S6 EP4: Malala Yousafzai discusses misrepresentations of Islam, the Taliban's ‘gender apartheid’, and her views on marriage

26:45So they're not only limiting them from how women are outdoors, but they're also saying we are going to control you and your movement and your voice and how you dress within your houses as well. And, you know, like in any country, if a woman faces violence, she should have a place where she can seek refuge and safety. The government should be providing security. Like that's, you know, the basic sort of concept. The state is supposed to be protecting you. But in Afghanistan, like the Taliban, the government are the ones who are taking away women's rights. And we have to be, we have to note this down because it's not culture simply.

27:22It's not just like norms and traditions. This has now taken the form of systematic oppression, which means like the people who are supposed to protect you are the ones who are harming you. They're treating women as second class citizens. And that is why it is a gender apartheid. So we have to see it beyond just gender discrimination or, you know, like or just like a sad story of a woman facing an issue in a community. No, this has gone beyond that. And it's important not just for women and girls in Afghanistan, but it's important for women everywhere. You know, every regime has a constituency, right?

27:57And there were enthusiastic Nazis, right, in the time of Hitler. And there are enthusiastic Stalinists in the time of Stalin. There's obviously a kind of grassroots contingent who support the Taliban because there's these mobs sometimes. You talk about the mob lynching of Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old student accused of posting blasphemous content on Facebook. and you spoke out and said the incident was not just about the death of Mashhad it's about the death knell of the message of Islam we have forgotten our religion, we've forgotten our values and decency how is it that these people have been either brainwashed or seduced into this kind of thinking?

28:33I have always said that it's not about one or two individuals when it comes to extremism and we cannot get rid of extremism by attacking one or two people it is about an ideology It is indoctrination. It is... They think they're Muslims, right? They claim to be operating in the name of Muslims. Islam has many things. Like you cannot lie. You cannot cheat. You have to be fair. You have to like not cause harm. But people are disobeying all of that. Like, you know, if they were truly representing Islam, you know, these stories would not have been happening. This is not part of Islam. And, you know, you would never hear about corruption.

29:13You would never hear about dishonesty. So it's ignorance. It is. It is ignorance. I think it is also other interests as well. Sometimes people have other interests and they justify it through that. It could be some cultural reasoning for that. Also, if we even look at the Taliban, like, you know, they just did not appear out of nowhere. There's a whole history to that. They have been there for like nearly three decades. The Western powers were involved. It was, you know, it started during the end of the Cold War. Yeah, the Cold War and they were once celebrated and they were like, you know, they came out from the Mujahideen concept.

29:46And, you know, nobody in Pakistan and Afghanistan was thinking about like being a Mujahideen and all of that. It's just, you know, we have to think about the role of the external powers, the Western powers, what are the geopolitical interests. And I think that's a whole different like political discussion. but it's important for us to educate ourselves to read more to learn more before like reaching conclusions and I can't fix it all like I I have thought about this so many times that you know can I magically make these problems disappear because you know I suffered through that and I wish like things were different in Swat Valley I wish girls right now are not banned from learning by the Taliban I wish you know there were no conflicts and crisis in the world and for me I realized that, you know, one of the best ways in which we can fight against many of the pressing problems, including poverty and how some people are left behind and marginalized, is to give them education, because education is that equalizing power.

30:42I know it's not going to fix every problem immediately. But it gives me hope that we can somehow make the lives of a lot of us better, and we can help girls have a freer future. So, you know, I see education as the pathway. It must be really difficult for you because you're speaking out for compassion, like all things that I completely endorse and agree with, communication, education, women's rights, and also against extremism, right? But then meanwhile, because you're speaking out very often against Islamic extremism, right, the Taliban, that's catnip to elements of the far right in the West.

31:30Have you noticed that? And not even the far right, even on the right, there's this feeling like, oh, Islam is a problem. Have you picked up on that at all? Yes, I think it's there. We have to talk about Islamophobia. And I have found myself that when there's a situation like this, then you have more haters on both sides than people who, in the external social media world. I don't think that's really representative of the reality. So you're catching it from traditional or super conservative or Islamists in Pakistan. They're having a pop trolling you. And then meanwhile, Islamophobes are having a go at you.

