A month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked whether the Taliban is a terrorist organization. The question appeared to stump her. "Well, I'm not sure how they are defined at this particular moment," she told reporters.
So how refreshing was it to hear Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old Pakistani girl, speaking from a U.N. podium last week, unequivocally and forthrightly denouncing the Taliban as terrorist and, for good measure, calling into question the courage and intelligence of its members? "They are afraid of women," she said. "And I remember that there was a boy in our school who was asked by a journalist, why are the Taliban against education? He answered very simply by pointing to his book, he said, ‘A Talib doesn't know what is written inside this book.'"
It was a Talib, you'll recall, who last year shot Yousafzai in the head at point-blank range as she was riding a bus home from school in northwest Pakistan. She barely survived, then endured months of hospitalization and reconstructive surgery. A Taliban spokesman called the attack "a warning to all youngsters in the area that they would be targeted if they followed her example."
Members of the Taliban oppose education for girls based on their reading of Islamic scripture. Yousafzai is a Muslim who rejects such fundamentalism, as she made clear in her U.N. remarks. Indeed, she went out of her way to provoke Salafi Muslims - those who seek to replicate Islam as it existed in the seventh century - by saying she had learned "compassion" from "Mohammed, the prophet of mercy," then immediately noting that she had been inspired also by "Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha," as well as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
The last of these figures was the founding father of Pakistan, a man of moderation and tolerance. Four years ago, at a university in Karachi, I delivered a lecture on terrorism in general and the Taliban in particular. I asked the audience whether Pakistanis today still aspire to build the kind of nation Jinnah envisioned. A student threw his shoe at me. (At the far-left DemocraticUnderground.com there was approval for the shoe-thrower. A contributor to the far-right Ron Paul Forum ssuggested the young man deserved a Nobel Prize.)
Yousafzai concluded her remarks with a call for "a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism," not quite the kind of struggle - "jihad" would be the Arabic word - the Taliban has in mind.
Nor should we expect Yousafzai to be praised by Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood preacher featured on Al Jazeera Arabic, which is owned, funded, and operated - as are Al Jazeera English and the new Al Jazeera America - by the rulers of Qatar.
