC Urdu service to detail her life during the Taliban’s occupation.
The following summer, the New York Times made a documentary about her life.
Malala rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on TV, and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu.
This made her a target for the Taliban, until that fateful day in 2012 when a gunman stopped her school bus and shot her at pointblank range, before fleeing. Malala escaped death by inches and was rushed to the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, unconscious and in a critical condition. She improved sufficiently to be airlifted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham six days later.
The bullet had entered just above her left eye and ran along her jaw, “grazing” her brain. Early the following year she underwent successful surgery on her skull and ear in a five-hour operation, in which a titanium plate was placed on her damaged skull and a cochlear implant fitted. The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support for her.
After she recovered, rather than retreating into anonymity and school exams, she stepped up to a role as a global ambassador for female education.
On her 16th birthday in July 2013 she gave an address to the UN, which declared the event “Malala Day”, and she appeared on the cover of that year’s Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World issue.
Then, in 2014 she became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala completed her secondary school education in Birmingham and graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 2020.
Earlier this year, on the eve of International Women’s Day, she wrote an essay on every woman’s right to chose to wear what she likes.
She wrote: “Years ago I spoke against the Taliban forcing women in my community to wear burqas – and last month I spoke against Indian authorities forcing girls to remove their hijabs at school.
“These aren’t contradictions – both cases involve objectifying women.
“If someone forces me to cover my head, I will protest. If someone forces me to remove my scarf, I will protest.”