Malala gets serious on US Daily Show

Malala Yousafzai, who is among the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize later this week, gave an interview to Jon Stewart on the satirical US television programme, The Daily Show, on Tuesday night. For a show more used to lampooning US politicians and mocking its interviewees, Malala’s recollections of how schools in her home region of Pakistan’s Swat Valley were attacked by the Taliban made more sombre viewing. “We are human beings. This is part of our human nature that we don’t learn the value of something until it is snatched from our hands,” said the 16-year-old. “We have seen cruelty. The darkest days of our life,” she said. In 2012, she said someone told her that she should search Google because there were threats against her. “I was 14,” she said. She dismissed the idea because she did not think even the Taliban would kill a child. Appearing on the show to promote her book I am Malala, there was no discussion of the possibility that she might become the youngest recipient by far of the Nobel Peace Prize. Wearing a voluminous orange headscarf, Malala received a long round of applause from the studio audience when she said the fight against the Taliban had to be “through dialogue and education.”