Pakistan schools’ governing body bans Malala book

If moral policing is bad in India, it is even worse in inimical neighbour Pakistan, where the educational authority has banned a book describing the travails and triumphs of teenaged education activist Malala Yousafzai.

All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association president Adeeb Javedani said on Sunday that he got Malala's book banned from the libraries of its 40,000 affiliated schools as she was a ''tool of the West'' and did not represent Pakistan.

Tens of millions of Pakistani children will struggle to lay their hands on the book – I am Malala – which was co-authored by British journalist Christina Lamb.

The book was published in October this year and recounts Malala's tale of her being shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban, her life in the Swat Valley under a largely Taliban regime, and her new life in Britain, where she now lives and studies.

The body that controls private schools - which represents more than 152,000 institutions across the country - has decided that allowing pupils to read the book would have a "negative" effect on the students. The federation also said it believed the book was not entirely respectful of Islam.

The book will not be included in the schools' curriculum, nor will it be stocked in school libraries.

Pakistan's most elite schools belong to the federation. The government does not plan to teach it in state-run schools, though it is not actually banned.

"The school body thought we should review the book, and having reviewed it we came to the decision that the book was not suitable for our children, particularly not our students," said the federation's president, Mirza Kashif.

"Pakistan is an ideological country. That ideology is based on Islam ... in this book are many comments that are contrary to our ideology," Kashif said.

In the book, the then 16-year-old Malala tells of her life in Swat, where her father ran a private school when it was under Taliban rule; of writing an anonymous blog for the BBC; and of her campaign for girls' education.

According to BBC, in Pakistan the reaction to Malala and her book has been mixed. Many claim she has been used by the West for its own interests. The Taliban threatened to attack bookshops that stocked it.

Kashif, while saying 25 million pupils attended private schools in Pakistan, claimed that in the book Malala had defended the writing of Salman Rushdie on the ground of free speech; and had failed to use the abbreviation PUH – "peace be upon him" – when referring to the prophet Mohamed. He said there was a sense that Malala had not written large parts of the book, because it referred to things that happened before she was born.

The ban follows recent controversy at a celebrated Lahore private school that started teaching sex education. Ah, well. Hard-line 'Hindutva' is not much different from extreme Islamism; and Indians will get to make their choice soon enough.