E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSAs doctors debated whether to send Malala Yousafzai abroad for care, thousands rallied in her name, including hundreds of schoolgirls who gathered in Afghanistan. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.
KARACHI, Pakistan -- Tens of thousands rallied in Pakistan's largest city Sunday in support of a 14-year-old girl who was shot and critically wounded by the Taliban for promoting girls' education and criticizing the militant group.
The demonstration in the southern city of Karachi was by far the largest since Malala Yousufzai and two of her classmates were shot on Oct. 9 while returning home from school in Pakistan's northwest.
The attack horrified people inside and outside Pakistan and sparked hope among some that it would prompt the government to intensify its fight against the Taliban and their allies.
But protests against the shooting have been relatively small until now, usually attracting no more than a few hundred people. That response pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of people who held violent protests in Pakistan last month against a film produced in the United States that denigrated Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Demonstrations in support of Yousufzai — and against rampant militant violence in the country in general — have also been fairly small compared with those focused on issues such as U.S. drone attacks and the NATO supply route to Afghanistan that runs through Pakistan.
Rizwan Tabassum / AFP - Getty Images
A Pakistani woman shouts slogans during a protest march against the assassination attempt by the Taliban on 14-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai, in Karachi on Sunday. Malala is making "slow and steady progress" in her recovery, the military said.
Right-wing Islamic parties and organizations in Pakistan that regularly pull thousands of supporters into the streets to protest against the U.S. have less of an incentive to speak out against the Taliban, who share their desire to impose Islamic law in the country — even if they may disagree with some of the militant group's violent tactics.
Pakistan's mainstream political parties are often also more willing to harangue the U.S. than direct their people power against Islamist militants shedding blood across the country — partly out of fear and partly because they rely on Islamist parties for electoral support.
One of the exceptions is the political party that organized Sunday's rally in Karachi, the Muttahida Quami Movement. The party's chief, Altaf Hussain, criticized both Islamic and other mainstream political parties for failing to organize rallies to protest the attack against Yousufzai.
Positive developments have been reported regarding the recovery of 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who was shot by the Taliban near her school on Tuesday. NBC'S Amna Nawaz reports.
He called the Taliban gunmen who shot the girl "beasts" and said the shooting was an attack on "the ideology of Pakistan."
"Malala Yousufzai is a beacon of knowledge. She is the daughter of the nation," Hussain told the audience by telephone from London, where he is in self-imposed exile because of legal cases pending against him in Pakistan. His party is the strongest in Karachi.
Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com
Many of the demonstrators carried the young girl's picture and banners praising her bravery and expressing solidarity.
Yousufzai earned the enmity of the Taliban for publicizing their behavior when they took over the northwestern Swat Valley, where she lived, and for speaking about the importance of education for girls.
The group first started to exert its influence in Swat in 2007 and quickly extended its reach to much of the valley by the next year. They set about imposing their will on residents by forcing men to grow beards, preventing women from going to the market and blowing up many schools — the majority for girls.
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
Yousufzai wrote about these practices in a journal for the BBC under a pseudonym when she was just 11. After the Taliban were pushed out of the valley in 2009 by the Pakistani military, she became even more outspoken in advocating for girls' education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country's highest honors for civilians for her bravery.
The Pakistani Taliban said they carried out the shooting because Yousufzai was promoting "Western thinking." Police have arrested at least three suspects in connection with the attack, but the two gunmen who carried out the shooting remain at large.
The young girl was shot in the neck, and the bullet headed toward her spine. Doctors at a military hospital operated on her to remove the bullet from her neck, and she was put on a ventilator. Her condition improved somewhat on Saturday when she was able to move her legs and hands after her sedatives were reduced.
On Sunday, she was successfully taken off the ventilator for a short period and later reconnected to avoid fatigue, the military said. Doctors said she is making slow and steady progress.
The possibility of transferring Malala overseas for continued treatment was still being considered, a military spokesman said. Pakistan has arranged a specially equipped air ambulance with the United Arab Emirates that will be used if doctors decide to move her abroad.
Visas are being finalized for the air ambulance crew and six doctors who will accompany the flight, the Pakistani ambassador to the country, Jamil Ahmed Khan, told Pakistan's Geo TV. Arrangements have been made to treat the girl at three hospitals in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, he said.
The UAE Embassy in Islamabad could not immediately be reached for comment.
