Shenila Khoja-Moolji: Producing Malala as the exception is a technique of power. Exception proceeds by individualizing and abstracting her from the local environment and cultures, and connecting her positive attributes to another source, such as her formal education, desire for success, and ambition. Her courage is, then, not read as grounded in local cultural practices that valorize social justice. Instead, she is positioned as a singular force against local customs and cultural elements. Marking Malala as the exception sustains the trope of the “oppressed Muslim girls” against which the concept of “empowered girls” is maintained. The discourse on empowered girls, thus, rearticulates Malala in its own terms, and distances her from other Muslim girls. She is made simultaneously to stand in for, represent and symbolize the oppressed Muslim girls, and positioned as the empowered girl who is not one of them. It denies other Muslim girls similar forms of empowered subjectivities. More importantly, it sustains the façade of Islam as an oppressive religion, making interventions—such as through universal education of girls, or empowerment projects—necessary and even ethically imperative. More here.