Of course, with all the Pakistani children that the United States has killed in drone strikes, the extent to which we have the right to condemn the Taliban for shooting Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl who challenged its rigid views on education for girls, is debatable.
But the Taliban only compounded its crime when it tried to justify an act more befitting straight out of the 1300s, if guns existed then. At the Atlantic, Ron Synovitz writes about a letter in which
… the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) states its case for the attack and threatens anyone who challenges its strict interpretation of Shari’a law. … the letter says that “Yousafzai was playing a vital role in bucking up the emotions” of Pakistan’s military and government “and was inviting Muslims to hate mujahideen.”
… “[i]t is a clear command of Shariah that any female who, by any means, plays a role in the war against mujahideen should be killed.” It then seeks to justify the shooting of the schoolgirl by citing passages from the Koran in which a child or woman was killed.
“If anyone argues about [Yousafzai’s] young age, then [consult] the story of Hazrat Khizar in the Koran relating that Hazrat Khizar — while traveling with the Prophet Musa — killed a child,” the letter reads. “Arguing about the reason for his killing, he said that the parents of this child are pious and in future [the child] will cause a bad name for them.”
A mind like a steel trap — one shudders to think that one day the Taliban, at least in its Afghan incarnation, may one day be represented at the United Nations.
In the meantime, the TTP has vowed, if she survives, to target Malala again.