The number of Pakistani Christian girls abducted, abused, and forcefully converted to Islam with the law’s consent is growing.
In January, the Christian Daily International-Morning Star News reported the following cases:
- On January 5, a married, 35-year-old Muslim neighbor of a 12-year-old Christian girl, Saba Shafique, abducted her in Punjab Province. He took her to another province, where he forcibly converted her to Islam and married her, her father said.
- On January 9, five Muslims abducted a 14-year-old Christian girl, Saneha Sharif, from outside her home in Punjab. Sharif Masih said he fears the kidnappers may try to forcibly convert his daughter to Islam and force her to marry one of the Muslim suspects.
- On January 20, three Muslims abducted a 12-year-old Christian girl, Ariha Gulzar, at gunpoint from her home in Punjab. They have threatened to sell her into sexual slavery, her parents said.
These are not isolated cases. Many Christian girls as young as 7 — primarily from poor families and those with physical disabilities — are kidnapped, forcibly married, sexually assaulted and forced to convert to Islam on the pain of death. Some are trafficked into slave labor and the sex trade. Christian and Hindu parents are getting increasingly fearful of allowing their daughters to walk alone outside. Perpetrators are increasingly supported by Islamic religious leaders and enjoy de facto impunity for their actions.
Many Christian families never see their girls again, the state authorities rarely take meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice, and police are often biased, refusing to file reports from Christian families.
According to the 2024 Pakistan country report by Open Doors, a human rights organization, Christian persecution in the country comes from government officials, Islamic religious leaders, violent Islamic groups and revolutionaries or paramilitary groups, political parties, ideological pressure groups and normal citizens – in other words, almost the entire country.
Discrimination and challenges for Christians are prevalent at every government tier and even in secular environments, notes Open Doors. This is true for the army, the judicial and the administrative services as well (especially at the local level) although Christians continue to serve in these areas.
The Movement for Solidarity and Peace calculates that in Pakistan up to 1,000 young Christian and Hindu girls and young women aged between 12 and 25 are abducted by Muslim men every year. The research, which suggests that Christians make up 70 percent of these cases, found that the scale of the problem “is likely to be much greater as a number of the cases are never reported and do not progress through law enforcement and the legal systems”. Many of the girls suffer rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and domestic abuse.
While all women are vulnerable to gender-based violence in Pakistan, women from Christian and Hindu minorities face overt and violent forms of persecution. According to Open Doors,
“The legal system repeatedly fails these young women … The psychological trauma and abuse continue even if a case is brought to bring back the girl. Many of them are forced to say they are over 18 years old or that they converted voluntarily…
“The challenges involved represent a huge emotional strain for the families who constantly fear retribution from the perpetrators and their supporters, as well as the reality that for most Christian girls a return to her family is near impossible.
Jubilee Campaign reported in a 2023 written statement to the UN Human Rights Council that in many cases, Christian girls are forcibly married to men who are twice their age or more, including those who are already married with children near the victim’s age.
For the small minority of rescued victims, the shame of abduction and rape places a shadow over their lives within Pakistan’s honor-based culture. Survivors show higher rates of PTSD, anxiety, depression, and detachment.
Meanwhile, it remains a great challenge to achieve equitable recognition of conversions. Converts from Islam will never be recognized officially, and they continue living as Muslims. However, the recognition of conversions to Islam from a Christian or Hindu background is swiftly accepted and the National Identity Card easily changed.
Christian women and girls are also at risk of sexual violence in the public sphere, including the workplace and schools. This is part of a wider attitude towards Christian girls and women: Muslim men often believe that Christian women and girls have loose morals and are easily available.
Many are house-maids or cleaners and are targeted for sexual exploitation. It is becoming normal to rape young Christian children. Reports revealed sexual assaults against a three-year old Christian girl by her Muslim teacher and an eight-year-old girl at the hands of her school principal in 2021.
Christian women and girls are also at risk of honor killings. It is estimated that around 1,000 women are killed annually in honor killings. This includes the case of 24-year old Sonia, from Rawalpindi, who was fatally shot in 2020 by a Muslim man for refusing to marry him.
