It honours the world's first Muslim after the Prophet Mohammed – his wife Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, who was a successful businesswoman and contributed immensely to the spread of early Islam. It was this future that was threatened when the first signs of Taliban influence emerged, borne on a tide of anti-Western sentiment that swept across Pakistan in the years after 9/11 and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Most Muslim rulers throughout history have been men, but anthropologist and former director of the women’s, gender and sexuality studies programme at Boston University, Shahla Haeri, sheds light on the many women who held positions of power in various eras and empires – from one of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives Aisha bint Abi Bakr, who famously led the Battle of the Camel in 656, to Pakistan’s only female prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. Bliss can be achieved by constant devotion and care to fear Allah and follow the example of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him). Soon afterwards, there was outrage across Pakistan after a video emerged from Swat showing the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl for alleged "illicit relations" with a man.

And then the next word was 'father' and I told her that he was in Pakistan and he'd be coming in the next few days. A practicing Muslim is in constant spiritual association with the Messenger of Allah, day and night. It gave me a lot of courage and strength [a sense] that enough is enough, now is the time to speak against the enemies of education," he says.I am Malala' by Malala Yousafzai I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai.

Remedies for the Sick Heart is a collection of Islamic quotes, poems and statements by scholars and daees. When I was encouraging young women to come to literacy classes, it was more often mothers or sisters-in-law (not husbands), who might prevent them from attending. Haeri also offers an analysis of the mythic Queen of Sheba, who is referenced in the Quran as a powerful ruler, and has served as a symbol of political perseverance for Muslim women throughout time. This is what happens when the state intervenes in a person’s private life; it creates two separate personas.By the time Malala was born, her father had realised his dream of founding his own school, which began with just a few pupils and mushroomed into an establishment educating more than 1,000 girls and boys.

Moments later, the bus was flagged down by two young men as it passed a clearing, only 100 yards from the school gates. When a journalist from BBC Urdu asked her father about young people who might be willing to give their perspective on life under the Taliban, he suggested Malala. The new Wali's focus soon turned to high schools and colleges, including Jahanzeb College, founded in 1952, where Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, would study many years later.As Adnan Aurangzeb says, "Swat was proud of its record on education… one way to identify a Swati outside of Swat was that he always had a pen in his chest pocket, and that meant he was literate. In accordance with the Islamic belief that the condition of the body affects the mind, physical cleanliness is essential for spiritual well-being.

Hazoor has defined “minimum Islamic purdah” as wearing a loose fitting outer garment and a head scarf.

Then I brought up the obvious, that the physical vulnerabilities of a woman can be traced to that most important function of human accomplishments, the absorption of her strength in carrying, nursing and rearing children.