Abira Ashfaq

We must ask complex questions and be willing to handle equally complicated answers. As sad and horrific as it is, when the media exploits the tragic shooting of a child to rally support for an overly simplified political position, you know something is wrong.  Reality is always more complex—and loathing the Taliban is fast becoming idiomatic language. We must unequivocally condemn the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, an intelligent child, alive to her reality, and an advocate for social change.  We must support efforts towards female education in Taliban-heavy areas and everywhere.  But, we must also discover the facts and question the simplistic morality the New York Times presents: the bad Taliban, painted in broad strokes as an irremediably barbaric, authoritarian, misogynist, monolithic entity and the rest of us united in our desire to put an end to obscurantist views. “What can Pakistan and its allies do to either work with the Taliban on reform initiatives, or stop it from terrorizing civilians?” the NYT asks. Working with them, as the question suggests, seems rhetorical, even disingenuous, given the paper’s own general reporting on Pakistan and especially when the attempted murder came at the heels of a political party’s march to Waziristan to do something just like […]