Daily Times

It seems like a page taken out from the page of a movie script. A rather unknown girl, Malala Yousafzai, living in a small town of Pakistan, becomes the darling of millions around the globe, almost instantaneously. Thanks to the electronic and social media, which brought her dreadful encounter with death to the fore, and from there on, there has been no end to the unprecedented attention and love she has been garnering all over the world. Recently, she was seen at the Oval Office with the President of the United States and his family, demonstrating her tireless spirit, and later, receiving accolades from the Queen of England. Strange isn’t it that luck often has the last laugh? There were people who wanted to kill her for her convictions, and now there are people lining up to catch a glimpse of her. Who says that fairy tales do not exist in the real world? An age old Urdu saying comes to mind: “Jissay Allah rakhay, usse kaun chakhay” (The one who is protected by God, remains unharmed despite all the sinister efforts).

Call it whatever syndrome, but we are just not used to anything nice or positive. We tend to look deep and try to be extremely cynical. In that attempt, we tend to discredit any and everything around us. Any other country on the face of the earth would have been beaming with pride, but here we have people frothing with rage. After all, according to their line of thinking, the evil wicked west is trying to humiliate the entire Muslim world, by making Malala the poster child of ‘their’ values. The arguments and counter-arguments about the lack of apathy and concern for the victim of drones and the plight of those children is raised to create confusion and doubts about the teenager in question. It is as if the teenager is responsible for the unmanned aircraft bombing our territories.

Right from the attack on her by the Taliban, there has been a ferocious campaign against Malala in her homeland. It was called a ‘drama’, and the social media had photographs from various angles, challenging her bullet wounds. Looking at those meaningless and baseless arguments, anyone with the intellect of an insect would have relented, but no such luck here, because we have reached the proverbial rock bottom. When Madonna displayed a tattoo of Malala’s name on her bare back in a concert, the self-righteous men and women were out on the idiot box beating their pinata of morality. Yes, all this while pointing towards a child, perhaps of the age of their own daughters, and convicting her with ‘guilt by association’. Again, it was as if Malala had instructed Madonna to display her name in that questionable fashion.

Whether it is her speech at the United Nations, her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, her appearances with leaders of the world promoting her biography, everything is being dissected with the sharpest possible scalpels. If you ask me why that is so, it is the shame and disgrace that we feel when the supposedly ‘sinful’ west demonstrates something that was once considered ‘our’ trait. Now, hypothetically picture this, and ponder for a moment. Would the reaction from a good number of our people be so venomous, if the same Malala was airlifted to Jeddah, Riyadh or Tehran for treatment? Would the same people, who are raising so much hue and cry about the west making her a poster child be raising the same concerns if the young girl was given the royal treatment by the Royals of the Holy Land or the Ayatollahs of Iran?

We are of the mindset because of which we are simply unwilling to accept that goodness can stem from any religion or faith. Human beings are tied to one another through the basic tenet of humanity. The never-ending charade of accusations, innuendos and doubts about a teenager, who is seeking her fundamental right to education, is beyond any reasonable comprehension. But it is how our society wants to operate. Anything associated with the west is either wrong or immoral. There lies the real problem. Goodness comes from God and even a non-believer possesses that trait. Often we wonder how that could possibly happen. How could a non-believer be blessed as well? To those I say, it is the same God who provides the non-believers food, protection and sustenance, and if He does not distinguish between who believes in Him or not, then why do we? We are still caught up in this rather bizarre notion that good cannot prevail among people who do not share our faith. Another point to ponder is that no matter who we are and what our belief system may be, good is projected for a certain reason. It serves as a catalyst to motivate others to replicate. For that matter, goodness is sheer goodness, and it has no faith. It is an inherent and inborn human virtue. No doubt, that faith channels and steers it towards the right direction.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar