Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai had sharp words for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for casting sweeping verbal attacks and discriminatory proposals that target the entire Muslim faith.
"Well, that's really tragic that you hear these comments which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others," Yousafzai told AFP on Tuesday.
Yousafzai, the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize, has emerged as a moral authority and advocate for girls getting an education since she survived a gunshot wound from a Taliban assault in 2012. She was speaking at an event to mark the one-year anniversary to a Taliban attack on a school in Pakistan, which left 134 children dead, when she pivoted to addressing the heated political rhetoric around the world.
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Amid a heightened sense of alarm in the U.S. over a pair of terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris, Trump has called for an outright ban to prevent Muslims from entering the United States. The proposal adds to a series of controversial ideas being floated in the GOP presidential race, from monitoring mosques and creating a database of all Muslims in the country.
In a separate interview with Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, Yousafzai condemned the "wild things being said about Islam and Muslims," warning that politicians and the media should be careful with their words and not cast blanketed blame on an entire population of Muslims.
"I can just highlight one thing. The more you speak about Islam and against all Muslims, the more terrorists we create," she told Channel 4.