Malala’s Father

My Union President is meeting the General Conference men this week. More than prayer and fasting is needed.
By Jack Hoehn
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani girl who was shot in the head because her religion didn’t want girls to become educated. The Taliban fundamentalists wanted girls to go to religious schools and be taught by their theologians and then return to women’s assigned tasks of washing, raising family, satisfying their male lords and masters, and covering their heads and faces like good little girls should. No more education necessary, and further, no more education permitted.
She recovered with left-sided facial paralysis after coming out of coma for weeks, and with half her female brain is an articulate, kind, and a world-recognized spokesperson for the suppressed, restrained, and uneducated girls of this world, held in suppression not by God but by the Taliban and their allies.
She covers her head in deference to God, but doesn’t feel whole as a person to have to spend her life covering her face, partly paralyzed by her assassins. When I cover my face I feel I am hiding who I am as a person, she explains.
Director Davis Guggenheim has made a movie about her called He Named Me Malala, featuring the fact that her father, a schoolteacher called Ziauddin Yousafzai, named her for an Afghanistan woman famous in that culture like a Joan of Arc who roused the men to fight the foreign invaders. And as she tells her story it becomes clear this is not only the story of a courageous girl, but of her father as well.
He has a stutter and was thought to never be able to speak in public by his father, but by persistence he memorized a speech as a child and stuttered through it with great emotive effect to his village audience, who found him a moving speaker in spite of the stutter. Ziauddin valued the gift and power of being able to overcome his stutter and move people with words. He became a schoolteacher and opened his own school, starting with three students, but soon became a very busy and valued place of learning in his town. When his own daughter was born he named her for a brave woman, and when the Taliban moved into his village offering at first a godly fundamentalism, like all the village he was interested.
There is male headship in Pakistan, and in the Vatican, and in the General Conference. There is no male headship in Christ.
But when their godliness became a front for their power seeking and manipulation of society, when they began to burn books and read aloud on the radio the names of sinners not falling in line, Ziauddin felt his honor as a man required him to speak out against their cruelty and destruction not only of books, but of humans. Bodies were appearing in the market place that had been called out on the fundamentalist radio. Notes were attached to severed heads and shown to children that said, If you oppose God’s work this will happen to you.
So Malala’s father became a public speaker in his town against the evil bent of the Taliban. And educated his daughter and encouraged her to blog and post with her pretty face and youthful sincerity as a public advocate for the education of girls and women. Her words and personality attracted world attention and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Taliban men suppressing opposition to their religion paused before killing the public and well-known father, but like the closet cowards they are they attacked and shot in the face his little daughter. Malala Yousafzai became, in her coma, a cause célèbre, and was transported to England with her mother, her two brothers, and her anti-Taliban father, where she finally woke up and now lives the life of an English schoolgirl.
Malala was a beautiful girl, and she is now growing to be a courageous and world-changing woman. Her life is a testament also to her stuttering but courageous true man of a father. A man who put his own life on the line because it was the noble, brave, and honest thing to do.
And a man who educated his daughter, and encouraged her advancement in public life and mission. Shooting his beloved daughter was much crueler and more demonic punishment to him than it would have been to decapitate him. But as real men must, he takes what life has given him, and the work of redemption of girls and women from the ancient suppression they have been held under is now a partnership of a stuttering father and a wounded daughter–true Muslims against the patriarchy of the Taliban fanatics.
I have no daughters, and I don’t stutter, but I want to be a man as manly as Ziauddin Yousafzai.
And I want to be part of a religion that teaches the redemption of all the suppressed in the world, be they social outcasts, economic slaves, or suppressed gender.
The men administering Adventism in North America have been summoned to meet Ted Wilson on Unity of the Church, which is a blatant cover for enforcement of no recognition of women as capable of leading the church of God
The men administering Adventism in North America have been summoned to a meeting with the men who are in positions of authority in the General Conference. Division and Union men are summoned to meet Ted Wilson on Unity of the Church, which is a blatant cover for enforcement of no recognition of women as capable of leading the church of God. Male headship is the ugly face of the fall—it caused inequality of men and women that began to be reversed by Jesus of Nazareth and his early followers, who introduced this fallen world to words never before spoken in public or written into literature: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
There is male headship in Pakistan, and in the Vatican, and in the General Conference. There is no male headship in Christ.
The fine man in charge of the North Pacific Union has asked for two days of fasting and prayer before he and his other male partners (will they permit the Southeastern California Conference President Sandra Roberts to attend?), are confronted by the manipulations of the General Conference. I hope it clears his mind to be as brave before female oppression as was Ziauddin Yousafzai when confronted by the Taliban.
