From almost a year ago, November 2013 – associations of private schools in Pakistan banned Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography.
Ironically, educational officials in Pakistan (who work in the very segment of society that Malala wants to improve) have prohibited her memoirs from classrooms across the country. (Tens of millions of Pakistani children attend fee-based private schools since public schools are in such poor shape).
Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, told Associated Press that Malala’s book will not be available in any libraries at its 40,000 affiliated schools. He also asked the government to ban it from all school curricula. “Everything about Malala is now becoming clear,” Javedani said. “To me, she is representing the West, not us.”
Kashif Mirza, the chairman of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation (which represents more than 152,000 institutions across the country), has also banned the book from all schools under his group’s jurisdiction. “The federation thought we should review the book, and having reviewed it we came to the decision that the book was not suitable for our children, particularly not our students,” said Mirza. “Pakistan is an ideological country. That ideology is based on Islam…. In this book are many comments that are contrary to our ideology.”
This is someone who oversees schools. Apparently his ideology approves of shooting girls like Malala in the head for being determined to go to school.
Not everyone in Pakistan supports the ban. “The decision to ban the book is the result of a deliberate smear campaign run against Malala and the book by right-wing commentators,” said Bina Shah, novelist and education campaigner based in Karachi, according to Pakistani media. “There has been complete confusion about the book, sown very deliberately in the minds of adults because of this right-wing talk.”
Thus blighting the future for who knows how many millions of girls in Pakistan.
Why, oh why does that sound so familiar to me?
So I can understand a wariness about “the West” but what does promoting education for women have to do with us? Equality isn’t a thing of the west, it’s a thing of the future, it’s a thing of freedom and of justice. That the west hasn’t yet slid back far enough to outlaw education for women (although I am expecting to hear that janitor’s closets in schools that cater to female students will have to be outfitted with military grade communications equipment in the near future) isn’t a mark against education.
That reminds me of something that the “Angry Arab” blogger and professor As’ad AbuKhalil said about Pakistan when he went and did some talks in a few universities there. He said the people seemed nice, but there was this “excessive obsession with Islam” that bothered him.
Pakistan does seem pretty over-the-top with reactionary Islamic stuff, especially when you consider that they’re not a theocratic government like Iran. It’s the same reason there’s riots whenever even a mere rumor gets started that someone “desecrated the koran” or “insulted Islam” (like that poor mentally disabled christian girl a few years back). That seems to have seeped up into some of the upper ranks as well, since I remember a governor there who was skeptical of the blasphemy law in public was assassinated, and his killer had a whole ton of lawyers from the Lawyer Movement show up to praise and support him.
Not a theocratic government? Pakistan exists because of a partition of Imperial India along religious lines. That partition led to the violent deaths of millions of people. Not just in ’48, but through multiple wars, outbreaks of mob violence, and genocide in Bengladesh.
Pakistan’s ruling elite may not be clergy, or even particularly ‘good’ Muslims, but the state is rooted in the sewer that is Islam.