Via Daily Mail:

A 16-year-old Bangladeshi student has been chosen to play the role of Malala Yousafzai in a new film about the young activist who was shot by the Taliban.

Fatima Sheikh, who has no acting experience, was selected by Indian director Amjad Khan to play the schoolgirl in an upcoming biopic which chronicles her extraordinary story.

But the actress’s parents, from Dhaka, are so terrified of revenge attacks by the Taliban they have insisted her face is not revealed until midway through filming.

After weeks of feverish speculation, Khan gave way to pressure and revealed the girl’s name to the Times of India.

But the only picture to be released shows the student wearing a niqab with just a narrow slit for her eyes.

No further picture or information about her will be revealed until filming is well underway.

Malala Yousafzai has become a global icon following her heroic struggle for the rights of girls to be educated in Pakistan’s Swat Valley which almost cost her her life.

After the Taliban gained control of the area in 2007, she began writing a blog for the BBC under the pseudonym ‘Gul Makai’.

The terrorist militia operated a regime based on fear and imposed their will on residents by forcing men to grow beards, preventing women from going to the market and blowing up many schools – the majority for girls.

HT: Neal