Malala sixth on ‘global thinkers’ list

Teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai has been given the sixth place on the Top 100 Global Thinkers list by prestigious US magazine Foreign Policy. Malala, who was attacked by the Taliban in October for advocating female education, was among four Pakistanis who made it to this year’s list. She was chosen “for standing up to the Taliban, and everything they represent”. She is currently recovering at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Other than Malala, former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani and his wife, Farahnaz Ispahani were placed on number 61 on the list “for pushing tough love for their troubled country”. Haqqani, who once defended Pakistan’s stance and brokered discussions in order to pacify the US, said in August that the two countries “should stop pretending they are allies and amicably divorce”. On the 100th spot stands Pakistani blogger Sana Saleem, who made it to the list for “insisting that free speech is not blasphemy”. Her campaign against government censorship “Bolo Bhi” landed her a place in the list. Sana opposed a proposal by the government to filter and block URLs by installing a firewall. She reached out to executives at international companies, asking them not to participate in building firewall and succeeded in making the government shelve the proposal. The Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list is published annually. It lists people whom the magazine’s editors consider as having influenced the thinking of the international community. According to the magazine, it reflects the “global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them”. In previous years, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan and current ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman have also featured in the Top 100 Global Thinkers lists by Foreign Policy.