32:06You're having to walk this tightrope. And you're fairly, by your dress, by your tie, your style of life, I think somewhat culturally conservative person. But it's a sort of, I don't know, it's a difficult position to be in, I can imagine. I think there is more nuance to all of these conversations. Like, I do not see it in like black and white. No. I also think, you know, we should be critical of this idea where people associate Western clothing with some sort of more liberty and freedom for women. I think that's not true. Like, why is Western clothing seen as? It's always about choice. That's the principle, not whether a woman wears a skirt and a headscarf.

32:46So that's a great point. Does she have a choice? does she have the freedom to make those decisions for herself? And I know somehow these choices can be influenced by culture, but the more we remove the influence of the culture and the fear that women go through, I think we can have an environment where women can have that liberty where they do not feel like they're dressing just because they're supposed to or they will be punished if they don't, but it's simply because they want to. In France, they banned the burqa, I think, did they? You wouldn't be in favour of that? No, I'm not. I'm against it, I think.

33:19And I'm also against the Taliban imposing the burqa on women. And in Iran, there was all this unbelievable accounts of women being attacked and humiliated for not wearing their scarves. On the way here, just cycling to the studio, I saw a woman in full burqa. So only her eyes were visible. Some people would see that and think, oh, that's an example of patriarchal oppression. And others would say that, no, that's just an observant, conservative Muslim woman. What do you say? I think it's difficult to come to a judgment that quickly. You will hear stories where it is because the husband or the man has asked her to dress that way.

34:01But you'd also hear stories where a woman would say that, you know, that's how I think the religion tells me. But then at the same time, you'd also hear stories where people are saying, that's not technically how the religion tells you to dress. You know, these interpretations are from mostly men who have described this conservative dress to women in their own way to say that cover yourself, you know, every part of your body and accept your eyes so you can see your way. But there's a lot of like disagreement in that. And there are many different opinions. So when I look at it, I'm like, I wish we had just more open debate about the Islamic teachings as well.

34:41Like, you know, what are the different point of views and the different, because, you know, in Islam we have many schools of thoughts and like, what does each say? It's not that, you know, there's like a verse in Quran that says, yeah, like, only eyes visible and cover yourself in black burqa. Like, I've also read, like, if you read, a lot of these translations have been done by men through history.

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36:28when the riots happened last year um did they start in southport was it do you remember all of that were you in the country a bit yeah what was that like it is difficult and i think we have to also talk about the use of social media and how people are spreading misinformation the way social media is working right now it wants people to react quickly to scream to shout to disagree with each other and it's not just about that i think it's also about hateful triggering content like if you if you do if i put a tweet about about you know something like an achievement or some progress we have made that's not going to get the likes and retweets but if i say something hateful and if I make an enemy sure that will get a lot of um I don't think you're going down that road though are you but I will never go down that road and I think even when you posted something about Gaza quite early on October 2023 and I looked at the comments and there was quite a lot of hate coming at you for saying that oh uh there's something horrific happening in Gaza I think when I look at what's happening in Gaza and I don't claim to have you know the to have it all figured out.

37:40But I think the most important thing right now is that we stand united as one voice for the people in Gaza who are suffering. In times like these, when there's clear oppression happening, it's not time for us to fight over a word or you use the word conflict and you should have used the word this. I'm like, of course, you know, if you look at the definition of a genocide, what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. And I never, ever said, I do not think it's a genocide. But people just make these assumptions. And I guess that's how social media works, that you can only say so much. You are limited to like two, three sentences that, and if people disagree with you already, then they're going to look for something that you have not said or you have missed and they will create a whole narrative out of it.

38:24but you know I have I have tried to do everything that I can to raise awareness and I think it's we need to amplify the voices of people from Gaza my it's not my voice that's important it's not the voice of any celebrity it's really their voices that we need to bring to our platforms and amplify those and we need to provide them support so like we have been giving grants and support to organizations who are providing help to children to women in this time and and doing everything. Like it's meetings in public, meetings in private, that, you know, I keep bringing this issue. It's not that, you know, it's not on my mind.

39:03I bring it up in every meeting that I have had with any representative and any leader. Were you invited to go on the flotilla? You know, Greta Thunberg, who you're often mentioned alongside, is on the flotilla attempting to bring attention to Gaza. Did they ask you to go? I have supported their work because we all need to do what we can in our capacity. And I think building pressure from all sides is important. Some people think that one way of activism is right and the other is not. No, I disagree with that. And I think all of, you know, we need to use all that we have in our capacity. At the same time, like, I think people should know that I am an advocate for girls education.

