Source: World Watch Monitor, June 9, 2014
A Pakistani Muslim NGO says that every year between 100 to 700 Christian women, “usually between the ages of 12 and 25 are abducted, converted to Islam, and married to the abductor or third party.”
In its investigative report “Forced Marriages & Forced Conversions in the Christian Community of Pakistan,” the Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP) identifies a pattern. It says that in most of these abduction cases the parents of Christian victims file a police report, but in response, the abductor’s relatives or friends file another police complaint on behalf of the abducted Christian woman, claiming that she willfully married and converted to Islam, and that her parents are now “harassing” her unlawfully.
Of Pakistan’s approximate 185 million [people], about 95 percent are Muslims—20-30 percent Shia [and] the majority Sunni. Christians account for about 2 percent of the total population and about the same number are Hindus. The MSP represents the Hazara community, a distinct Turkic ethnic group from the areas bordering Afghanistan (in which country they make up 13 percent of the population). They belong to the Shiite branch of Islam and are treated with suspicion. In Pakistan, Hazaras have lost thousands of their people in sectarian killings in the last two decades. Subjected to violence and discrimination, the MSP confirms similar treatment meted out to Christians.