It is not just Hindu girls who are kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam before being married off to their kidnappers. A month before the abduction of Reena and Raveena Meghwar, 13-year-old Sadaf Masih was abducted and forcefully converted to Islam. The Christian persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern reported that the abductors forged her birth certificate that showed her age as 18 and warned her family of “consequences of the law” if they protested.
Pakistan ranks as the fifth worst nation in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s World Watch List. Last year, when the father of 12-year-old Pakistani Christian girl who was abducted and converted approached the court, the police arrested him for “filing false charges” against her captor. Last April, Fouzia Bibi, a Christian mother of three was abducted and forced to marry her boss.
Organisations such as Jamia Binoria Madrasa in Karachi openly claim to have converted 152 Christians, 147 Hindus, one atheist, two Buddhists, five Ahmediyyas, one Ismaili and one Kalash into Islam. A new TV series, Maria Bint e Abdullah, on GeoTV has created a furore with Pakistani Christians asking the government to cancel the show. The trailer shows Maria, the daughter of a Christian mother and a Muslim father bearing a rosary in her hand, kneeling in a cathedral in front of statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary accompanied by a voice over that says: “To me she doesn’t seem a Muslim.
She doesn’t even know how to say namaz.” As Maria picks up her Bible another voice interrupts, “Can I ask something, are you Christian?” The series is emblematic of the crisis minorities face in Pakistan. Over 30,000 people have applied for asylum or refugee status in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other countries, say Christian community leaders. According to agency reports, around 1,000 Christian women are forcibly converted in Pakistan every year. Should a girl escape her husband, the police immediately arrests her family member.
According to a report by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan, women and girls aged between 12 and 25 are abducted and forcibly converted to Islam before being married to their abductor or his associate. These girls are often sexually abused, forced into prostitution, trafficked and subjected to domestic abuse. The rebellious among them are warned that they “are now Muslims and that the punishment for apostasy is death”.
In August last year, 18-year-old Binish Paul was thrown off the roof by Taheer Abbas who was furious at her refusal to marry him and convert to Islam. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies side with Muslim kidnappers and instead of dealing with it as a case of kidnapping, consider such cases as conversion to Islam forcing the victim’s families to withdraw the case. And if the victim’s family is successful in taking their case to the court, courts are equally not helpful and because of pressure from the Islamic groups bring sharia law in and decide the case in the favour of the kidnapper.
Poverty is a deterrent to their freedom. Like the ‘Haris’, most of Pakistani Christians are low-caste Hindus whose forefathers converted during the British Raj. There are villages in Punjab totally made up of poor Christians who are labourers and farmhands. Islamic zealotry has brought cultures in Pakistan to the edge of extinction. The Kalash people who live in a remote valley in northwest Pakistan are reducing in number. Anthropologists say they were probably the first wave of immigrants in Asia.