I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (25)

Most Pakistanis are Sunnis like us – more than eighty per cent – but within that we are again many groups. By far the biggest group is the Barelvis, who are named after a nineteenth-century madrasa in Bareilly, which lies in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Then we have the Deobandi, named after another famous nineteenth-century madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, this time in the village of Deoband. They are very conservative and most of our madrasas are Deobandi. We also have the Ahl-e-Hadith (people of the Hadith), who are Salafists. This group is more Arab-influenced and even more conservative than the others. They are what the West calls fundamentalists. They don’t accept our saints and shrines – many Pakistanis are also mystical people and gather at Sufi shrines to dance and worship. Each of these strands has many different subgroups.



The mufti on Khushal Street was a member of Tablighi Jamaat, a Deobandi group that holds a huge rally every year at its headquarters in Raiwind, near Lahore, attended by millions of people. Our last dictator General Zia used to go there, and in the 1980s, under his regime, the Tablighis became very powerful. Many of the imams appointed to preach in army barracks were Tablighis and army officers would often take leave and go on preaching tours for the group.

One night, after the mufti had failed to persuade our landlady to cancel our lease, he gathered some of the influential people and elders of our mohalla into a delegation and turned up at our door. There were seven people – some other senior Tablighis, a mosque keeper, a former jihadi and a shopkeeper – and they filled our small house.

My father seemed worried and shooed us into the other room, but the house was small so we could hear every word. ‘I am representing the Ulema and Tablighian and Taliban,’ Mullah Ghulamullah said, referring to not just one but two organisations of Muslim scholars to give himself gravitas. ‘I am representing good Muslims and we all think your girls’ school is haram and a blasphemy. You should close it. Girls should not be going to school,’ he continued. ‘A girl is so sacred she should be in purdah, and so private that there is no lady’s name in the Quran as God doesn’t want her to be named.’

My father could listen no more. ‘Maryam is mentioned everywhere in the Quran. Was she not a woman and a good woman at that?’

‘No,’ said the mullah. ‘She is only there to prove that Isa [Jesus] was the son of Maryam, not the son of God!’

‘That may be,’ replied my father. ‘But I am pointing out that the Quran names Maryam.’

The mufti started to object but my father had had enough. Turning to the group, he said, ‘When this gentleman passes me on the street, I look to him and greet him but he doesn’t answer, he just bows his head.’


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The mullah looked down embarrassed because greeting someone properly is important in Islam. ‘You run the haram school,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t want to greet you.’

Then one of the other men spoke up. ‘I’d heard you were an infidel,’ he said to my father, ‘but there are Qurans in your room.’

‘Of course there are!’ replied my father, astonished that his faith would be questioned. ‘I am a Muslim.’

‘Let’s get back to the subject of the school,’ said the mufti, who could see the discussion was not going his way. ‘There are men in the reception area of the school, and they see the girls enter, and this is very bad.’

‘I have a solution,’ said my father. ‘The school has another gate. The girls will enter through that.’

The mullah clearly wasn’t happy as he wanted the school closed altogether. But the elders were happy with this compromise and they left.

My father suspected this would not be the end of the matter. What we knew and they didn’t was that the mufti’s own niece attended the school in secret. So a few days later my father called the mufti’s elder brother, the girl’s father.

‘I am very tired of your brother,’ he said. ‘What kind of mullah is he? He’s driving us crazy. Can you help to get him off our backs?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, Ziauddin,’ he replied. ‘I have trouble in my home too. He lives with us and has told his wife that she must observe purdah from us and that our wives must observe purdah from him, all in this small space. Our wives are like sisters to him and his is like a sister to us, but this madman has made our house a hell. I am sorry but I can’t help you.’

My father was right to think this man was not going to give up – mullahs had become more powerful figures since Zia’s rule and campaign of Islamisation.

In some ways General Musharraf was very different from General Zia. Though he usually dressed in uniform, he occasionally wore Western suits and he called himself chief executive instead of chief martial law administrator. He also kept dogs, which we Muslims regard as unclean. Instead of Zia’s Islamisation he began what he called ‘enlightened moderation’. He opened up our media, allowing new private TV channels and female newsreaders, as well as showing dancing on television. The celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve was allowed. He even sanctioned an annual pop concert on the eve of Independence Day, which was broadcast to the nation. He did something which our democratic rulers hadn’t, even Benazir, and abolished the law that for a woman to prove she was raped, she had to produce four male witnesses. He appointed the first woman governor of the state bank and the first women airline pilots and coastguards. He even announced we would have female guards at Jinnah’s tomb in Karachi.