Taliban Shot Pakistani Teenage Girl for Supporting Girls’ Rights

Meanwhile, the Islamic equivalents of Charlie Fuqua and his Neanderthal knuckle draggers in the Republican Party are putting into action precisely what Fuqua advocates: the Taliban shot and seriously wounded a 14 year old girl in Pakistan for advocating for education of girls.   The Christofascists always take offense, but if they look at the Taliban and Islamic extremists, they are actually looking at a mirror image of themselves: groups that are fighting against modernity and clinging to a perverted version of religion based on writings of authors who were nothing short of ignorant by modern standards.   The Washington Post looks at the shooting of ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai.  Here are some article excerpts:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A 14-year-old Pakistani student who won international acclaim for speaking out for girls barred from school by the Taliban was critically wounded Tuesday by a gunman who boarded her school bus, asked for her by name, aimed his pistol at her head and fired, officials said.

The Pakistani Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack on ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai, who gained notice in early 2009 when she wrote a diary about Taliban atrocities under a pen name for the BBC’s Urdu service. Yousafzai lives in Mingora, a city in the scenic northwestern Swat Valley, where Taliban insurgents imposed harsh Islamic law for two years before being routed by a major military operation in May 2009. 

Tuesday’s daylight attack demonstrated the Taliban’s continued ability to infiltrate the area, which adjoins Pakistan’s insurgency-plagued tribal belt.

Many Pakistanis view Yousafzai, who also promoted literacy and peace, as a symbol of hope in a country long beset by violence and despair. In 2011, the Pakistani government awarded her a national peace prize and 1 million rupees ($10,500). 

She also was a finalist last year for the International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded by a Dutch organization that lauded her bravery in standing up for girls’ education rights amid rising fundamentalism when few others in Pakistan would do so. 

Yousafzai was flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Peshawar, where doctors on Wednesday said they removed a bullet lodged near her spine. The girl’s condition was improving, but officials said she had not yet regained consciousness.

Fundamentalist religion remains one of the biggest threats to peace and stability in the world today.  Yet it is to religious extremists little different from the Taliban in terms of their hatred of others - the Christian Taliban - to whom Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (and George Allen here in Virginia) have sold their souls for political gain.  These religious extremists are frightening and need to be driven into the political wilderness rather than embraced by the Republican Party.