Prayer and fasting are of course very important for the Taliban; they do it for a month every year, and then go out and shoot little girls in the face, and like Gestapo criminals cowardly attack male opponents in the night, dumping their bodies into the market place to terrorize the morning shoppers.
So there is something better than prayer and fasting. Isaiah 58:6 has it. Freeing women to be pastors, preachers, presidents, and pontiffs would be that. Muslim girls need to be unyoked from the Taliban male headship. Adventist girls need to be unyoked from the male-headship heresy.
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”
Brilliant, Dr. Hoehn!
Excellent. Thank you.
Yes–excellent!
I’ve thought about this for half an hour and I still can’t improve on what Warren Nelson wrote.
Let’s stand for the right, though the heavens fall!
I share the sentiment of the above writers in applauding Dr Hoehn for this great Christian contribution that he has made. May everyone attending the meeting share the sentiments of this article. The Taliban has shown that prayer can also cover a multitude of evils.
Seventh-day jihAdventists?
Jack,
When will the meeting take place? I will join you in praying that God’s will is made obvious and what is working against God will be overcome.
“My Union President is meeting the General Conference men this week. More than prayer and fasting is needed.” Prayer and fasting rarely might be helpful But when confronting an ecclesiastical political machine which thinks God is on their side needs much more than that. Excellent statement by Jack.
Well said Jack thank you Keith Wilkens.
BRAVO, Dr Hoehn. Are the men summoned to meet Pope Ted, real men, or gutless. It’s time for Ted Wilson to abdicate the throne in the sound proof inner sanctum he resides in. It’s time for North American SDA’s to tell him enough is to much, that either he leaves or North America leaves.
It was not Malala’s religion that didn’t want her to be educated, only a perversion of it, peddled by the Taliban. One of my good friends is an educated, and very liberated, Muslim woman.
Thank you for your passionate plea for real men to stand for the right! I pray that their voices will be heard at today’s meeting.
Amen, and Hallelujah!
I will fast and pray before this meeting, and I will continue to sell Ampersand pins to encourage the equal ordination of men *and* women!
Thank you. Pastor Lori Farr
Thank you, thank you thank you.
Amen! Truth cannot be denied!
I will try: Exceptionally Brilliant article!!!
Regarding “prayer and fasting,” they are far from the ideal things to do in occasions like this. They didn’t work against Hitler, Stalin, or Castro… Why would they work now?
What is happening right now is one of the most ridiculous, infamous, and abusive events in SDA history. Oh yes, Ted Wilson already made it, long time ago, to the SDA history books.
I am very curious to see if the Unions’ presidents will behave by principle – like Bonhoeffer – or like Trump – by fearing Putin!
Wow wow wow!
William Abbot wrote me a long post castigating me for the article. I chose not to sadden you by posting it. So please note for the record that William does NOT approve of the article. And Jack does NOT approve of his post. The end.
It’s unfortunate we don’t get to read the opinions of your detractor, Jack. If he was using obscenity, making libellous statements or making personal attacks then I understand your decision. Otherwise I’d be interested to consider the critique. If it’s poorly reasoned it will only make your case look stronger.
One issue that is missing from your piece – which, as an admirer of Malala Yousefzai, I found moving – was that of democracy. The decision not to ordain women wasn’t made in a secret cardinal’s conclave or by a fringe group of AK-47-toting extremists; it was made by a secret ballot that included representatives from throughout the world Church after extensive study, prayer and consultation. We may well grieve at the result (I grieve that the wrong question was put) but we cannot compare the process to some kind of cabalistic autocracy. Surely the GC vote deserves a certain measure of respect.
Jack, I agree. Good for you!
Dr. Hoehn,
Its never personal. We are brothers in Christ. My comment was about, ‘your baby’ I was criticizing your logic. I was criticizing, structurally, your argument. Seriously, you are a good writer. But, like some other good writers you can’t abide criticism. If I had offered up specious criticisms I don’t think you’d take it quite so hard. You would probably have pointed out the flaws in my argument.
And finally, when did 1380 characters constitute a long post? It was way less than 500 words.
I read everything you write me William, and I hope your valid criticisms will do me some good. But I will not publish things I do not find helpful to me or to my other readers. You are welcome to keep helping me, but “you are all wrong” comments will not likely be published after my articles, unless I am convinced you are right.
“Your article could be better and here’s how” comments have a much better chance.
You have been given the opportunity by the editors to publish your own articles on Adventist Today, and this is the correct format for promoting ideas that completely contradict mine.
James 1:
25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
I have read the book and often thought of how Adventism, in some areas, doesn’t allow women to be pastors. I saw the comparison. However, this article is much clearer than anything I could have written. Well said! And agree wholeheartedly!