Malala Yousafzai: Teen idol

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In a world where girls are gazed at more than heard, this newsmaker is no less than a revolutionary

Malala Yousafzai’s mettle is legend. In 2009, at age 11, she blogged about life in her native Pakistan under Taliban rule. She then publicly campaigned for the education of girls despite death threats. In 2012, she survived a would-be assassin’s bullet to the head. Last July, during a half-hour conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, she confronted him about U.S. drone-strike casualties in her homeland. That was after Yousafzai, who aspires to be a politician, spoke at the UN on her 16th birthday.

Yet somehow what it took to really command attention was the teenage activist’s ability to reduce Jon Stewart to burbling mush during her appearance on the The Daily Show in October. A much-circulated YouTube video showed the usually unflappable host clasping his hand to his mouth in amazement when Yousafzai explained why she didn’t hate the Taliban or her gunman, who is still at large. Stewart was equally gobsmacked by Yousafzai’s eloquent plea for the importance of educating women and girls. “Can I adopt you?” he finally asked.

Yousafzai smiled serenely. But someone unfazed by the Taliban isn’t about to be bothered by a patronizing joke from a liberal talk-show host. Her agenda was larger: publicizing her memoir I Am Malala and promoting the Malala Fund dedicated to raising funds for the 60 million girls in the developing world who have little access to education.

Yousafzai has come to occupy a singular position in the West, a culture used to gazing at 16-year-old girls, not listening to them. Her voice was first heard in a BBC Urdu blog diary in January 2009; the Grade 7 student wrote under a pseudonym about the Taliban ban on educating girls. Within the year, she was advocating publicly, despite death threats. But she didn’t have name recognition in North America until she was the victim of horrific violence returning from school in October 2012. The world watched in wonder as she recovered in England, where the family now lives.

Her attack garnered protests and international condemnation. It spurred a UN petition, under the slogan “I am Malala,” demanding children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015; as a result, Pakistan passed its first Right to Education Bill. Pakistan officially condemned Yousafzai’s attack but she remains a controversial figure. Her book has been banned in most schools. Extremists claim her shooting was staged by the CIA to justify drone attacks, even though she has spoken against them: “A war can never be ended by a war,” she told CBS this year. She has also been derided as a spy and a mouthpiece for Western agendas.