OKLAHOMA CITY, May 14: A human rights activist who founded an all-girls school said the Pakistani Taliban were “more afraid of books than bombs” as he and his 15-year-old daughter, Malala Yousufzai, were honoured on Monday at the memorial for Oklahoma City bombing victims.

Ziauddin Yousufzai decried political violence during a ceremony held to honour him and his daughter, who has been recovering in Great Britain since the shooting that garnered international attention.

The annual Reflections of Hope Award is given out by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museums in honour of the 168 people who died in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Mr Yousufzai said Pakistanis were all too familiar with the kind of extremism that led to the Oklahoma attack, as well as the Sept 11 terrorist attacks and the Boston Marathon bombings last month.

“We share the pain. We share the suffering,” he said. “We have tragedies like Boston every day.”

He denounced the violence inflicted by Taliban militants who have taken the lives of tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers over the past 30 years. He said the militants advocated an “ideology of darkness” where truth was stifled and education discouraged.

“My part of the world is bleeding. I’m here to bring my people out of terrorism,” he said.

Mr Yousufzai accepted the award on his daughter’s behalf during his first trip to the United States since the Taliban’s assassination attempt on Malala.

In a recorded acceptance speech, she said the Oklahoma memorial’s recognition served as encouragement to continue being an advocate for the right of girls worldwide to receive an education.

“It’s more courage. It’s more strength,” said Malala, who returned to school in England in March.

Mr Yousufzai founded the Khushal Public School 17 years ago to foster female leadership in an area where the Taliban had banned girls from attending school. His daughter also was an activist who attended the school until Oct 9, when the Taliban shot her in the head and neck while she was riding the school bus home.

Mr Yousufzai said he was honoured to be known largely as Malala’s father in Pakistan’s male-oriented society and dedicated the award to fathers, brothers, sons and husbands “who believe and who accept and who respect their daughters, their sisters, their mothers and their wives”. “They are individuals and they are equal to them,” he said.

As he concluded, dozens of teenage girls from Oklahoma communities entered the stage behind him holding signs that read: “I am Malala.” He encouraged them: “We should defeat bad ideas with good ideas.”—AP