On This Day in History: October 9

Malala Yousafzai is shot

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If your god tells you to shoot a 15-year-old girl in the head because she promotes education for women, then your god is a fucking dick.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 9, 2012--

If you read any religious texts, most gods are dicks. Bunch of petty, slavery and sexism-promoting vindictive assholes prone to fits of violent jealousy. But since they don’t actually exist anyway, we can just blame asshole humans for inventing them as an excuse to be assholes. And the fucking Taliban sure are assholes.

Born in 1997 in Northwest Pakistan to a lower-middle class Sunni Muslim family, Malala Yousafzai was educated mostly by her father, an educational activist. She began speaking publicly about education rights for women when she was only 11, saying in a televised speech, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to an education?” And the Taliban was all, “Oh, yes. We don’t have that right. Many apologies. We shall change our ways.” Nah, they were gigantic cockwipes about the whole thing.

Early in 2009, Malala began blogging for the BBC. Meanwhile, the Taliban were terrorizing her part of the country and blowing up schools. Displaced by the violence, a New York Times documentary was made about her, and she continued to give numerous speeches and interviews, raising her profile markedly and winning her country’s highest civilian honor. Death threats became a regular occurrence; they were published in newspapers, on her Facebook page, even slipped under her door.

The Taliban held a meeting about what to do about this terrible young girl they were so fearful of, and unanimously sanctioned an assassination. A spokesman said after the attack, “We had no intentions to kill her but were forced when she would not stop (speaking against us).” Yeah, real fucking heroes.

On October 9, 2012, two Taliban militants with previous assassination experience stopped her bus as she rode home from school. They asked which one was Malala, and the other girls would not say. Then they threatened to kill everyone, and Malala was identified. They shot her in the head, wounding two other girls on the bus in the process.

The international outcry was massive, including from President Obama and the UN Secretary-General. That bullet sent from the would-be assassin’s pistol propelled Malala from national treasure to international superstardom. After three days in a Pakistani hospital, she was transported to England for additional treatment; two days later she emerged from her coma.

Malala Yousafzai has continued her education and her activism, and in 2014 was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. As an additional fuck you to the Taliban, in 2020 she graduated from Oxford University.

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