Bob CollinsThe Nobel Peace Prize committee has made some boneheaded choices over the years, but today’s announcement that Malala Yousafza is the recipient is about as perfect as any selection has ever been.
Yousafzai, 17, and India children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, 60, were awarded the prize for “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”
There are some people who are in the world, and some people who seem of the world, which is more a commentary on the world. Yousafzai is in the latter.
In her appearance on the Daily Show last year, she was asked what she thought when she learned the Taliban wanted her dead because she dared want an education.
I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do Malala?’ then I would reply to myself, ‘Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.’
But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’
Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.’
“Why should I be afraid of someone who is afraid of me already?” she said.
That was the moment when the committee should have handed her the medal and renamed the award.
She will make a statement about receiving the award today. After school, she says.
NewsCut Archive: Malala Yousufzai and the war in Afghanistan (Minnesota Public Radio News).
