And a Child Shall Lead Us

Three beautiful girls are the most treasured individuals in my life.  As a father, directly and indirectly, my world revolves around my daughters.  Through the course of each day, my thoughts consciously connect with their world and lives.  This comes in the form of memories and hopes, reflections of our past and imaginations on how I envision their future.

My sense of awareness is heightened by the separation that engulfs us and the good things I hope to see unfold in their lives.  It's also raised by personal experiences I've lived in my travels throughout the world, especially those many sojourns into troubled lands where I've witnessed the dumbfounding paradox of human behavior, the best and worst of humanity.

Whenever a story breaks depicting the harshness and cruelty of injury inflicted by cowardly individuals on the life of another, especially a child, and even more so a girl, there is a very personal fury I feel.  And the fury rises when the act committed was driven by hate, ignorance, and a depraved self-righteousness of individuals who believe they are acting in obedience to God and honoring the truths of His decrees.  Such was the case with the shooting of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai on October 9 in the lush Swat Valley of Pakistan.

Malala became known around the world in 2009 when at age 11 her diary dispatches were published by the BBC Urdu service.  Her writings both charmed and alarmed the greater world about life under the oppressive shadow of Taliban occupation.  In published accounts, she conveys her simple desire for all Pakistani girls, including herself, to be allowed to attend school and receive an education.  It was such hopes and dreams that made her a prominent target of the Taliban.

Malala's hometown of Mingora became the center of Taliban violence beginning in 2007 when the religious group pushed its way to power.  Staunch opponents of female education, the Taliban terrorized students and teachers, bombing hundreds of schools and forcing remaining schools to close their doors to girls.  Though their acts of violence paralyzed the area in fear, they could not silence the voice of a young girl nor kill her dream.

Despite the intimidation, Malala continued to write and speak.  It was such boldness and courage that triggered the horrifying event of October 9 when Taliban gunmen stopped a bus transporting her home from school.  The gunmen boarded the bus, asked for Malala by name, then shot her in the head and neck at point-blank range.  Miraculously she survived.  And the storm that has ensued from this spineless act could very well produce what billions of dollars and a decade of war have been unable to accomplish: The end of the Taliban.

As Malala clings to life in a hospital in England, she has become an international hero - a change agent.  Like Mandela, King, and Ghandi, her stand has exposed the ugliness of fanatics who hoped to silence her and put an end to her dream.  Her selfless courage has again brought to light the cancer of extremism and a self-serving righteousness that wanders meticulously through our world masquerading under the name of God in various forms.  You need not travel to Pakistan to find it; it's very much alive here in the United States, in our own institutions of faith.  The supposed trademarks of Christianity – love, forgiveness, acceptance – are often conspicuously absent in our representations and endeavors, cloaked in the shroud of some form of holiness that is nothing but polarizing, and in many respects, one diametrically opposed to those traits that should govern the life of a person who claims to be a Christian.  Shockingly, our actions are often not much different from those of the Taliban.

The incongruity found in the tragic act of repulsive evil inflicted on Malala is this:  If your religion espouses certain beliefs and truly practices such proclamations – as the Taliban does – why would you not be grateful for someone who broadcasts your tenets of faith to the entire world?  It's apparent their act of retaliation against the most defenseless of all, a child, reveals the true nature of hate and fear and control that governs their belief system as well as their hearts: rules of ideology that run counter to God and His true nature.  May all of us who call ourselves Christians examine our own hearts and ask a searing question:  How often are our acts of commission and omission, our thoughts and attitudes toward others, similar in spirit to the Taliban?

And a child shall lead us.  Sometimes it takes the innocent and altruistic act of a child to wake us from our slumber.  In their courageous and humble undertakings we see what has been unseen in the rhetoric and cruelty of prejudice, in the history and drama that has enveloped centuries of living and stifled the hopes and dreams of uncounted millions.  The innocence and purity of the solitary pursuit of a dream bursting in the heart of a young girl in Central Asia could very well become the great tipping point to arouse the consciousness of not only the nation of Pakistan, but also the entire world.

So Malala, we in the free world stand with you and pray for your miraculous recovery.  You could very well be remembered in history as the girl who brought the evil regime of the Taliban to its ultimate demise because you dared to demand more in voicing your dream. "I have the right to speak up.  I have the right of education.  I have the right to sing."  In the end you will win.  And because of you, my girls win, as do all young girls on this planet.