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“Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head three months ago by the Taliban for advocating the education of girls, has been discharged from a British hospital,” The New York Times reports.
“Doctors said she had made ‘excellent progress’ and would be staying with her family nearby before returning for further surgery to rebuild her skull in about four weeks.”
The attack on Malala prompted calls to strengthen Muslim democrats’ capacity to combat extremist ideology.
Radical extremism can only be defeated through a long-term, sustained war of ideas conducted by Muslim democrats and modernizers within their own communities, said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former envoy to the US and a professor of international relations at Boston University.
“Eventually, the United States will have to find Muslim allies who help limit the influence of ideas or organizations that turn some young Muslims into terrorists,” he argued. ‘Washington has made few efforts toward that end, depending on friendly autocrats or whoever manages to get elected instead of working to strengthen modernizing democrats who share Western values.”
The attack came shortly after Malala was awarded a Civic Courage Prize by the Centre for Civic Education in Islamabad on September 15, International Democracy Day.
The Centre for Civic Education is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance NGO.
