Malala Yousafzai was shot in October of last year by the Taliban for publicly advocating for girls’ education. She has since recovered and been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. On Friday 12 July 2013, Malala spoke at the UN in New York. The video of her speech is below, and the full text of her speech is also available here.

She spoke with a confidence that I have yet to see in a girl her age. I did notice though that there was some rhetoric along the lines of ‘the terrorists are bad, we must fight them’, and near the end she even called “upon all governments to fight against terrorism…”. I found it ironic that she said this, considering America’s drone program which terrorizes and kills innocent children everyday. This website has a great visualization of the 3,146 individuals who have been killed by drone strikes since 2004. Anyways, I don’t want to use her speech to make a political statement (although arguably I already did?) or take away from the awesomeness of her speech. Those statements were just something that caught me off guard. She spoke amazingly, phenomenally even, and I recommend everyone watch it. The CBC also highlighted some key moments and quotes from her speech on 12 July.

The real reason I was inspired to write this blog post because a friend sent me this blog the other day, which was basically a conspiracy theory by a guy named Dr. Mohammad Nauman Shad. He argues that Malala’s shooting was planned, she was never actually shot, she’s tied to the CIA and is doing everything for the USA’s political interest, etc etc. Here is a link to his blog post. Let me just say – it was ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I’d like to briefly rip apart just a few parts of his “analysis” here.

He starts by saying that the “Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) had blocked YouTube plus a thousand other websites that may leak sensitive information about the events to occur ahead.” — If this was really staged, the information would NOT be readily available online, and definitely not on YouTube.

He then tries to cast doubt in the reader’s mind about Malala’s intentions by saying that “Malala was a SHY 11 year old girl, who is somehow suddenly transoformed into a publically fearless teenager who becomes an educational activist!” — Who said she was shy? How is it so hard to believe that she developed confidence in two years? It’s actually quite normal. Also, where is your proof that she used to be shy? Lastly, you spelled the word ‘transformed’ wrong.

This blogger goes on about how Malala’s father is a businessman, and that since his school was being shut down, he had a interest in promoting education/schools in his area, and used his daughter to promote his cause. Even if her father’s school was being shut down because of “trouble” in SWAT, that is still a good enough reason to speak up about the importance of education. Just because they were a rich family or had a vested interest in building schools doesn’t take anything away from the cause.

The blogger asserts that because of the protests against drone strikes, the USA was in trouble and needed a distraction, which is why they created this Malala “hoax” — Okay, yes the USA’s drone program has gotten greater attention these days and it’s not helping their cause gain legitimacy anymore. Yes, the USA has been known to create “distractions” when things go wrong for them (it happened VERY often in the Cold War, and details were only revealed years later, after documents were finally declassified). However, in this case, it is just just bullshit, and the blogger offers absolutely no proof at all to let the reader believe this even for a split second.

The blogger has a whole section entitled “Disprecancies in the Malala Hoax” — First things first: the correct word is “discrepancies”. Throughout this whole section, he talks about how the photos are not consistent, sometimes she has a bandage on her left side, sometimes the right, and that it’s not clear whether or not she was even shot in the neck or forehead. He offers absolutely NO proof for this at all; no pictures, no links to articles or statements in the media. Also, he claims to be a doctor but doesn’t even spell “tracheostomy” right.

This guy concludes by saying that “There is enough forensic medicine evidence to prove that Malala was not shot.” — The dude clearly don’t even know what forensics are…the term is “forensic science”, not “forensic medicine”. And none of the arguments he presents use forensics at all. It’s just him speculating on what the photos look like and what doctors said. That’s…not…forensics………

The guy’s blog has a couple of comments, all praising his analysis and how “clinical and professional” he is, how “terrific” and “well researched” his blog is. I commented outlining the criticism I wrote above. Turns out he has his settings so that he has to approve each and every comment before it shows up. I highly doubt that my comment will be approved by him. So, I decided to write this blog and share it all over the internet. Sorry, Dr. Mohammad Nauman Shad.