Malala Yousafzai's UN Speech

The speech at the UN by young Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan is deservedly winning worldwide attention. Full text here. Malala of course would have been dead if Taliban lunatics had had their way: for them she is a “living symbol of the infidels and obscenity”. As it is she was shot in the head but survived. She is now well on the way to achieving legendary global status as a human rights activist.

This is not an occasion for a rigorous critique. The very fact that Malala is still alive and boldly challenging the Taliban tendency by giving a speech focused on human dignity and moderation from a female Muslim point of view is the key message of the occasion. Nonetheless, the lively Presenter’s Blog (aka Peter Watts) has been quick to analyse it:

Step-by-step to Logos

Logos is the logic of a speech; it’s argument. Malala’s argument is contained within paragraph eight, all of which I’m going to reproduce here, step-by-step, because the passage is so dense with power that each phrase deserves to individually understood:

“Dear sisters and brothers, we realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way, when we were in Swat, the north of Pakistan, we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.”

Light and darkness. Voice and silence. These paired opposites are examples of antithesis. They have a clean, binary logic that is enhanced by contrast. Malala then uses this foundation to create an analogy: “we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.

“The wise saying, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’. It is true. The extremists are afraid of pens and books. The power of education frightens them.”

Here, the well known commonplace “The pen is mightier than the sword” is used to move the argument to it’s next stage: Extremists are afraid of education. The technique used is epicrisis, where a widely accepted commonplace or maxim adds weight to an argument built upon it.

And so on.

Some speechwriters and public speaking experts build their work around all these clever Greek terms and techniques of rhetoric. I don’tfind them very interesting or important. They all come out naturally enough in a balanced energetic and well structured argument.

This part of the speech is a good passage by any standards. Short punchy sentences and a human story to drive home the point:

The wise saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It is true.

The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them.

They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them. This is why they killed 14 innocent students in the recent attack in Quetta.

And that is why they kill female teachers. That is why they are blasting schools every day because they were and they are afraid of change and equality that we will bring to our society.

And I remember that there was a boy in our school who was asked by a journalist: “Why are the Taliban against education?”

He answered very simply by pointing to his book, he said: “A Talib doesn’t know what is written inside this book.”

But then the energy dissipates in a melange of platitudes and hotch-potch examples:

They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would point guns at people’s heads just for going to school. These terrorists are misusing the name of Islam for their own personal benefit.

Pakistan is a peace-loving, democratic country. Pashtuns want education for their daughters and sons.

Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood. It is the duty and responsibility to get education for each child, that is what it says. Peace is a necessity for education. In many parts of the world, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism, war and conflicts stop children from going to schools.

We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering in many ways in many parts of the world.

In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labour. Many schools have been destroyed in Nigeria. People in Afghanistan have been affected by extremism.

Young girls have to do domestic child labour and are forced to get married at an early age. Poverty, ignorance, injustice, racism and the deprivation of basic rights are the main problems, faced by both men and women.

She gets back on track:

Today, I am focusing on women’s rights and girls’ education because they are suffering the most.

There was a time when women activists asked men to stand up for their rights. But this time we will do it by ourselves.

I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women’s rights, but I am focusing on women to be independent and fight for themselves…

And so on with ups and downs until the strong conclusion:

So let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism, let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons.

One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.

Education is the only solution. Education first. Thank you.

All in all, a strong enough speech that more than rose to the occasion.

Perhaps it even touched the significant contingent of UN cynics from those wide swathes of the ‘Muslim world’ where women are denied basic human rights (such as the right to vote) and who use every oportunity to manipulate UN processes to thwart liberalising ‘Western’ policies that might change that dismal state of affairs.