Pakistan: Young Christian Girl Abducted and Forced into Islamic Marriage
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A 16-year-old Christian girl has been kidnapped from her home in Punjab Province, Pakistan, and forced into marriage with the Islamic man who abducted her, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. With an increasing number of young non-Muslim girls being abducted and forced into Islamic marriages, Pakistan ranks 7 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.
Diya Iftikhar was abducted from her parents’ home in Jaranwala, Faisalabad District, Punjab Province by Muslim Ghazaal Jutt and two armed accomplices while her parents were out on September 12, MSN reports. Neighbors reportedly saw the girl being forced into a van at gunpoint and driven away.
“We were terrified because Ghazaal and his accomplices were involved in the Aug. 16, 2023 attacks on churches and homes in Jaranwala,” Diya’s mother Shahida told MSN. “They are notorious for their criminal activities, including sexual harassment of Christian girls.”
Four days later, Diya’s parents received a video message saying their daughter had agreed to marry Ghazaal of her own free will. “We knew Diya was coerced to record this false statement because she detested Ghazaal,” Shahida told MSN. “She had often complained to us that Ghazaal and his friends used to harass her when she went to her tuition center.”
Diya’s parents have reported the matter to police, who have so far failed to take appropriate action, MSN reports.
“Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic “marriages” and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say,” MSN said in its report. “Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their “legal wives,”” MSN said.
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