Traveling within Pakistan is often limited for Christians and there are grave security risks connected with it:
“Even with the option of government security and support from the local bishop, it has been judged unwise to travel to certain parts of the country, such as Peshawar, with religious hatred cited as one of the causes for concern. For Christian women, especially those traveling on their own, the risks are especially acute, particularly in areas with strong Islamist influence where the notion of travel by unaccompanied females is anathema.”
The Pakistani media are routinely biased against Christians. For example, when a Muslim man is accused of abducting an underage Christian girl and forcing her to marry him, the standard editorial approach is to declare it a “love match” in which the girl is fully implicated. Such coverage will routinely fail to give consideration to the issue of her being under-age and the undue pressure likely applied by the so-called husband who is often decades older and has often acted without the consent of the individual’s parents and who in the West would be accused of pedophilia.
Most abduction cases do not get media coverage, and the victims suffer in silence, notes Open Doors.
Some of those incidents go unreported because the Christians involved choose not to speak about the resulting hostility. Doing so would expose them to more attacks. For example, if a family member is killed because of their faith, the survivors might decide to keep silent about the circumstances of the killing to avoid provoking any further attacks.
Other incidents go unreported and never reach the public consciousness because no one really knows about it; or the incident is simply not considered worth reporting; or media coverage is deliberately blocked or distorted; or media coverage is not deliberately blocked, but the information somehow gets lost; or the incidents are deliberately not reported widely for security reasons (e.g. for the protection of local church leaders).
Pakistan was part of India, and a majority-Hindu nation before the Islamization that started in the seventh century with the invading Muslim armies. Today, Pakistan is a chilling example of how non-Muslim girls and women are treated. Their liberty and dignity are confiscated. They live in fear and pain under Islamic rule. Democracies should take note of Pakistan and always do what is necessary to preserve their cultural identity, their sovereignty and freedom. They should never allow Islamists the right to impose their mores and laws. Pakistan, a hell on earth for non-Muslim women, is already a regressive enough example.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara.
Mike says
Islam is an evil, backwards, archaic, racist, hateful, sexist, misogynistic, pedophilic, death cult. The only aim it has is to dominate and kill anyone or any culture, that doesn’t submit to it. It’s the biggest threat that humanity faces and it needs to be wiped from the face of the planet, otherwise we will all suffer……
OLD GUY says
And just why do political leaders of non – islamic countries keep allowing these Islamic rapist and murders into our countries. Maybe DOGE needs to start investigating the off shore banking industries that seems to launder huge amounts of cash around the world. And don’t tell me we need these muslims to pick melons.
rick says
In war time, it is sad to say, soldiers commit crimes they would probably never do in their own civilian life. Rape is one of these horrible inhuman crimes. Yet in everyday Pakistan, men do rape young girls and even commit further defilement by forcing these raped young girls to renounce their Christian faith and adopt Islam. Even inhuman soldiers do not do that in wartime.
Pakistan is a degenerate nation for having so much of this crime going on. They never once have had a UN Resolution condemning such behavior by their citizens. It happens in other Muslim societies such as among Palestinians who also practice “honor murder” of their own female relatives for disobeying some absurd “rule” of behavior, but Pakistan holds the dishonor of the number of kidnapped and raped young children and the further humiliation of torturing them into accepting Islam over their own Christian faith.
What International organization takes Pakistan to task for this subhuman behavior? Where is the Pope who is supposed to be the Defender of Christians on this horror? If the Pope is such a coward, isn’t these some Catholic Bishops who can come forth?
It make one think how subhuman so many people are in this world that escape all punishment for their criminally degenerate crimes. And no one comes forth to do something to protect these 12 year old victims and their grieved parents.
Wellington says
“Pakistan is a degenerate nation….”
Agreed, rick, but I would add this: Every majority Muslim nation is degenerate just by being Islamic, only the degree varying from one such nation to another—and why ALL Muslims in any Western nation are ignorant parasites at best, active participators at worst, as they use Western liberty, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to ultimately destroy Western concepts of freedom.