39:45And I'm very clear on like, on what issues I focus on. And I focus specifically on Afghanistan because girls' education is banned there. And when I talk about Gaza, I specifically talk about the students and girls there. Israel has decimated the whole education system in Gaza. They have bombed almost every school and all universities. Children cannot have a future. They are starving. That's what I want to bring attention to. Like, that's what people need to realize. You know, like I'm an education advocate and I want to see every child in Gaza, every child in Palestine to have a normal student life, which Israel is denying to them.

40:26They're not even treated as equal people. So I do not have like, you know, I may not be able to have a full grasp of everything that's happening or the historical understanding. And I'm learning as much as I can. But sort of in my role, that's something I want to bring attention to. And I have also been reflecting on why is it important to call it a genocide. I think some people in the beginning were saying that, oh, it's not a genocide yet because, you know, it doesn't fully meet the definition. And some people were saying like it clearly meets the definition. for me I think it's important to call it a genocide because I think by now it has really met the definition but even in the beginning it was important to call it because when you know that the worst could happen call it that at the right time and don't talk about it when it's done the whole point of making genocide part of the international law was firstly to hold the people who committed it accountable in the past, but also to prevent it from happening in the future.

41:30I reflect on these things and I think about how I can be a better citizen, a better human. And we can be better by listening to others more, not jumping into conclusions too quickly, and not holding hate. And for me, like, the thing that I'm sort of highlighting in my new book is

41:55political figure who has to have an opinion on everything and has to get it right every time. I'm still learning. And I try to do what I can in my capacity. But I think that the way we have heard the stories of activists and these global figures is that they're somehow perfect and they're defined in one way and they can never change and they have to have these fixed definitions. but you know I received that at such a young age that um you know at 17 I still was figuring out who I was and for me that exposure in college letting myself find you know the guy or the crush that I um thought could be the the love of my life and uh and talking more openly about the mental health journey is, you know, is important.

42:52And I want to share that because I want to tell people that activists haven't figured it all out. Yeah, you get a crush on a bad boy. Yeah. Mysterious. I couldn't quite figure out what the charm was. He doesn't say anything. He just arrives and eats your food and then wanders off. You know, the charm was that he was handsome and good looking. What was the guy's name? Tariq. That's probably not his real name. No. I've changed the names of a lot of my friends. He's a real person. He's sort of a Heathcliff figure. He was a real person. Troubled from a bad area. He's given a chance to better himself.

43:25Well, that's not the right thing. He's given a chance at an education. He's got very ambivalent feelings about him. I tried to help him. I thought there was a way to get him out of all of that he was stuck in, but I think maybe he did not want to help himself. So in the end, I couldn't find a way for him. Let's talk about the Gange. There's a passage where you get bongoed with a righteous puff, actually two puffs of quite powerful marijuana. It was the second time you tried it, and actually it kind of flipped you out big time, didn't it? Yeah, so the first intake was fine. I coughed and it didn't affect me, but the second time I inhaled it, I felt like it went into my body.

44:08And in that moment, I just, like, disconnected from my body, from the world outside, and it's really hard to describe and like relive that moment. But in some ways, I thought I was reliving the attack, even though I do not remember anything from that day. But I could feel like I was seeing the gunman. I felt like I was not able to reconnect with the world. I thought I was in that coma. And somehow I just wanted it to disappear. I wanted to go back in time. And I wanted to feel normal again. But that was, you know, a new shift in my life. And it took me a long time to recover from that because, you know, after that I was having sleepless nights and sweating all the time and I could not concentrate on my studies.

44:57It hugely affected me, like physically as well. It affected my work as well. And that's when I knew that I have to get some help and support. It was how long? It was like the next, it wasn't even a few hours. It was several days, was it? Yeah, you know, the night was very difficult, but it went on for a few days. You weren't high anymore. You were just feeling anxious. Yes. Like I could not sleep anymore. I just, the moment I would close my eyes, I felt like, you know, everything was coming back all of a sudden. Then I think, you know, when I went back to college and I was in my third year, I knew that it was now affecting my academic life as well.

