Nobel Peace Prize winner and Pakistani teenager activist Malala Yousafzai has condemned US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s remarks to ban Muslims from entering the US as “full of hatred”.
The 18-year-old girl said his comments blaming Muslims for terrorism would only “radicalise more terrorists”.
“Well that’s really tragic that you hear these comments (by Trump) which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others,” she told British media.
“It’s important that whatever politicians say, whatever the media say, they should be really, really careful about it.
If your intention is to stop terrorism, do not try to blame the whole population of Muslims for it because it cannot stop terrorism. It will radicalise more terrorists,” the added. Malala was speaking at an event in Birmingham to mark one year since a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, that left more than 150 dead, most of them children.
In 2012, Malala was herself shot in the head by the Taliban and air-lifted for life-saving surgery in the UK. The event in Birmingham, where she now lives with her family, was organised on Tuesday by her and her family, and two survivors of the attack, Ahmad Nawaz, 14, and Mohammed Ibrahim, 13, took part. “There are these terrorist attacks happening, for example what happened in Paris or what happened in Peshawar a year ago. It’s not just needed in Pakistan but across the world. If we want to end terrorism, we need to bring quality education so we defeat the mind-set of terrorism mentality and of hatred,” she said. Her father Ziauddin Yousafzai echoed her views, telling the audience: “If Americans don’t stand against their own Donald Trumps it (their strategy) will not work. It will be very unfair, very unjust that we associate 1.6 billion [number of Muslims] with a few terrorist organisations.” Trump, campaigning for the presidential polls.
Trump’s call to ban Muslims divisive, stupid: Cameron
British Prime Minister David Cameron termed as “divisive, stupid and wrong” Donald Trump’s infamous call for total shutdown of Muslims entering the US, but rejected a plea to ban the controversial Republican presidential hopeful from entering the UK. Instead, he said that a visit by him would “unite us all against him”. “I think his remarks are divisive, stupid and wrong and I think if he came to visit our country, he’d unite us all against him,” Cameron said when asked in the House of Commons whether he supported a petition to ban Trump from entering Britain.