Malala Yousafzai Wants The Taliban ‘Held Accountable For Their Crimes’
NEW YORK — Activist Malala Yousafzai returned to New York this week to discuss the paperback release of her memoir “Finding My Way” — but the conversation quickly moved beyond her story of attending college and growing into adulthood.
At the center was the issue that has defined much of Yousafzai’s public life: The Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women and girls and its use of religion to justify restrictions on their rights.
Speaking at The Strand Bookstore on Wednesday, Yousafzai said the international community must do more to challenge the Taliban and reject the idea that its policies represent Islam.
READ: The Taliban’s Treatment Of Women Should Shock The Conscience Of Humanity
“For myself, and for women in every part of the world, there are two things that I have learned from the changes that have happened,” she said. “One is that there is little protection for women in international law. Perpetrators like the Taliban are not held accountable for their crimes.”
The event marked the paperback launch of her second book (published in hardcover last year), a memoir about her life after she became internationally known as a teenager for advocating girls’ education. She is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history, receiving the Peace Prize in 2014 at age 17. Her first book “I Am Malala,” published in 2014, became an international bestseller.
Now 29, Yousafzai, a practicing Muslim who was shot by the Taliban at age 15 after campaigning for girls’ education, has increasingly focused her advocacy on the status of women and girls in Afghanistan.
The Taliban banned girls from secondary education after retaking control of Afghanistan in 2021 and have since imposed further restrictions on women’s education, employment and participation in public life. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from secondary education.
For Yousafzai, separating the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam from the religion itself is essential. She has previously argued that the Taliban’s claim that restrictions on women are religiously mandated is not supported by Muslim scholarship.
In a 2023 lecture, she said Muslim scholars, including Afghan scholars, have made clear that Islam does not prohibit girls and women from receiving an education or working. She has characterized the Taliban’s religious justification as an excuse for maintaining power.
That argument has become a recurring part of Yousafzai’s advocacy. At a conference last year involving Muslim leaders, she called on Muslim scholars and political leaders to challenge the Taliban’s policies directly, saying that the group had “weaponized” faith to justify its treatment of women and girls.
At The Strand event, Yousafzai connected that broader fight to the personal choices explored in “Finding My Way.” The memoir recounts the backlash she faced over choices that critics viewed as inconsistent with her culture, including wearing jeans while attending college in the U.K. She described being told that she was abandoning her culture while also being criticized for continuing to cover her head.
“The controversy began when I started wearing jeans in college,”she recalled. “Somebody took a photo of me just walking like any other student, wearing jeans, and the photo went on social media. There was a big backlash. People said that I was against our culture and that I had brought shame to the country. They also said I was not liberated enough because I covered my head.”
She said her parents “asked me on the phone, ‘What are you going to do about this?’ And I said, ‘Nothing. Why do I have to defend what I get to wear? Why do I have to explain it?’ It is about having the opportunity to make choices in my life.”
For Yousafzai, the episode illustrated a broader question about who gets to decide how women should live. She said the issue was ultimately about having the opportunity to make choices about her own life.
That principle is also at the heart of her work in Afghanistan, where she said women and girls are being denied the ability to make fundamental decisions about their futures. Yousafzai said the lack of meaningful avenues for justice inside Afghanistan makes international accountability particularly important. Since the Taliban controls the country’s institutions, including police and courts, she argued, Afghan women cannot rely on the domestic system to challenge the restrictions imposed on them.
She again called on governments and international institutions not to look away.
“One is that there is little protection for women in international law. Perpetrators like the Taliban are not held accountable for their crimes,” she said.
The Malala Fund, which Yousafzai co-founded, supports alternative education programs for Afghan girls, including home- and community-based schools and digital, radio and TV programming. The organization says nearly 1.4 million girls have been prevented from attending school beyond sixth grade since the Taliban takeover.
Yousafzai described conversations with Afghan girls who continue to learn despite the risks. One girl told her that reading a book alone at home felt like an act of resistance.
For Yousafzai, education has therefore become more than a personal aspiration. Under the Taliban’s restrictions, she said, learning itself can become a way for girls to assert their existence and imagine a future beyond the limits imposed on them.
Yousafzai, who will be at the United Nations next week to meet with world leaders, said she wants governments to recognize what is happening in Afghanistan. Her message is ultimately framed around visibility: The Taliban, she said, seeks to erase women from public life, while education, storytelling and international solidarity can help ensure they are seen and heard.
For Afghan girls, she added, the immediate goal remains straightforward: Creating a future in which going to school is once again an ordinary part of life.
Yousafzai said that day will require both educational support and a sustained challenge to the Taliban’s use of religion as a justification for excluding women and girls from public life.
“We have to stay determined,” she said. “We may not have all the answers, but we have to be present and keep working every single day.”
Clemente Lisi serves as executive editor at Religion Unplugged.