page_title: Malala Yousafzai
section_title: Reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Malala Yousafzai / Murder attempt / Reaction
caption_attribution_description: United States President Barack Obama (right), First Lady Michelle Obama (second from left), and their daughter Malia (left) meet with Malala Yousafzai (second from right), a young Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012, in the Oval Office on 11 October 2013.
context_page_description: Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become "the most prominent citizen" of the country.
  Yousafzai was born to a Pashtun family in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Her family came to run a chain of schools in the region. Considering Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Pakistani Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region.
context_section_description: The murder attempt received worldwide media coverage and produced an outpouring of sympathy and anger. Protests against the shooting were held in several Pakistani cities the day after the attack, and over 2 million people signed the Right to Education campaign's petition, which led to ratification of the first Right to Education Bill in Pakistan. Pakistani officials offered a 10 million rupee (US$105,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers. Responding to concerns about his safety, Yousafzai's father said: "We wouldn't leave our country if my daughter survives or not. We have an ideology that advocates peace. The (Pakistani) Taliban cannot stop all independent voices through the force of bullets."
  Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari described the shooting as an attack on "civilized people". UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it a "heinous and cowardly act". United States President Barack Obama found the attack "reprehensible, disgusting and tragic", while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Yousafzai had been "very brave in standing up for the rights of girls" and that the attackers had been "threatened by that kind of empowerment". British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the shooting "barbaric" and that it had "shocked Pakistan and the world".
  American singer Madonna dedicated her song "Human Nature" to Yousafzai at a concert in Los Angeles the day of the attack, as well had a temporary Malala tattoo on her back. American actress Angelina Jolie wrote an article about explaining the event to her children and answering questions like "Why did those men think they needed to kill Malala?" Jolie later donated $200,000 to the Malala Fund for girls' education. Former First Lady of the United States Laura Bush wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which she compared Yousafzai to Holocaust diarist Anne Frank. Indian director Amjad Khan announced that he would be making a biographical film based on Yousafzai.
  Ehsanullah Ehsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Yousafzai "is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity", adding that if she survived, the group would target her again.
  In the days following the attack, the Pakistani Taliban reiterated its justification, saying Yousafzai had been brainwashed by her father: "We warned him several times to stop his daughter from using dirty language against us, but he didn't listen and forced us to take this extreme step." The Pakistani Taliban also justified its attack as part of religious scripture, stating that the Quran says that "people propagating against Islam and Islamic forces would be killed", going on to say that "Sharia says that even a child can be killed if he is propagating against Islam".
  On 12 October 2012, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā – a ruling of Islamic law – against the (Pakistani) Taliban gunmen who tried to kill Yousafzai. Islamic scholars from the Sunni Ittehad Council publicly denounced attempts by the Pakistani Taliban to mount religious justifications for the shooting of Yousafzai and two of her classmates.
  Although the attack was roundly condemned in Pakistan, "some fringe Pakistani political parties and extremist outfits" have aired conspiracy theories, such as the shooting being staged by the American Central Intelligence Agency to provide an excuse for continuing drone attacks. The Pakistani Taliban and some other pro-Pakistani Taliban elements branded Yousafzai an "American spy".
caption: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and their daughter Malia meet Yousafzai in the Oval Office, 11 October 2013
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