Friday, 12 July 2013

United Nations


We have just witnessed history in the making as sixteen year old Malala Yousafzai addressed the United Nations. When she was in her village in North Pakistan, relatively unknown, one voice, would we have believed that today she could stand in front of the whole world and speak for the rights of women and children everywhere to be educated; to speak for the peace and brotherhood that will enable that education to happen; to speak for tolerance and forgiveness when she has herself been through so much? ‘I am just one voice but together we can change the world’, was part of her message. The overthrowing of fear and prejudice was another. She called upon her sisters everywhere to stand in their own strength and speak out for equality and their human rights. One could almost feel the presence of the Brother/sisterhood in spirit standing with her. The whole of the UN stood for her, but she said it was not her day, but the day of all those who are oppressed. I truly feel she was speaking for the light.

We are not all in the position to speak out physically as Malala did today, but we all have the power of the light within us to bring about changes within ourselves and for our world, through healing, through compassion, through understanding, through forgiveness of which Malala spoke so eloquently, through love.

My cousin Jeremy wrote on Facebook: ‘God bless you Malala, and the tens of thousands of other girls around the world with similar courage. Bless you for your truth to Islam. Bless you for your truth to the human spirit!’

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