45:34And I could not even have a normal time with my friends. You know, I was so grateful that I suddenly had these amazing friends and I loved being in their company. We could gossip about something. We could talk about essay crisis. And all of a sudden that was gone. And I was having these panic attacks now and then. So like one day when I told a friend of mine that, you know, I just I was not feeling like myself. She she recommended me this therapist. And that helped. That helped. In the beginning, I was very skeptical because I thought, what could they do? But then I thought, okay, maybe if they're supposed to help me, then they should have all the answers and they should immediately fix me in one meeting.

46:22but I realized that it is a process and they help you talk through it think through it they give you these different models to just understand it and separate emotions from thoughts from actions from your feelings and and I was you know and I really appreciated that because it helped me think differently and it's not that you know the mental health journey is is now over and I have figure it all out. For me, it's about the fact that I know what I need to do. And that is ask for help. Was there anything in particular that helped you with the therapist? Like any piece of advice?

47:01I think it was firstly just talking through things. I think this whole idea of having a window of tolerance that is different for everybody. And that could be different at every stage of our life was very important. I thought that I had faced the worst that I could, and I had come out of such big trauma and attack, you know, and living under the Taliban, you know, which we talked through, like, that was a very difficult time. I never knew that something so small could trigger me or could make me feel scared for a moment. Like, I could not even look at headlines about people getting killed or I could not, you know, look at an object like a knife.

47:44And somehow like I would, I would start shaking and I just would just get scared. So for me, it was this realization that somehow I was not meeting up the labels that I was receiving, like the courageous Malala, the brave Malala. She knows it all. And she's so strong. She stood up with the Taliban and somehow now she's scared of these small things. So she told me, the therapist, that it's a window of tolerance and it could get smaller and it can get bigger with time. And right now, because of... What does that mean, window of tolerance? That, you know, we all can take in so much. I know the therapists make it more technical, but it's simply like we can only take so much at a point in life.

48:28And for me, that was a very difficult time because firstly, I was in my final year of university. I had a lot of academic work to catch up on. I was going through these panic attacks. I also was dating a guy, Asar, and I thought I had to make a big decision about whether to marry him or not. And that topic was on my mind. And I was also just worried about what life would be like ahead of university. What should I be doing? What am I expected to do? What does it mean for an activist who has received all of these awards and has given this role already to do when she finishes her college. And I think in that moment, it was the intensity of all of these thoughts that were coming all together.

49:15And I think, in her opinion, it was just too much for me to carry. So she said like, yes, you know, and now that you had this, the bong incident and this whole flashbacks, everything coming back, it's making it more difficult for you. It's okay to feel weak and vulnerable in this moment. And don't feel like you have somehow failed. It will get better with time. and she gave me like these different techniques, you know, taking deep breaths in and then slowly breathing out or having quiet times and all of these things, you know, the different things that a therapist can give you. And that helped me a lot.

49:55I was really struck how much you agonized having met this guy who seems really nice about marrying him. And I was thinking, I guess maybe with a slightly Western frame of, well, if you love him and you think you want to spend your life with him, you could marry him but it becomes something more than that it feels as though marriage seems to mean something to you um can you talk about that like that it feels as though you'd be surrendering in some way that's how it felt to me i thought he's there going like please like i love you let's make this work and you keep him hanging on i know i know and i loved him no doubt.

50:33I was questioning marriage. For me, it was the whole institution. Marriage can mean anything, right? It's just two people. It can mean anything. It can even be more than two, right? Saying we want to spend our lives together or we think we do. You know what I mean? I prefer just two people. But I think for me, it was also like how I grew up seeing marriage play a role in the lives of other people. I grew up watching girls being married when they were still children. I saw girls forcefully married, never being even asked. Even my own cousin Nazneen, who I talk about in this book, lost her future because she was married off by the family.

51:14So somehow I thought that, you know, like marriage is just that topic. It's about oppression and I just want to stay away from it. It was never like a good news for us when we were growing up. We just thought, okay, like a girl is getting married. Now the husband and the husband's family will be determining her future. In a traditional, in the community where you grew up, how does marriage take place? It's not quite boy meets girl, is it? Or is it? I think it's changing now. But like in my parents' time, no. Then even in my time, hardly, barely. It's arranged? It's arranged. By family? By families, yes.

51:53And you might not, forgive my questions if they're really ignorant, and you might not have met the other person before, at what point do you meet them? Not on the wedding day. Yeah, on the wedding day. For real? Yeah. That was fairly common? Yeah. That was normal? Yes. Yes. There are exceptions when it works for people and even now people are like, you know, dating and people go on, love is blind and they do this blind dating and then they live, you know, forever together, all of that. I think it's for us, it was, and I think this is what people get wrong every time, as if these concerns are about marriage itself, or these concerns are about arranging a marriage.

