The international establishment media is indifferent to such incidents, because it has a paradigm: Muslims are always brown victims and Christians are always white oppressors. If a story doesn’t fit that template, it is unworthy of attention.
“In Pakistan, Non-Muslim Children Are Brutalised and Forcibly Converted to Islam,” by Uzay Bulut, European Conservative, May 10, 2024:
A 13-year-old Christian girl, Sania Amin, went missing on April 4 after she left home to buy groceries in Anjotar, a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Local eyewitnesses reported that three Muslims took her by force and dragged her through the streets. Pakistani police refused to register a “First Information Report” (FIR) for Sania’s abduction.
Christian Today reported on April 15:
A Christian family in Pakistan has been left devastated after police refused to register a case about the alleged kidnapping and forced marriage of their 13-year-old daughter, Sania Amin. Despite the frantic appeals of her father Amin Masih, authorities have turned a blind eye, claiming the young girl converted to Islam and wed her supposed abductor … The distraught family has made repeated pleas to investigators, even presenting documents that appear to show Sania’s forced conversion and wedding. However, the police have remained unmoved, indifferent to the potential criminality of marrying a child.
This is not an isolated case. Pakistan has an endemic of abductions, rapes, forced conversions, and forced marriages of minority children and women. The Associated Press reported in 2020 that, each year, nearly 1,000 non-Muslim girls are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan, largely to pave the way for underage marriages that are non-consensual.
The lack of accountability for perpetrators has led to a surge in these types of crimes. In the first four months of this year, there has been a sharp increase in similar cases impacting young Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan. Consider the case of Chanda Maharaj, also known as Chanda Kumari, a Hindu girl. Based on a court ruling, she has recently been sent back to the Muslim man who abducted her. This occurred after she spent a year and three months in a shelter home. Chanda was 15 when she was kidnapped by a Muslim on 12 August 2022. The incident occurred in Sindh, Pakistan while she was walking home with her sister. Marco Respinti, a journalist with Bitter Winter, reported on March 15:
Initially, the police refused to take action on the complaint filed by the Hindu girl’s parents. Finally, after the international campaign supporting her, in October 2022 Chanda was rescued by police from her ‘husband’ and taken to a shelter home. However, on October 20 a court ruled that her conversion and ‘marriage’ were valid and sent her back to her kidnapper, Shaman Magsi. The parents appealed, and in December 2022 Chandra was taken again to the shelter home although she had clearly expressed to the court her wish to be with her family.
The Pakistani persecution against Chanda did not end there. In March of 2024, the court determined that Chanda’s biological age made it legal for her to be with her ‘husband,’ although her birth certificate said she was not yet 17. As a result, she was taken back to her abductor. Respinti notes that, “There has been no hearing; she has not been heard [at a court of law], and her parents learned about her situation after she was taken back to the home of her kidnapper [against her will].”
On 11 April 2024, UN experts expressed dismay at the continuing lack of protection for young women and girls belonging to minority communities in Pakistan….
Mike says
Rather than lecturing others about supposed “Islamophobia,” Pakistan needs to do a lot more to combat rampant Christophobia, Hinduphobia, Sikhophobia, Buddhaphobia, Judeophobia, Jainophobia, Zoroastrophobia, Ahmadiphobia, Shiaphobia, and Atheophobia and Agnostophobia within its own borders.
It also needs to do more to fix its collapsing economy, infrastructure, and educational, social service and judicial systems (including the reactionary and discriminatory blasphemy laws). Oh yes, and to do more to fight rampant misogyny and child abuse as well.
SC says
Sorry folks you live with beasts you are gonna get bitten. It is time to up and leave, let then do their own dirty work. Pakistan will be unsafe for anyone who is not the right sort of moslem and most likely sooner rather than later. The folks in charge care nothing about anyone even their own. And if you do not speak, read and write Arabic, then the arabs think nothing of you, moslem or not.
Tony Rice says
Arabic is not ordinarily spoken in Pakistan. Much schooling, legal and political matters / discussion are in English.
Mike says
Tony: also, there was that recent incident at a cafe in Pakistan, where Islamists wanted to kill a woman for imagined blasphemy, because she had an artsy dress from the U.A.E., I believe it was, that had some Arabic calligraphy.
Never mind that they couldn’t even read Arabic, and that the dress didn’t even have any Quranic scripture on it; it just had benign words such as “sunshine,” “river”, etc.
OLD GUY says
Coming to America. Won’t diversity be a Bitch.