Pakistan's Malala: Simple response shocks comedian Stewart

If you know anything about American comedian Jon Stewart, then you know he’s not easily silenced nor is he usually in awe unless you count any given conservative Republican action in the United States government. In surprising character for Stewart, he gushed over a young Pakistani teen girl. 

As Malala entered the stage of the largely syndicated program on Comedy Central, it was obvious that both the interviewer and the inerviewee were feeling honored.

Across the interview desk, Stewart was in complete admiration of this 16 year old girl who recently released a book about her experience with the Taliban.  Malala Yousafzai, an advocate for womens rights and access to education, is the youngest in her region to be so passionate and out spoken about the issues girls and women face.  She believes in it so much that she was targeted and shot by the Taliban out of their fear of her message to the world.

At a mere 14 years of age, as Malala was on a bus, a Talib fighter boarded the bus, targeted her and shot her in the head.   To everyone’s surprise, she survived the attack and made a full recovery.   Since then, she has become a voice and model figure in the human rights field.

Now, she is set to become the youngest Nobel Peace laureate in the world.

In the most poignant part of the interview, Jon Stewart asks Malala about her internal thoughts about learning that she was a target of the Taliban. Her response enthralled the entire room.

“I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, 'If he comes, what would you do Malala?' then I would reply to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.'  But then I said, 'If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.' Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that 'I even want education for your children as well.' And I will tell him, 'That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”