8 Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award. Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. […] I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth – which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave. […] This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change. I am here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education. […] Education is one of the blessings of life – and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations. We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which some people think only boys can. But things did not remain the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, it suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten when more than 400 schools were destroyed. Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares. Education went from being a right to being a crime. Girls were stopped from going to school. When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too. I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one. I decided to speak up. We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not learned, have you not learned that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity? Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he says, “Do not harm yourself or others?” Malala Yousafzai: Nobel lecture Before you read Make up your mind about the following questions. • Why is education important for the lives of children around the world? • What are the consequences if young people are excluded from education? • Which aspects prevent children from getting the education they deserve? Reading: Education for all a) Read this speech and highlight the passages that you think are the most powerful. b) Try to find out why these passages stick out from the rest of the speech. 1 2 VIP file V Malala Yousafzai • born 12 July 1997 • Her parents run a number of schools in northwest Pakistan, a region that is often attacked by Taliban fighters. • From the age of 12 she wrote an internet blog about the situation under Taliban occupation, focusing on the education of girls. • On 9 October 2012 Malala was on her way to school when she was shot in the head by Taliban fighters who wanted to stop her from promoting the education of girls. • She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her struggle for female education. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 104 Famous speeches Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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