52:36It's not about that. It's about, we have to look at the context, in what context it's happening. And again, it's about a woman and a girl's choice, and who's taking that decision for her. So in our culture, it was mostly about the families deciding that and the girl was never even asked like that's the most important thing and the fact that it's happening you know while she's under 18 like this should not even be a conversation under 18 under 16 under 16 I think under 18 in some parts but what would be the youngest you'd ever heard of uh when you were growing up 11 11 year olds getting married my classmate yes Wow How old was the groom?

53:17The groom could be 30, 35, 40, 25, doesn't matter In that scenario, do you know if she was his first wife? Yeah, she was the first wife What was behind that? It's just the family thought like, you know, okay, now she's old enough because she has reached her puberty and that's it So we were in grade 5 and she disappeared She never came back. And I found out like three, four years later that she was married off and she had kids. She was still a child by definition when she had children. Like it's important. I think for us, it's important to change laws. And that's one of the focuses of Malala Fund that we work on policy implementation against, you know, like child marriage and these things.

54:05and also more like financing for education, all of these things to ensure that there is legal and systemic protection for women and girls. But at the same time, it's the implementation part of it. And how does it translate into the local communities and how do they accept it? So that is something that is a lot of work. And for that, we work with local education activists. It takes time, but I feel like with, you know, with us using all that we have from TV shows to how, you know, women's sports can play a role to also how direct advocacy among those communities, direct engagement, campaigning, and then even just providing more schools, like providing better quality education can help with all of that.

54:46And then in the community, they might view that as Western interference, right? But if you do it through the local organizations, I think you can do it the right way. And I think it should not be, you know, done in a way in which sort of we are saying, or, you know, in the West we think it's right, so, you know, that's how everybody should live. The local activists have done this job for 20, 30 years. They know how to explain it to the local communities in their own language, in their own cultural context, and they teach them how to be better dads, how to be better leaders of their community, and that they are actually protecting the honor of the community by giving a better future for girls.

55:28And if they do things like honor killing and if they stop girls from school and if they do these forced marriages, they're actually bringing a dishonor to their community. It is a lot of work, but I think more support to the local organizations is extremely critical for this. So-called honor killing is not Islamic, as I understand it. No. Do we know where it comes from? I don't know. I never asked. But I think sort of in our culture, they say that a man's honor lies in a woman's body. And I think we have to redefine that. When you say my culture, our culture, you mean Pashtun culture? Pashtun culture, that's what we...

56:11Which is the ethnic community in the north of Pakistan and across Afghanistan. Yes. Which is different from the majority of Pakistan. Yeah, like, you know, it's like Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochie, Khazara, many different communities. we hear about if a woman is facing like, if she has faced harassment or rape or something, then she's sort of punished for it. That's unbelievable. That's one of the most extraordinary things. The idea as well, was there one where a woman was, forgive me for even using the term, but gang raped as a punishment for something? Do you know the details on this? In fact, the woman is an advocate now.

56:53Mukhtar Mai. She was gang-raped in June 2002 on the orders of a Pancheat village council as, quote, punishment for her younger brother's alleged illicit relations with a woman from a rival tribe. And then it was expected that she would kill herself out of shame, but she didn't. I mean, that is too horrific even to comprehend, isn't it? Yeah. And the other thing to say is there was a, I guess, Amnesty International did some kind of a survey and determined the five worst countries for women. Number one was Afghanistan. Number two was the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three was Pakistan. It says this is Afghanistan.

57:3187 % of Afghan women are illiterate. That's a random fact. 70 % to 80 % face forced marriage, many before the age of 16. That's Afghanistan. Pakistan would be different. Yeah, and we want that to change. We want there to be no discrimination against women in any part of the world. Do you think it's going in the right direction? Does it feel like it is? In some countries, yes, but I think in Afghanistan, it has worsened. What about Pakistan specifically? In Pakistan, it's getting better, I would say. There is more hope. The work that the civil society is doing is incredible. But then we also, you know, of course, I talk about the culture and how these narratives shift, but it's also the natural disasters.

