Home Latest News Pakistan Needs Ban on Forced Conversions, U.S. Congress Told

Pakistan Needs Ban on Forced Conversions, U.S. Congress Told

by AFP
File Photo. Jack Guez—AFP

File Photo. Jack Guez—AFP

Movement for Solidarity and Peace alleges that an estimated 100-700 Christian girls and at least 300 Hindu girls are forcibly converted to Islam each year.

Pakistan needs to overhaul laws to ban forced conversions, which are leading to rape or other abuse against hundreds of non-Muslim girls each year, an advocacy group said Wednesday.

The Movement for Solidarity and Peace, which campaigns against religious violence in Pakistan, said that forced conversions generally involve the abductions of girls or young women who are then converted to Islam and married. The girls are often raped or beaten and, when the family complains to police, the abductor responds that the girl has willingly converted, the group said in a report.

While exact figures are unverifiable, an estimated 100 to 700 Christian girls and at least 300 Hindu girls undergo such conversions in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation each year, the group claimed. “These trends threaten religious freedom and public safety for all people in Pakistan,” the group’s director of advocacy, Amber Jamil, told a briefing at the U.S. Congress.

The group called for Pakistan’s judiciary to provide a legal definition for forced conversions in the penal code. While abductors would violate multiple laws, Pakistan generally considers non-Muslim marriages invalid if one spouse later converts to Islam, the study said.

The group also called for more funding for the government to enforce laws and for a study to look more closely at the frequency of forced conversions across Pakistan. Pakistan has been torn by religious violence in recent years. Human Rights Watch said that 400 Shia Muslims were killed in targeted attack across Pakistan in 2013.

A leader of the Pakistani Christian community, Peter Jacob, told the briefing that international pressure could help persuade Islamabad to do more to protect religious minorities. Jacob voiced alarm about a rise in violence despite reforms at the official level, including the abolition of separate electorates for religious minorities.

“It seems that violence has become self-generating,” he said. “In a kind of economy that has investment in violence, in hatred and in religious intolerance, these elements continue to grow beyond [what the] state can control,” he said.

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4 comments

Pakistani May 22, 2014 - 3:39 pm

This is completely fake report. No one is forcibly converted in Pakistan. The real story is that many Christian and Hindu girls accept Islam by their own choice and willingness and then themselves try to marry with a Muslim men to seek shelter and protection. If they do not marry to Muslims, their families will not let them change their existing religion.
As in Pakistani society, it is not easy for girls to live an independent life after leaving their family so these girls opt to marry a Muslim so that they can easily practice Islam and they have no issues of protection.

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Human Rights Actvist May 22, 2014 - 3:43 pm

This report is simply baseless. The basic objective to publish such reports to get $$$$ from abroad. Infact this is a great business these days.

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jaggy May 23, 2014 - 7:18 am

the comments above, prove that Pakistani’s live in a world of denial.
if these girls were muslim, and were forced to convert to other religions by rape and/ beatings – these same people would be jumping up and down screaming for Jihad against the infidels.

Reply
KoMV-Music May 23, 2014 - 3:36 pm

Sad and very true, Pakistan has sorry state of affairs and Islamist extremists rule this land of the unpure. Islam is evil.

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