“I Am Malala”, A Book Review by Michelle Welch

April 7, 2014 by Del_Swann
Review by Michelle WelchBefore I get to the book review, I want to mention a new app that has been released by Shambhala for iPad/iPhone users. A free meditation app is now available in the iTunes store. The Shambhala Meditation App is designed to provide a clear way for people to learn more about the Shambhala community, encourage meditation, and to find local centers. Read this article to learn more or go straight to the iTunes store to download the app.

I read rather widely, fiction and nonfiction in all sorts of genres and subjects, and this leads me to many books that are not strictly Buddhist or Shambhala-related. As I study more about Shambhala and about Buddhism, however, I begin to see things in a different light, and I’m surprised at how much of the Great Eastern Sun can be found in many of my favorite books.

I Am Malala is the memoir of the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban on her way home from school. In the book, Malala recounts not only the assassination attempt but the many things that led up to it, starting with her father’s life-long fight to bring education to underserved populations including girls and the poor, the political and economic unrest in her region of Pakistan, the devastating floods and earthquakes that left a needy population open to the influence of the Taliban, how her father spoke out against the Taliban’s harsher measures such as the closing of schools, and how Malala herself began to follow in her father’s footsteps of political activism as early as age 11. The story of this brave young woman is inspiring and humbling to read.

It is Malala’s attitude toward the Taliban, the very people who wanted to kill her to silence her protests, that is most amazing and most relevant to the Shambhala vision as I understand it. Her enormous capacity for compassion, forgiveness, and equanimity can best be summed up in a quote from her interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:

“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.'”