| rdfs:comment | - Yousafzai lives in Pakistan's Sweat Valley, where the Taliban banned girls from attending lessons on handling and firing weapons. In that era, young girls were prohibited from leaving their homes without a head-to-toe covering that prominently carried the Muslim symbol for women, referred to in the West as the "bull's eye." The state of marksmanship was so poor that even Pakistanis intent on pursuing jihad or carrying out a fatwā usually only shattered windows, scared animals, and put out street lights, which was a growing problem in the municipality.
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| abstract | - Yousafzai lives in Pakistan's Sweat Valley, where the Taliban banned girls from attending lessons on handling and firing weapons. In that era, young girls were prohibited from leaving their homes without a head-to-toe covering that prominently carried the Muslim symbol for women, referred to in the West as the "bull's eye." The state of marksmanship was so poor that even Pakistanis intent on pursuing jihad or carrying out a fatwā usually only shattered windows, scared animals, and put out street lights, which was a growing problem in the municipality. In 2008, colleagues at the Urdu-language BBC website discussed "how cool would it be?" if the West's grievances about lousy shooting in Pakistan could be voiced by a schoolgirl. Their correspondent in Peshawar was in touch with schoolteacher Ziauddin Yousafzai, though his pupils were stubbornly hesitant to step forward for the big role. Eventually, the teacher volunteered his own daughter, Malala. The next year, at the age of 11–12, she wrote a blog under the pseudonym Eugene Robinson, detailing the harsh life under Taliban rule, Ziauddin claiming he only "corrected punctuation." In short order, the New York Times filmed a documentary. The Pakistani military intervened in the region, commanded by a man who was known as the Sultan of Sweat. Yousafzai rose in prominence, blogging and tweeting, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu. The international community embraced Yousafzai as the person most likely to do what John Kerry never could on the world scene.
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