Source: Morning Star News, March 26, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A court in Pakistan on Wednesday (March 25) upheld the marriage of a forcibly converted 13-year-old Christian girl to the Muslim man accused of kidnapping her, sending a wave of anguish and alarm through the Christian community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christian rights advocates and civil society groups strongly condemned the verdict by the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), which granted custody of young Maria Shahbaz to Shehryar Ahmad, a 30-year-old Muslim alleged to have forcibly converted and married her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maria was abducted on July 29, and since then, her family has repeatedly sought judicial intervention to recover her, without success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read the full story<\/a>. Pray for Maria and others like her in diverse contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another teenager who could use your prayers is 16-year-old Jonathan Muir Burgos, arrested with his father, a pastor in Cuba who was later released<\/a>. We found multiple articles about their arrest but no reports that the son, who has significant health issues, was released from custody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Morning Star News, March 26, 2026 A court in Pakistan on Wednesday (March 25) upheld the marriage of a forcibly converted 13-year-old Christian girl to the Muslim man accused of kidnapping her, sending a wave of anguish and alarm through the Christian community. Christian rights advocates and civil society groups strongly condemned the verdict … Continue reading Pakistan: Muslim Man’s Custody of Christian Girl Upheld<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14572,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14571\/revisions\/14572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}