58:20Floods in 2022 or 2023 affected thousands of schools. Floods right now in the northern provinces and in many other parts of Pakistan, again, damaged and demolished so many schools. So climate change and extreme poverty and these extreme ideologies and misogyny and patriarchy are still affecting education directly. Like, you know, girls are the first ones to drop out, the last ones to return. Their schools are washed away. Their schools are targeted. So it is concerning. And I think, you know, we need more funding, more support to create a more climate resilient education system and figure out, you know, other ways that kids do not miss out on the right to learn.

59:12It feels as though there's still suspicion of you in Pakistan, that there's many people who love you, support you, see you as an ambassador. But it's difficult if you're an advocate, but you're not living in your home country. and they're sort of saying like, oh, you're making us look bad or even that you're a Western stooge or a CIA asset, even after you were attacked, there were conspiracy theories circling straight away, right? I know, I'm like the agent of so many countries. It always gets tiring. Sort of, I know, I know, I work for almost every country. I think Pakistan is the country I was born in and I love Pakistan and I will always be a Pakistani.

59:52I think nobody can take that away from me. I do not have to prove my patriotism and my love for my country. For me, the best investment in the country is to give education to every child. And that is my way of giving back to the country for all the love and everything I have received. I want to go to Pakistan as much as I can. But I consider myself now as this global citizen. I travel everywhere. I call so many places home now. Pakistan will always be my home. But now home is Birmingham to me. Home is London to me. Home is the time I spend with my friends and my incredible colleagues and the time I spend with my husband.

1:00:34Like all of that is home to me now. So I have like redefined that. And I know people will always have an opinion and I can't change that. But I just think about all the support and the love I have received and I really value that. Is Oxford home as well? Oxford is sort of home, yeah. The fun part, not the essays and the assignments. I was at Oxford. Which college? Not making a big thing out of it. Oh, Magdalen. Magdalen, interesting. Is that interesting? I liked Magdalen. Magdalen is a beautiful college. What did you study? History. History, nice. Yeah, nice. What did I get, did you say? A first?

1:01:22No, that's not a question I asked. Yeah. I wasn't distracted by having to be a global leader for change and I did actually smoke quite a lot of pot, so I can't say I wasn't distracted by that. Yeah. I worked so hard. See, you missed out on a lot, I guess. I think I did. Yeah. maybe we're there thank you so much malala it was so wonderful speaking to you thank you so much thank you

1:02:04welcome back thank you for joining me for that chat you audience and you malala if you're watching or listening. The takeaways were, in no particular order, the bong incident, it's a big thing in the book, and that's already made headlines, I think, in some of the coverage of the book. Did I smoke a bong at Oxford, you are asking? Did I cover that in the chat? I didn't smoke a lot of bongs, but other things. I definitely didn't have as horrific a sort of psychotic break as Malala did. Why am I making it about me? What she said was, I was not meeting up with the labels I was receiving. And those labels were things like the courageous Malala, the brave Malala.

1:02:50She knows it all and she's so strong. I can certainly understand how, I mean, it seems self-evident that if you've been through a massive trauma, an unspeakable level of trauma, that that will be with you. And then getting completely bongoed is not going to help. But at the same time, if I'm completely honest, I was also aware that I was in danger of dragging her back. I mean, to be fair, Malala did bring up the assassination attempt. in preparing for the interview, I became very interested in how the Taliban took over that region and the ways in which they existed alongside the formal government.

1:03:38And maybe I should explain as well, that in my head was the possibility that we're living through not a comparable moment, but a moment that has certain parallels. So I was thinking about how that takes place by stealth. And then there's this sort of transition moment. And when do you know that you're in it? And how do people behave when they're in it? So I suppose that was why I was sort of interested in exploring that. And maybe she was more interested in putting that behind her. Fair enough. No judgment. I got interested in Mullah Fazlullah, the mullah who basically was a cable car operator in the Swat Valley and then became a charismatic guru and the head of the Taliban.

1:04:19He also instructed the assassin who shot Malala. He basically broadcasted what was called Radio Muller on an FM radio channel. Prohibited activities were routinely declared and violators' names announced for assassination, which often included beheading. He led a drive, eradicating vices such as music, dancing, and what he calls major sources of sin, TV, CDs, computers. He threatened barbers who shaved their customers' beards. He opposed polio vaccination. He was an anti-vaxxer.

1:04:57Fascinating. Thanks so much for listening. That's all for this week. All that's left to do are the credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Man Al-Yaziri. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.

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