Malala Yousafzai has spoken out against Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from the US. Trump had called for a halt to Muslims being allowed to enter the US until authorities could ‘figure out’ Muslim attitudes to the country, in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings which killed 14 people.
She has said that his words are ‘full of hatred’ and warned that his anti-Muslim comments will only make fundamentalism worse, and radicalise more terrorists.
The 18 year old Nobel Prize winner (the youngest ever) gave Trump this reality check while speaking at an event to mark one year since a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar.
On 16 December 2014 nine extremists scaled the walls of an army-run school in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, throwing grenades and opening fire on the children and their teachers, leaving more than 150 dead.
Education, not discrimination is what will stop terror according to Malala. In 2012, she was herself shot in the head and nearly killed by the Taliban simply because she went to school.
‘There are these terrorist attacks happening, for example what happened in Paris or what happened in Peshawar a year ago’, Malala said, referring to last month’s Islamic State attack which killed 130 people.
‘If we want to end terrorism we need to bring quality education so we defeat the mind set of the terrorism mentality and of hatred.’
Speaking yesterday at the event in Birmingham, Malala told AFP news agency: ‘Well, that’s really tragic that you hear these comments which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others.’
She was also quoted as saying that his comments could ‘radicalise more terrorists’ and urged politicians and the media to exercise more caution.
‘If your intention is to stop terrorism, do not try to blame the whole population of Muslims for it because it cannot stop terrorists’, she said.
Malala joins the long, long list of people who have publically condemned Trump’s anti-Muslim comments in which he blithely generalises about 1.6 million people and aligns them with terrorists.
He has been widely criticised, including by fellow Republicans. David Cameron has said they are ‘divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong’ and even Nigel Farage has said ‘on this occasion he has gone too far.’
Unlike them, however, Malala doesn’t have to say this as a politician to distance herself from Trump – she speaks from experience. Despite the attempt on her life by terrorists, she still speaks out and continues to advocate for girls to receive an education.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.