No decision has yet been taken to send the girl abroad, but the air ambulance is part of the contingency plan, the Pakistani military said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has written letters to top political and religious leaders in Pakistan denouncing the attack on Yousufzai and asking them to help battle extremism in both countries, the president's office said in a statement issued late Saturday. Karzai wrote that he views the shooting as an attack on Afghanistan's girls as well.
NBC News’ Fakhar Rehman in Pakistan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Leave a Comment:
The movie did not denigrate Mohammad, his own history did. The movie was based on Mohammad's history as recorded in sacred Islamic texts known as hadith. The main reason devout Muslims are upset is because Mohammad was played by an actor; his image, or rather the image of an actor who played him, was depicted. It is against Islamic law to display images of the prophet.
In countries like Pakistan it is a good idea to show up for protests when the local cleric demands your presence.
And not only do these clerics (Islamists et al) want to impose sharia law on Pakistan, they want to impose it across the entire planet; their God commands them to fight until all the world worships Allah alone. That's why there were all the protests about the "video," they were designed to gain support for U.N. resolution 16/18, an Organization of Islamic Cooperation concoction that Obama supports -- and it's why he blamed the video for the Benghazi attack too: Obama White House motto: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."
You are correct. These muslim/Islamic scumbag, pork eating,pig screwing , cowardly sewer rats always show the world what wild animals they really are. If the people would take up arms and kill these pigs they would be much better off.
Kill a baby today you Muslim Taliban coward scum and show how brave you are!
I forgot to mention U.N. resolution 16/18 would make blasphemy an international crime. If passed by the Senate, folks like the Rev. Terry Jones and Islamophobes like Pamela Geller would be severely punished. Islamic law calls for crucifixion.
Or how the liberal media outlets failed to mention Barack Obama's comment in his recent U.N. speech that the "future must not belong to those who insult the prophet of islam". Or, in other words, those who dare to exercise their First Amendment rights.
@Collette
He also wears a ring that says in Arabic, "There is no God but Allah." We have the 12th imam as our president.
Unfortunately there is nothing AfPak can do to stop the Taliban from taking over in a year or 10 years from now, whatever. The sad thing is the US spent thousands of lives in a futile attempt to slow them down at best. What a horrible waste of people on both sides. Once the Taliban take over, the head-chopping will begin in earnest, men, women, and children will fall and had better keep their mouths shut about 'freedoms' and such nonsense.
This is good news. I hope they can rally the government to go in and cut the Taliban apart. They are a cancer on the entire human race.
She is a brave girl, and I hope she fully recovers from her injuries.
I'm glad to see some of the Pakistanis stand up against this type of attack by the Taliban. They are also demonstrating courage as there will be backlashes against them also. Ultimately, they will have to work out their freedom. Many have shown what they'll kill and die for; it may be harder to define how they want to live. It will likely come at a high cost for many.
I am happy to hear this poor girl is getting support from her fellow country men and women. Terrorists do not just target other countries, they target anyone that doesn't submit to their ridiculous ideas and demands, and they have no loyalty to their own country. The world is not fooled. There are no religious motivations behind these acts. It is all about power. Thankfully not everyone in Pakistan is blinded by their horrific oppression.
if these cretins are all gathering in one spot this would be a good time for a couple of drones.
This proves that Taliban have no respect for anyone, and are liable for theiractions and are now looked below a snails crawl world wide.
How could this be?Husein Obama declared the Taliban is gone thanks to him. lol .The Taliban is only gone if the news is not reported or your lies,Clinton's and Rice continue .You should be impeached to say the least.It's an outrage.It's an outrage you have the gumtion to run.You wonde why the world laughs at us.Look at our si called leadership.I don't know who is worse at this point Biden or Hussein.
The world should unite and destroy every last Taliban on earth.
When I read this horrible story, it made me as angry as I have ever been. There are only a very few brave, caring people born on this earth that are strong enough to do what this very young lady did. The world needs to reach out to her - get her the best health care anywhere in the world - promote her to the highest level of sainthood. Please Pakistan, standup for this young lady - she is the future of your country.
Amazing to me that a whole country of women have not risen up and said enough. It is sad to see how hard it is to overcome traditions in this age of knowledge. Thank God we don't live there.
Don't send money. Instead send them copies of "The Diary of Anne Frank".
