Rafia Zakaria is the author of 'Against White Feminism'. Quite naturally, she lives in a White country where Feminism has achieved much for all of the population.
She writes about Malala
Pakistan is in Malala’s past.
No. It is likely that Malala- like other celebrated Pakistanis with superior foreign credentials and work experience- will play a part in building a better future for Pakistan. This may have to wait till the Tehreek-e-Taliban is less powerful or changes its policies.
The celebrity world of international renown, red carpets, and millions and millions of dollars for her Malala Fund NGO are her current reality.
If she continues to work hard- I believe she is working with Apple TV to develop content- then she will enjoy more renown and have greater achievements to her credit.
It’s the flip side of Pakistan, a realm that is particularly attuned to the framework of her story as a young Muslim girl shot in the head by rabid and bloodthirsty Muslim men.
Who get shot by other Muslim men who are part of the Pakistani Army. True, American drones too might take some of them out.
As the scholar Shenila Khoja-Moolji
whose work, like her subject, is shit
has noted, the enduring and all-encompassing strength of this narrative is such that the individual, even Malala herself, is erased from it.
Except she isn't at all in contrast to our narrative of Shenila who got bitten by a radioactive spider and then took to battling super villains who, sadly, were wholly imaginary. Thus she wasn't invited to join the Avengers.
One integral pillar of hundreds of years of colonialism,
was making money out of having colonies or, if that wasn't happening, then pretending there was some geopolitical benefit from occupying that shithole
or at least trotted out as its moral imperative,
was making money out of it or see above
was the idea of saving Muslim women from Muslim men.
Fuck off! Nobody gave a shit about Muslim women. Indeed, White men didn't give a shit about their own women. That's why Feminism started.
In Malala, the West, now sheepish about its self-serving colonial aggressions,
The West isn't sheepish at all. It made money when money was to be made then fucked off when the place became an even shittier shithole. There may be one or two libtards who apologize for colonialism. But they also apologize for having a dick when what they should be apologizing for is having a tiny dick or, if that isn't the case, not sucking off homeless dudes, or- if they are sucking off homeless dudes- not paying those homeless dudes loads of money for gobbling their precious jizz.
has a modern and extremely endearing testimony to point to instead.
What is Malala's testimony? It is that, if you have grit then you can survive getting shot in the head by the sort of nutters who want to shoot all us kaffirs in the head; and what's more you can graduate from Ox-fucking-ford University and sign a deal with Apple TV etc, etc.
“This,” a time-traveling British colonial officer may as well be saying to the Western world, “this is why we stayed as long as we did.”
Fuck off! The only reason the Brits were in Malala's part of the world was to keep the Rooskies out of Afghanistan and thus India. Nobody gave a shit about brown women- or white women for that matter.
Malala’s contradictions make her even more compelling.
There are no contradictions. She and her family stand for good, modern, Education delivered by the private sector. She got shot in the head by nutters who are against this. Then modern medical Science helped her recover and she went to School and then College and is now working with Apple. This is a narrative about how Education is a good thing. Sure, it is tough to acquire- especially if you have been shot in the head. But its worth acquiring and we are all better off when more people have it.
At least one publication reviewing Vogue’s Malala cover noted how her headscarf, or hijab, “covers” Vogue.
P. Chidambaram's dhoti covers his delectable haunches. But Dalal St. still got a hard on when he became Finance Minister. Sadly, he took to stripping off his dhoti to reveal leopard skin budgie smugglers. I'm not saying his twerking aint arousing but India is a deeply conservative country. The thing is contrary to Hindu culture.
In the accompanying interview, Malala delivers a little explainer as to when she wears it—“I wear it more when I am outside and in public”—as well as what the scarf is, “a cultural symbol for us Pashtuns.”
Actually, Pashtun women have a really pretty 'tsadar' though they'd also have a shawl or chador. Come to think of it, the Queen Gor' bless 'er, and other women of that class are big on head scarfs.
