Western politicians can apologize for crooked policies and retreat into passivity for fear of committing new errors, which are bound to be deemed as new sins by future generations. Yet none will change the elemental facts. The notion of an Islamic democracy is merely another euphemism for turning women into lesser citizens, and it ought to be deemed as unjust and anti-democratic as America before the end of racial segregation. “Terrorism” is only one manifestation of the evil that the world hopes to root out from the region where part-time terrorists have always been full-time chauvinists.

The real enemy is misogyny. Malala Yousafzai is not just a teenager in Pakistan’s Swat Valley but a victim of the greatest apartheid of our time, and a wounded warrior in feminism’s newest front line.