Human Rights and Pakistan

Malala Yousafzai's I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban is a book about the struggle to obtain an education in the deeply corrupted Pakistan state, where radical Islamic extremists oppress people who disagree with them. Inspired by her father, who was passionate about founding his own school, Malala at a very young age took to promoting the cause of education with her father's help.

She would read the classical works of literature by Tolstoy and Jane Austen and write a blog for the BBC describing what it was like to grow up in Pakistan under the Taliban and be a girl seeking an education. This paper will describe the book's main point, the major problem that Malala faced in her country, and my own personal evaluation of the book.

Malala's book is a personal look into the nightmare world that is life in Pakistan under Taliban rule -- but it is also an inspirational message about how someone who is courageous and has the courage of her convictions can stand up to an oppressive regime and even face death by its hand -- as Malala does. The main problem of the book is that Malala opposes the Taliban's desire to see girls be subservient to their role and to take submissive and passive roles in society in general.

Malala wants to be an educated woman because she believes in the power of education -- that it can liberate individuals and free them from oppressive ways of thinking as well as the environments that proceed from those thought processes. Malala stands for a type of revolution that is the opposite of what the extremists in Pakistan promote through their violent brand of Islam.

Malala essentially stands for human rights, for freedom and for the ideals promoted by the West and the UN -- where she ultimately gives a speech describing her journey.

A sixteen-year-old girl from Pakistan standing up before the world leaders in New York City at the United Nations convention -- Malala had come far: from a young school girl learning about resistance from her father to be actually gunned down by an extremist for daring to speak her mind to speaking before the UN about her convictions and the role that women would play in the future.

The tapey that Malala writes during her recovery from her gunshot to the head expresses the essence of her life: "If the men cannot win the battle, O my country, / Then the women will come forth and win you an honor" (Yousafzai, 2013, p. 250). Thus, the problem Malala identifies and addresses is the problem of the failure of leadership in Pakistan, where authorities armed a group of extremists and thus made a mess that they later could not handle.

With the men incapable of adequately taking back their country, Malala recognized that it was a woman's turn to speak truth to power. Thus the thesis or tendency that this book upholds is the concept that in this day and age courage can take all shapes and sizes and that one must be willing to stand up and stand out and in fact die for one's convictions -- otherwise, there will never be an adequate force good enough and powerful enough to oppose the wicked, the corrupt, and the oppressive.

Malala proves to be a powerful soul -- a unique and strong voice whose opposition to the violent forces in Pakistan puts her on the receiving end of that same violence. Yet her message is one that must get out, that will not go away: hers is the voice of reason and as long as she has the ability to use her voice she is firmly committed to doing so.

The thesis of the book therefore is that one must be strong, not shrink from adversity, and not be afraid to oppose those who are unjust. It is an inspiring thesis because Malala is such a young girl and one typically thinks of such messages coming from strong men, athletic heroes, or action stars.

My personal evaluation of the book is that it is a very touching portrait of a real-live girl coming of age in Pakistan yet really coming of age before the whole world -- which is where her journey ultimately takes her. She transcends her borders and her violent environment because she sees and recognizes a truth greater than that which the ruthless extremists in her homeland attempt to propagate. Thus the book comes with a good message that is very much worth learning.

The book is also very easy to read and always engaging from start to finish. It invites the reader to look into life in a foreign land that he or she may never have really thought about before -- and it invites the.