Religion is the source of endless misery,whether it be in the form of Islam, Christianity, Communism, Naziism, or any other ism that turns on "faith" and irrationalism. Even Buddhism, which would seem least likely to inspire and/or justify prejudice, violence and cruelty has been the source of barbaric oppression in Tibet and elsewhere. Until humanity evolves to be free from all types of religion, rejects the asinine veneration of faith, and is able to commit to reason and logic, we will see a world filled with the most unspeakable evil. Certainly, we should be deeply offended by the actions of the Taliban against Malala, but we must recognize that the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban are part of a longstanding tradition in religion, including Christianity, which has always promoted radical, irrational hatred and violence toward anyone who dares to stray from the given subgroup's dogma. Christians like to pretend that their religion is somehow more humane than others, but history shows that is nothing but a lie. Today's evangelical Christians are just as radical and intolerant as rival Christian groups were during the Renaissance. Only a few institutions, mostly developed through the secular Enlightenment have served to bar them from perpetrating widespread violence in modern Western societies.
The foregoing is not necessarily a condemnation of the views of the founders of religions, as both Jesus (for the most part) and the Buddha were amiable men who generally preached a humane doctrine, although Jesus' was grounded in a tribal religion replete with primitive doctrines that promoted tribal solidarity and intolerance of external groups, making a broad, humane message internally contradictory. I cannot be optimistic about the possibility of human maturation that would result in the discarding of violent obscurantist belief systems any time soon. When traditional religion has been rejected, it has usually been replaced by new religions like Hitlerism and Stalinism, and the results have been horrifying. Such religions had the same features as the older religions they replaced: unquestioning faith in a messianic figure and that figure's pronouncements, and the enthusiastic willingness to commit any excess called for by the leader and his political apparatus. It is the nature of "faith," i.e., religious faith, and the abandonment of independent thinking and a commitment to reason, that has and will continue to produce the kind of foulness perpetrated by the Taliban against the young girl in Pakistan. It is nothing new, and it is not specific to radical Islam.
Andrew Smith >>> >>> >>> Although I find myself agreeing with you to some degree with some of the points you have raised, it seems to me that you have given yourself an out. After strong criticism of ALL religions and blaming religion, itself rather than the individual, you then address the sins of Hitlerism and Stalinism . But, you let Hitlerism and Stalinism and yourself off the hook for being as vicious as you accuse religion by just calling them a religion of sorts instead of admitting that atheism isn't perfect, either..
Atheism has nothing to do with any of those.
Collette ~~~ I do not understand your comment. I said that Atheism is not perfect. I did not say that all Atheists are corrupt.
You left out Leftism. The real reason for all the worlds failures and problems.
Big john: Your comment betrays the same kind of stupidity, prejudice and irrationality I was discussing above. You understand nothing. There is NOTHING in so-called "leftism" that you could possibly count as an irrational, illogical, intolerant, "faith." Extreme leftists, like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot,et a.l and the isms they led were examples of political cult-of-personality religions. Rightist extremists like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, et al. and their isms were of the same order. "Leftism is a general perspective that favors a humane social order that emphasizes community, support for the less fortunate, environment preservation, and rejects government interference in matters of private morality. Rightism, i.e., non-radical rightism, generally favors a particular form of individualism, the maintenance of long-standing institutions both economic and social, individual interests over community interests, particularly as it regards the questions that relate to private property, the right of the stronger to maintain power over the weaker. Rightism sees these as the natural order of things. Neither leftism nor rightism are "religions" and by making the statement you do, you indicate that you are so lacking in ability to understand complex ideas that you are not worthy of further comment. You are the very kind of person who does not wish to understand the truth. You are happy with your simpleminded prejudices. You are just another example of why I have no hope for humankind.
To paraphrase the Prime Minister, Nothing is going to change until They love their children more than they hate the West.
I am so glad to hear that her condition is improving. She sounds like a wonderful person, who deserves the best wishes from everyone.
Send her to get treatment in the west. The Taliban is going to target her again, no doubt.
I'd really like to begin feeling hopeful about Pakistan but something tells me that it's too early in their troubled history of religious fanaticism.
ercillor. My cousin has travelled over to Pakistan and Afghanistan teaching women about health and reproductive issues...she does not go over there anymore because it is too dangerous. It's awful what happens over there but if women say I am not going to bear your children without some respect it could actually get interesting.
What makes you think that she will not be simply beaten and raped by her husband?
Yea Muslims!!! Too bad the rest of the world thinks it's a bit too little, a bit too late... you've already made your bed. Now lay in it.
