A network of private schools has unleashed a public attack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Nobel peace laureate, in the most concerted assault yet on her reputation in her home country.
The All Pakistan Private Schools' Federation, which claims to represent 150,000 schools across Pakistan, said yesterday would be "I Am Not Malala" day and urged the government to ban her memoir, I Am Malala, because it allegedly offended Islam and the "ideology of Pakistan".
“We are all for education and women’s empowerment,” said Mirza Kashif Ali, the organisation’s president. “But the West has created this persona who is against the constitution and Islamic ideology of Pakistan.”
The public denunciation of Ms Yousafzai (17), who has been hailed as a figure of courage, reflected how differently her celebrity has been received in some parts of Pakistani society – even after she jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi, the Indian child rights activist, last month.
Abroad, Ms Yousafzai is revered for continuing her impassioned advocacy of education and girls’ rights after she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012. She is currently studying in Britain, where she lives with her exiled family.
But in her homeland Ms Yousafzai divides opinion. While some Pakistanis have lionised her as a national hero, others portray her as a western stooge who has maligned both country and religion.
Conservatives frequently cite from her memoir, written with journalist Christina Lamb, to bolster their case. During the news conference yesterday, Mr Ali accused Yousafzai of defending the author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses is banned in Pakistan, in her book.
‘Nexus with Salman Rushdie’
"It is clear that Malala has a nexus with Salman Rushdie and is aligned with his club," he said. In fact, the book notes only that Ms Yousafzai's father saw The Satanic Verses as "offensive to Islam" and that he said that Muslims should first read the novel, then respond. "Is Islam such a weak religion that it cannot tolerate a book written against it? Not my Islam!" the book quotes her father as saying.
Yet tolerance is in short supply in Pakistan these days, and accusations of disrespecting Islam can be fatal. Last week, a mob killed a Christian couple over accusations of blasphemy and incinerated their bodies. Dawn, a major English-language newspaper in Pakistan, reported that the wife had been pregnant. An anti-terrorism court yesterday remanded four people into custody over the killings. – (New York Times)