The Muslim world needs a different type of champion. We need more Malala Yousafzai than we do Greta Thunberg.

When education minister Maszlee Malik told the KL Summit of Muslim countries that there was a need to reform their education systems, he made reference to Thunberg, 16, who gained world attention on environmental issues.

Maszlee said the education system should be producing talented people who can think, lead scientific discoveries and solve societal problems.

I am not taking anything away from Thunberg. Everyone will agree that she has done much for the world to bring environmental issues to the forefront of our everyday conversations.

However, Malala defied the Taliban in Pakistan, demanding that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 but survived. In 2014, she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Apart from Muslims in Western countries, we in the Muslim world live in a regressive society which does not support a conducive environment for freedom and growth, unlike the one where Thunberg grew up.

In western countries reading is no longer mainly about extracting information; it is about constructing knowledge, thinking critically and making well-founded judgements.

It is important to learn languages, but we need to be aware of the creeping Islamisation in the school system where religion takes precedence above all else. Education is not about khat or jawi and forcing vernacular schools to comply.

The marriage age is also a stumbling block in the path of women’s advancement in Malaysia.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said seven states had disagreed with the federal proposal to raise the minimum marriageable age to 18.

Even Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and among the 10 countries in the world with the highest number of child brides, has raised the minimum age to 19 this year.

Malala’s story is unlike Thunberg’s but it’s a typical story in a modern Muslim world.

At a very young age, Malala developed a thirst for knowledge. For years her father, a passionate education advocate himself, ran a learning institution in the city; school was a big part of Malala’s family life.

In 2007 when the Taliban began to take control of the Swat Valley, soon becoming the dominant force in northwestern Pakistan, girls were banned from attending school, and cultural activities like dancing and watching television were prohibited.

In Malaysia, some Muslims prefer that we live under Taliban-type rules. In Terengganu, Muslims are jailed and fined for not attending Friday prayers. More prohibitions are being imposed like dressing and entertainment, curtailing freedom of choice.

Rather than being educated, to debate, think, and choose the right path, Muslims have to be put into a straight jacket to conform to rules.

The KL Summit was a failure as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other notable Islamic nations were absent. If we want to lecture the Islamic world, we need to put our house in order first. Otherwise, we begin to sound like a bunch of hypocrites.

Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin told delegates at the KL Summit that it is the duty of Muslims to buy goods produced in Muslim nations. He also cited the “Buy Muslim-made first” campaign in Malaysia. He forgot to mention that the campaign was a failure.

Muslim nations with enormous wealth from oil and gas resources are using their money to buy more arms from the United States and are at war with their neighbours.

Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have any official diplomatic relations. However, news reports have surfaced indicating extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between the countries, in pursuit of mutual goals against regional enemy Iran.

Palestine, once a symbol of the Muslim fight against the Zionist empire is no longer important in the Muslim nations’ agenda.

When Malaysians objected to Maszlee’s appointment as president of the International Islamic University Malaysia, Maszlee said he would keep the post so that he could help transform IIUM into the “Oxford of the Muslim countries” and will help to return the institution to its glory.

But how can IIUM be the “Oxford” of Muslim countries when our education system is a race-based quota system and when we think khat and jawi is the future instead of mathematics, science and art. Now the government wants to teach jawi in vernacular school’s creating more controversy and suspicion that schools are being Islamised.

How do you create thinkers when you come through a privileged backdoor quota system rather than based on merit? Increasing the matriculation intake from 25,000 to 40,000 is not the answer.

A recent CNN report said critical thinking and reading comprehension are particularly important in the smartphone era, so students can learn how to weed out the truth from fiction.

“In the past, students could find clear and singular answers to their questions in carefully curated and government-approved textbooks, and they could trust those answers to be true. Today, they will find hundreds of thousands of answers to their questions online, and it is up to them to figure out what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong,” the report said.

The Malaysian education system needs to be freed from overbearing government interference in education; more leeway should be given to teachers to innovate and introduce critical thinking in their teaching methods.

Yes, we need more Thunbergs, but we also need more Malalas to break barriers, with the courage to take on the Talibans of this world.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.