UPDATE 2: Here’s the link of the extended interview for Canada, though it won’t work in the U.S.
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UPDATE 1: Someone named “Iggy” tried to leave this comment below:
Sorry, I can’t take her seriously with that nasty headscarf she’s wearing, a symbol of subjugation, superstition and ignorance.
I deplore this kind of behavior by atheists: it implies that religious people can’t be “taken seriously” in anything they say or do, simply because they’re religious. (And we don’t know how religious Malala really is, anyway.)
Yes, religion is superstition, but to not take Malala’s actions seriously (which were, of course, designed to fight religious superstition), or to refuse to admire her courage, simply because she wears a headscarf or has Muslim beliefs, is a form of contrarianism that is both odious and counterproductive. If anything reduces the effectiveness of atheists, it is dumb comments like the above.
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Over at the Daily Show website, Jon Stewart has a three-part interview with 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai. You’ll remember her as the courageous Pakistani girl who, a year ago today, was shot by the Taliban as she was coming home from school—an activity prohibited for females by the Taliban. Critically wounded in the head and neck, Malala managed to survive and continues to tell her story, which you can read in a new book. I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. The title is a bit infelicitious, but her story is amazing: she blogged for the BBC before she was shot, for instance, and received death threats that she ignored.
The interview is in three parts, totaling roughly 18 minutes. Do watch it all; she is eloquent, remarkable, and a true role model. If you don’t have 18 minutes, watch the first part.
She’ll go far. Rumors are that she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and we’ll know soon if she gets it. The links are below; I hope you can see them outside the U.S. If you can’t, there’s a great two-minute excerpt on YouTube.
Here’s a screenshot:
And remember—she’s only 15!
h/t: Amy
She is being tipped for the Nobel Peace prize… but we all know that tips mean nothing!
Do we have a book open on the literature prize? It ought to be a female writer – only 12 women have won it.
Sadly not viewable in Australia !
Try this BBC interview
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24435564
Don’t let Foxtel defeat you, Don!
http://techgeek.com.au/2012/02/09/how-to-watch-the-daily-show-colbert-report-abroad-with-no-vpn/
Hoping this will be on Comedy Central soon. There is sometimes a lag. Anywhere that carries Comedy Central will need to view the video there. If your country doesn’t carry Comedy Central then you should be able to watch on the original site.
Sub
sub, too.
Although for some reason WordPress has ceased sending me email notifications. Is anyone else having this problem?
sub three. Working fine here.
It did that to Diane G & me a few weeks back. If you go to your subscription page I bet it says you’ve been unsubscribed so it’s a hick up that usually resolves over a day or so.
Hick up??? LOL
Oh hick up is a variation on hiccup. You can spell both ways. I’m just dash adverse esp when typing on my phone.
Hiccough is an erroneous back-formation that made it into the dictionary, I see great things in “hick up’s” future. 🙂
The videos were priceless if you can view them. If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize it would be her. That prize rarely meets such a sincerely meritable recipient.
Yet it might be a mighty burden to be a prize winner at 15? Huge pressure & expectation…
She seems like she has a good family & is grounded though so she won’t turn out like Miley Cyrus. 🙂
The only unfortunate thing is she thanks god for being saved from the bullet (she should thank the doctors) & attributes her success to god (when it’s her own courage).
What a peculiar reference. Cyrus is a performer on stage – you might not care for her performances, but she hasn’t “turned out” like anything.
It’s a joke and the funny is in what you pointed out.
I am a new fan of Miley since her portrayal of Michele Bachmann on SNL.
For those outside the US, there’s a plugin for Firefox called Modify Headers that seems to work for The Daily Show / Colbert Report.
I watched the on air segment last night and was deeply moved by it. Malala is a very impressive human being.
Me, too, and she was very impressive and modest and full of girlish giggles ( in a good way).
I was amazed by her focus and delighted by her recovery. Her assailant(s) achieved the opposite of their goal.
What a wonderful role model for all humans, especially young women and girls!
There is one proven way to reduce poverty: Educate the women and girls.
This means the balance of power in the society shifts towards the women; and that, I think, is one of the main reasons fundamentalist religious people oppose education.
Taliban
Rick Santorum (US Senator, advises parents not to send kids to university)
etc.
Keep ’em stupid, they are easier to control that way …
Yep, there is a reason totalitarian regimes burn all the books, & kill journalists and teachers!
Malala is my hero! I was very happy to see her on Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart show last night. Thanks for posting about her.
She is on CBC now and you should be able to here now or on the podcast later here: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/10/09/i-am-malala-the-girl-who-stood-up-for-education-and-was-shot-by-the-taliban/
She is 16 and admirably articulate. One should be impressed too by how well English is taught in the schools of Swat, because Swat is a remote area in the north of Pakistan.
She’s been living in the U.K. since the attack, but I think she started learning English long before that.
It’s an official language in Pakistan.
She is a true hero, and I hope she inspires people to fight the American Taliban that want American women to be brood mares for god (Quiverfull movement) and to replace science with superstition in schools.
Malala refused to cover her face in Taliban infested Swat while a young girl! I think she knows something about subjugation & she defies it! Indeed, women dressed like Malala would be flogged (as she describes in the CBC interview I linked to above) simply because hair and face is showing.
