It’s not just Malala. The phenomenon of Leftists defending Islamic supremacism, Sharia, and even violent jihad is a veritable pandemic.
“Hijab Row: Malala Epitomises Great Liberal Tradition of Standing up for Islamist Fundamentalists,” by Utpal Kumar, News18, February 11, 2022:
Malala Yousafzai is at it again. A true rent-a-cause activist, just like Greta Thunberg and Rihanna, she has jumped into the ongoing hijab controversy in India. It so happened that a private college in Karnataka’s Udupi district barred a few hijab-wearing Muslim girls from attending classes. Malala is aghast at the college “forcing us to choose between studies and the hijab”. For Malala, “refusing to let girls go to school in their hijab is horrifying”. She adds, “Objectification of women persists — for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalisation of Muslim women.”
Malala has come a long way from being a young Pakistani girl who dared to look in the eyes of the Taliban when they threatened her from attending school. In 2012, she was shot in the head by the Islamist militia for her campaign in favour of education of girls in Pakistan. She then thought “wearing a burqa is like walking inside a big fabric shuttlecock with only a grille to see through and on hot days it’s like an oven,” as she confessed in her memoir, I Am Malala. In another book that she co-authored with Patricia McCormic, Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World, she went further: “Living under wraps seemed so unfair — and uncomfortable. From an early age I told my parents that no matter what other girls did, I would never cover my face like that. My face was my identity.”
Today, 10 years later, in the comforts of the ultra-liberal West, Malala’s worldview seems to have turned upside down: Hijab today symbolises freedom for her. It helps Muslim women fight against their sexist commodification. Incidentally, the country that awarded Malala the Nobel Peace Prize has already banned burqa and niqab in schools and colleges. She is yet to criticise Norway for doing that. In 2009, Switzerland banned minarets despite the existence of just four minarets in that country. The ban continues till date, but Malala is yet to condemn the Swiss. Maybe she thinks Asian Muslim women deserve the hijab/burqa barrier to protect their modesty!
Malala, however, isn’t an exception. She, in a way, epitomises the great liberal tradition of standing up for Islamist fundamentalists.
These liberals would work overtime to look for excuses to accommodate the extremist worldview. They would perversely intellectualise the exorbitant demands made by Islamists to give them legitimacy.
Source minus title: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/malala-continues-leftist-tradition-of-defending-islamic-hardliners
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