Why does Malala mention the fact that she is Pashtun? Why do I mention that I'm Tamil? Sadly, the answer is that me and Malala are proud of where we're from- probably coz our Mummies and Daddies and neighboring Uncles and Aunties and so forth were really nice to us.
Her adherence to it gives her the sort of authenticity that is comprehensible to the West.
Fuck off! Having a name like Malala instead of Maggie is enough to establish authenticity. This isn't Elizabeth Warren pretending to be Pocahontas.
That a practicing Muslim girl proud of her Pashtun identity would have found freedom only in the West is just what the
libtards who demand we take more and more refugees from shithole countries want. By contrast the
neoliberal white-savior-industrial complex
would just want us to drone strike the fuck out of every bunch of turbaned, bearded, blokes driving in a pickup truck with a rocket launcher or two
ordered to justify decades of ill-considered interventions.
For the last two decades 'ill-considered' interventions have had to with fucking over those fuckers where they live before they can turn up on our shores to 9/11 out asses. Seriously, nobody gives a fuck about women- which is why Feminism exists. How come there is no Hindu Malala? There must be some backward bunch of cretins who don't want their daughters educated. But the Hindus aren't trying to kill us. So we won't spend money 'intervening'.
If the West wishes to see Malala as the perpetual brave girl,
The World wants to see girls as brave. Why? Girls who aint brave won't have babies. Humanity will die out.
the Pakistani religious right wants to present her as a crafty woman.
To be fair, the Tehreek e Taliban tried to ensure she'd be a draughty woman with a big hole in her head through which the wind could blow.
Similarly savior-friendly is the single-issue solution of “girls’ education.”
Nobody wants to be the savior of poor people in shitty parts of the world. On the other hand, if nutters from there try to kill us then we want to bomb those fuckers to death. We may celebrate the recovery of a girl they shot coz that shows our Science is better than their Fanaticism.
“If one girl with an education can change the world,” Malala has said, “imagine what 130 million can do.”
Okay, maybe she hasn't completely recovered. On the other hand, she did PPE at Oxford- i.e. has become as stupid as shit.
Inherent in this sort of reductionism is the premise that the world’s needy inhabit a simpler world without the complexities of intertwined issues and consequences.
This worthless cretin lives in a very simple world where everybody has a savior complex towards women from her part of the world whereas the truth is nobody gives a shit about them.
Building a girls’ school, like the one Malala once went to,
which her family built. They were educational entrepreneurs.
thus becomes the antidote for decades of Western interventions, war, and large-scale neglect.
No it hasn't. It was briefly under British suzerainty but the Brits built nothing there. This was because no matter who or what, was the Akhond of Swat, fucking with him was so not worth it.
The fact that girls’ education does not in fact solve everything is never mentioned.
Nor is the fact that farting doesn't solve everything mentioned each time someone toots and says 'better out than in'. Zakaria finds this very sinister. What a superb lawyer she must be!
As Khoja-Moolji discovered
Khojas like her are now targets for Islamic militants in Karachi
while visiting girls’ schools in rural Sindh, the Pakistani province where I was born and raised, it was not access to education that was the problem, but the quality of education and instruction.
This fool doesn't get that access to quality education matters. Access to worthless education doesn't.
The rampant joblessness girls saw among their fathers and brothers was also a problem. Simply put, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at girls’ education is unsurprisingly not the magic wand that too many saviors would like for it to be.
But appearing to throw away money has a reputational effect which makes the game worth the candle.
Reinforced by figures like Malala, the Western world refuses to confront the folly of simple solutions,
While this cretin thinks 'the Western World' gives a shit about peeps in shithole countries who reproduce like rabbits.
or their error in imagining and universalizing all “girlhood” as a time of innocent curiosity and exploration.
As opposed to what? Deeply perverted curiosity and exploration? What sort of porn has this woman been watching?
No one who drinks the Kool-Aid of magical thinking pauses to consider that this sort of girlhood is only available to the female progeny of wealthy Westerners.