No upside to Islam, whether in Pakistan or America or anywhere. Meanwhile, to the extent that Islam controls (such as in Pakistan), to that very extent are non-Muslims, at best, in second-class status mode; at worst simply deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this impressive trinity “mentioned” by Jefferson ( a person the Islamic sphere of mankind could have never and will never produce), having nothing in common with Islam. NOTHING.
Liberty or Islam. Take one’s pick because you cannot have both.
.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
Yes.
And even the muslims who seem to be “integrated” can suddenly become more devout in their wretched faith – and commit jihad.
James Lincoln says
And to think that Pakistan has nuclear weapons – with 170 plutonium-based nuclear warheads on short- and medium-range systems.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2025-01/focus/pakistan-and-nuclear-danger-asia
somehistory says
Vile, foul and demonic. May these sons of satan soon face their deserved Judgement and punishment described in the writings of the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians;
“This will come about when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his powerful angels. in a flaming fire, meting out punishment to those who don’t know God and those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”
and the prophecy of the prophet Zechariah.
New International Version
This is the plague with which the LORD will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
tgusa says
“Pakistan: Christian Girls Abducted, Raped, Forcibly Converted to Islam”
Standard operating procedure within islam. Meanwhile in Finland…
https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/1890649172690272519
Good lord. Have we reached peak insanity yet?
somehistory says
Thanks for sharing that. Grown women…and a guy? with what looks like a beard…singing what might be expected of three year olds sent to day care.
Do they really believe this will stop a mozlum from raping?
dumbledoresarmy says
This is also happening in Islamic Egypt – and has been happening for years (probably ever since the invasion and conquest of non-Arab Egypt, by Muslims).
ALL dhimmi populations were exposed to this. ALL had their girls – often underaged girls, because mohammedan mobsters, emulating Mohammed (whether he was real or not he is their ideal; this thug and bandit who raped 9 year old ‘aisha’ his child-‘wife’), like their females young… REALLY young, all the better to impose maximum pain and suffering.
Jewish and Christian and Hindu communities living under Mohammedan domination were perpetually preyed upon by bloody damned mohammedan unmen. For hideous centuries.
The ultimate intention and effect was genocidal… to annihilate the non-Muslim group, by taking away the females who would produce the next generation; said females were then either utterly destroyed, or force-bred to produce more mohammedan mobsters.
delenda est Islamia. It is the religion of predators, of rapists, of thieves, torturers, mass-murderers and liars, constructed so as to unloose and sacralise the vilest and basest aspects of human nature.
In a sane world, Islamic Pakistan and Islamic Egypt and every other Islamic entity within which this sort of absolutely evil behaviour is manifestly going on, connived with and enabled by those in authority, would be pariah states, quarantined as North Korea is quarantined. We would not trade with them. We would have nothing whatever to do with them. They would receive ZERO foreign aid.
abu taleb says
I have mentioned such crime many times to muslims, no one has ever condemned the crime even the so called moderate muslims. So, in a way, they are supporting the crime.
That is why I will never trust any muslim.
Alex Lund says
A member of the armed forces NBC unit (also had a doctorate in chemistry) once told me what is possible to make with the chemicals in an average household.
Couldnt some with the knowledge about these things find a way to create something (from the things you find in the average Pakistani household) that allows these women to build something in the kidnappers house to free themselves?
Sara Alan says
This is obviously evil, but beyond that, isn’t forcible conversion not really conversion. For example, if I say to another: you must accept Jesus Christ as your savior or I’ll kill you, isn’t it empty if the person converts to avoid death? I don’t believe in forcible conversion – I believe only when you really want to become an adherent, will it actually happen.
somehistory says
Any Christian who is being forced to *convert* to islime, can remain true to God and Christ in his heart. Just as the ancient man Namaan, who was healed of his leprosy, asked about his duty to his king when he had to go with the king into his place of worship. Namaan was assured that God could see his heart and know that he no longer worshipped the false god.
As the Scriptures say, “God sees what the heart is.”