A letter to Adnan Rashid: Do the Taliban have a bullet for every raised voice?

You say Malala is like your sister.We don’t support the brother who stands by the attacker when his sister is...

Dear Mr Adnan Rashid,

I am writing to you in my personal capacity, as I’m shocked by what you have written to Malala Yousufzai, my sister by religion. I am surprised that you don’t want to argue whether religion permits attacking a girl or not, and yet, you have the audacity to say that your emotions for Malala were brotherly.

In Islam, and in our culture (and I suppose in your culture, too), we don’t support the brother who stands by the attacker when his sister is attacked.

In her articles published in BBC Urdu, Malala only wrote about her woes after not being able to go to school because the Taliban were blowing them up. So, the Taliban have a bullet for every dissenting voice? Why couldn’t they just write a letter explaining their reasons to blow up schools (just as you did in your letter)?

You say education being imparted by these schools is wrong, therefore, blowing them up is right, so why don’t the Taliban open their own schools to impart the ’right’ education. Why can’t they offer an alternative and let people adopt it according to their own free will?

For the justification of attacks on anti-polio teams, you quote Bertrand Russell,

“Diet, injections and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable”.

This means that the polio vaccine is bad and attacking anti-polio teams is right. Why don’t the Taliban invent a polio vaccine of their own, to produce the sort of character that they desire? And till that polio vaccine is made, please advise as to what the nation should do to avoid being crippled by the disease?

Let me just make it very clear: I’m against the killing of innocent people, no matter who carries out these killings  — the Americans or the Taliban, drone strikes or suicide bombings. I am sure you have some form of justification for killing 40,000 Pakistanis (most of them Muslims) and crippling hundreds and thousands of others.

And lastly, please do not kill me for writing this letter.

Regards,

Brother of Malala Yousafzai

Read more by Omair here