What she is wearing may simply be what she is comfortable in. Lots of women where scarves like this in India and Pakistan as part of their cultural dress.
It is important to look at the whole person; the world and people are nuanced.
Ugh “wear”. The homophonia continues.
Are you allowed to say “homophonia” hear?
A lot of “headscarf wearing” seems to be cultural. A former collegue of mine was wearing one, not a strand of hair was visible, just her face. Still, she was smoking, didn’t fast during ramadan etc. She was a cultural muslim, I guess. Of course, inquisitve me asked her about the scarf. She said she’d feel naked without it, having worn it since her early teens. Her daughters didn’t wear scarfs.
Wearing a headscarf doesn’t invalidate Malalas bravery. IMO she deserves the peace prize.
“Sorry, I can’t take her seriously with that nasty headscarf she’s wearing, a symbol of subjugation, superstition and ignorance. ”
Sorry, Iggy, I can’t take you seriously until you’ve been shot in the head for standing up to subjugation, superstition and ignorance.
I was thinking something similar but slightly more positive: Iggy, if you can’t take her seriously because of the headscarf, take her seriously because of getting shot in the face for going to school.
for those dismissing the scarf : remember that Kopernicus was a very good catholic, friend of the bishop. Yet, his fight towards knowledge had a tremendous positive impact.
I don’t know what kind of impact this lady will have, but don’t be fooled by such a detail : she’s got potential.
Its part of her culture to wear a scarf, and I doubt many 15 year old girls would be comfortable stepping outside their culture norm.
I’m 30 and I wouldn’t step outside with out wearing a bra, or make up, or having my hair dyed. Its part of my culture, vain? Sure, but it’ also a cultural norm.
Dude, she’s a sixteen year old girl who grew up in an Islam-soaked country. That she managed to come out of that not only relatively sane but a driving force for the rights of women and the education of girls is absolutely astounding.
Would I rather she ditch the superstition of Islam? Of course. But her achievements are herculean — and, did I mention? She’s a sixteen year old girl.
Besides, her scarf looks like it’s as much fashion statement as it is mandated head covering. I’m pretty sure that, if the Taleban had their way, she’d be shot just for wearing something that bold.
So, yeah. As Jerry wrote, that type of trolling is the sort of thing that makes rationalists look bad, all the more so because, best I can tell, it’s not representative of the overwhelming majority of us.
Cheers,
b&
When I heard her speak I forgot she had a scarf. I thought it was more for fashion, than for tradition. It looks nice on her and more to the point she is not hiding behind it. No different than a hat or a tie in her circumstance.
I’m think that this individual was pulling off a Poe.
I’d like to mention that, for that many of Malala’s actions are adult, she is sixteen, and most sixteen-year-olds still operate under dress codes imposed by their parents. We have no idea if the headscarf is Malala’s preference, or if every day she whines “Mom, do I REALLY have to wear this?”
Reblogged this on The Road.
re: the scarf. It’s a gorgeous scarf, and I’ve noticed that Islamic women express themselves with their scarves, so I’ve come around to finding it not such an affront to womanhood. Plus, they never have to worry about having a bad hair day.
Hell, scarves were commonly worn by woman in the US, over their hair, for decades. For example my mothers generation and earlier.
You mean like these?
http://extremecatholic.blogspot.com/images/mantilla/jfk-dating.jpg
http://playingwithscarves.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/queen-elizabeth-getty-74127386.jpg
Yes indeed. I almost mentioned Jackie, my mother admired her, but was pressed for time and tried to keep it short.
Total guess here…but wearing the scarf might make what she has to say more palatable to moderate Muslims?
Off topic: Is there any way to avoid ‘subs’? It’s noise that we have to filter out when reading the comments. I.e. it imposes a very small cost on the rest of us who read the website directly in a browser.
I see many Muslim women using their scarves to hold a cell phone hands free. A very practical use (though you need a flip phone).
I finally managed to watch it.
Wow. Smarts, dignity, generosity and grace.
Doesn’t matter if she wins the Nobel Peace Prize (though hopefully *fingers crossed* she will). She’s already won the hearts of millions which is a far more greater victory in my opinion.
Here’s another thought with regard to the scarf. She was shot in the head. Maybe she’s trying to hide her scars.
For heaven’s sake everybody: it’s nobody’s business but her own why she is wearing a scarf.
Seriously, we quite rightly raise our eyebrows when Fox News feels the need to do a news item on Hillary Clinton’s lack of lipstick or Michelle Obama’s hemlines.
And yet here we are, rationalists and supposedly enlightened people, parsing a young woman’s dress choice as if that mattered.
Malala Yousafzai, Jessica Ahlquist, Zack Koppelin… Some hope for the future?
“I deplore this kind of behavior by atheists: it implies that religious people can’t be “taken seriously” in anything they say or do, simply because they’re religious.”
How about this guy criticizing some doctors “simply because they’re religious”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U
around 1:13:00 (SOMETHING FROM NOTHING ? [OFFICIAL] Richard Dawkins & Lawrece Kraus)
Or around 23:00 it’s even stronger…
Here is the video of the full interview on youtube if anyone can’t view because outside USA.
http://homoeconomicusnet.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/video-malala-yousafzai-interview-in-full-on-the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-8th-october-2013/