Another example of "the noble koran" in action. Let's welcome them to our neighborhoods! Then we can all pat ourselves on our backs and feel like we're modern and progressive and all-inclusive!
I have wondered for so long why the Muslim people, who like all people, have both good and bad, would allow the men to completely dominate and persecute the female children for so long. I have read the history of Islam and have seen many examples in their history where certain people wanted to "modernize" or see their society move into the mainstream thinking of the modern, civilized world. But the barbarians always came forward to kill all who would try to pull the religious fanatics away from the strict beliefs as interpreted by the Zealots.
That is why we still see hundreds of men, women, and children gathered for the purpose of stoning people to death for sins against the Koran and thus sinners and the wages of sin is death. The 18 people who had their heads chopped off after being dragged from a modern hotel for the sin of listening to music is another example.
I look at the news sites around the world where Islam rules and see that they post the prayer times (5 times per day) on these sites where a person of that faith will not be able to say, "What time do we pray?" It reminds me of looking at our news to see when the college ballgames come on tv on Saturdays. But no one will be executed for missing a ball game.
I am happy to see this large support and I hope it will spread throughout the religion to show the believers that the written word is a guide, not a death sentence. The Jews and Christians had to come to that realization by force of arms. The Jews had their "Come to Jesus" meeting in the first century after they killed Jesus. They made the mistake of rebelling against their masters, the Romans. The Roman Emperor Constantine sealed their fate.
The Roman Catholics had their days of killing and torturing in the name of God, but the Reformation and Napoleon pulled the teeth of the Pope even though they still try to gain political power throughout history.
What amazes me as I read history is that all of these religions originated from the Hebrew laws Moses carried out of Egypt, and the five books of laws he wrote himself. They all have the same "mother" so to speak in the Hebrew writings, but tried to eliminate each other time and again over the last three thousand years.
There was another people that all of the religions tried to remove from the face of the earth by murder and mass murder. It is the Pagans that primarily came from Greece and the Slavic and Germanic tribes. To be Pagan was to worship something other than the Hebrew, Christian, of Muslim God. How strange isn't it that they claim different Gods but all come from the same ancient text. But the blood lust of proving their God is supreme killed those that did not choose to recognize their Gods.
The stories in history are stranger than any human could write fiction. Case in point, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria Egypt. I looked it up and there was three possible times and reasons for its destruction. One by Christians as the Pagans were being murdered in the streets, one by Julius Caesar during a battle with Pompeii, and the last was attributed to the spread of Islam where all forms of written records were destroyed because illiteracy was one way to control the masses.
I do hope that people will see that Death by God is not the message Jesus brought us.
Lazarus
Matilda Tuscany: Clearly you have misunderstood what I said, I do not excuse ANY religion, whether it is a secular religion, like Hitlerism or Stalinism, or Angkor (Pol Pot) or Maoism, or any other such ism. My point was and is that any time we accept ideas on "faith" (as the term is used in religion), whenever we abandon our responsibility to critically examine the pronouncements of religions by using our intellectual faculties, whenever we impute deity-like properties to any "authority," we help to condemn humankind to continuing misery, cruelty, and death. I absolutely give no more credit to the secular religions than to the traditional ones like Christianity and Islam. I find it difficult to understand how you could misconstrue what I wrote. I welcome your reply.
Anyone who does not see that this is indeed about islam is ignorant of what islam is, and what it teaches. I've read the koran. mohammed married girls this young. His reign of terror began many of the wars throughout history. Right now, as we read these posts...all over the middle east, girls are being swapped like cattle to sick old men, beaten, raped, murdered, genitally mutilated. Wake up... I'm not saying that everyone who is islamic is a terrorist, but girls and women are severely oppressed by the harsh patriarchal society bred by the long legacy of islam. And it is not only the taliban that are doing it. The freedom girls and women DESERVE comes through education and true freedom. Many are finding it now..amidst all the darkness that surrounds them. That freedom of salvation in Jesus Christ. Even though they know they would be killed by their own family for converting to Christianity, they are doing so by the millions. So much we take for granted or even scorn here in the west. They would literally die to have.
Malala is an inspiration, prayers for her full recovery and the realization of her dream for her country and it's people. Men who gun down unarmed children are cowards, afraid of a young girls words....she is far more powerful than they will ever be. Truth and justice is on your side Malala, stay strong.