Or wealthy Easterners or middle class Easterners in countries which have undergone demographic transition- at least partly coz women are getting jobs as Computer programmers or FinTech mavens.
Malala looks beautiful, even resplendent, on the cover of British Vogue. Underneath her photo are the words “Survivor, activist, legend.”
Whereas it ought to have read 'Western stooge- in the opinion of a stupid American lawyer of Pakistani heritage.'
There is a funerary air to this sort of commemoration on a magazine cover at the age of twenty-three.
No there isn't. British Vogue says Red is the color of energy, of revolution. 'Red is life’s intensifier, with an edge of impolite danger, like pouring petrol on a barbecue.' That's why Vogue gave Malala a strong red background.
Perhaps this is so because the old Malala, the ordinary girl blogger, did in fact die on that life-saving flight that flew her from Pakistan to the United Kingdom.
Or perhaps this cretin is brain dead.
The Malala that survived is entombed in expectations;
This cretin is entombed in cliches.
in the West, they can indeed be summed up by “survivor, activist, legend.”
If people expect a lot of you, it becomes easier for you to achieve a lot. This stupid woman probably thinks that when people are entombed or buried in coffins then everybody expects them to return to life and get good jobs with Apple.
Those who are invested in a certain sort of “liberated” Muslim woman
tend to be those same women and those connected to them by ties of blood or affection
commemorated in the pulp-nonfiction rescue of books like Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel or Malala’s own I Am Malala need to believe that she is free, better off, holy—in the wildly rich neoliberal sense.
Niall Ferguson is married to the beautiful Ayaan. They have a son together. I hope sonny see's his Mum, like all Mums, is holy. Under her feet is paradise.
This is where the story is now. The beautiful, feminist Malala staring out
She isn't staring out. Her eyes are luminous and kind.
from the cover of Vogue is, despite all her struggles, still burdened by inordinate expectations.
No she isn't. This is because she did PPE at Oxford. It will be a miracle if she can still tie her shoelaces. On the other hand, had she studied Kung Fu at Shaolin, then we'd have inordinate expectations of her kicking to death various terrorists in scenic locations.
Whatever was left untouched by the paranoia she elicits among Pakistanis, and the pride she generates among Westerners, has since been gulped down by celebrity.
Jealous much, Zakaria?
A young woman who chooses not to write about winning the Nobel Prize at age seventeen in her college essay
Brits don't go in for that shite. Maybe Malala was applying to Harvard as her 'safety school'.
because she is “embarrassed” is in too many ways living a pre-determined life,
No it isn't. She could have gone to the LSE or SOAS etc. Education enables people to rise above 'pre-determination'.
one where Malala the icon, the celebrity, the legend, if you will, engulfs entirely any other kinds.
Kinds of what? This cretin forgot what she herself was ranting about.
We must free Malala.
No we must free Britney. Malala can look after herself.
As feminists, we should
pull each others' hair and scratch each others' eyes out.
champion the Malala who is not a prisoner of her own story,
that's the real Malala, not the freak this cretin has invented
one who breaks out, who abandons the carefully choreographed persona of an international celebrity, Nobel Prize Winner, etc., and embraces the possibility of messing up or even (imagine) being a bit irresponsible.
Malala should be more like Britney Spears.
All of those experiences are the privilege of the actually free.
No. Anyone can mess up- even in prison- or so binge watching 'Orange is the new black' has convinced me.
Vogue is a worthy conquest, but laying claim to her own individuality would be even better.
But I already laid claim to Malala's individuality. Zakaria must get in line.
Perhaps if she realizes this, then Malala would not be freaked out by the choices and decisions that confront her now that she has graduated from Oxford;
In other words, she won't be a young woman with an excellent educational credential who has lots of different very attractive career and other opportunities before her.
she would be delighting in them. If she doesn’t, then the rest of us need to get together and free Malala.By writing worthless shite.
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