Pakistani Christian girl flees after court orders her to live with Muslim rapist
By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post
A 14-year-old Christian girl, who was ordered by a court (5th story on link) to return to the Muslim man who had abducted her and forcibly married and converted her to Islam, has escaped and is in hiding in Pakistan’s Faisalabad area, according to reports.
Catholic teenager Maira Shahbaz has fled the home of her alleged husband, Mohamad Nakash, weeks after the Lahore High Court ruled that Shahbaz was legally married to her abductor and ordered her to be returned to his custody, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.
Judge Raja Muhammad Shahid Abbasi ruled earlier this month that Shahbaz must return to the home of the married man who had kidnapped her at gunpoint during the COVID-19 lockdown and whom the judge referred to as her “husband,” on the basis that she had converted to Islam.
“The order is unprecedented and will likely mean Maira will never return to her family,” Shazia George, a Pakistani human rights activist, told ICC after the ruling.
Judge Abbasi overruled a lower court’s decision that she be allowed to leave her captor’s home and stay at a women’s shelter until her case was heard by the Lahore High Court.
The Christian girl was abducted by Nakash and two accomplices while she was walking home in the Madina Town area in Faisalabad District. According to witnesses, the abductors forced Shahbaz into a car and fired gunshots into the air as they fled the scene, ICC reported earlier.
Nakash, a married man, was accused of presenting a false marriage certificate to the lower court that said Maira was 19 years old and they had wed in October 2019. The document not only failed to provide proof of consent from Nakash’s first wife, with whom he has two children, but the Muslim cleric whose name is listed on the certificate had denied involvement in the sham marriage.
Lawyer Daniel earlier said that if Maira stayed in Nakash’s home, she might be forced to become a sex worker.
“This case has highlighted the wicked tactics used to force victims to make statements in favor of their abductors before the courts in Pakistan,” Suneel Malik, a human rights defender in Pakistan, told ICC. “Victims are threatened with dire consequences if they speak the truth in court.”
William Stark, ICC’s regional manager for South Asia, said, “The threats that Maira’s abductor has issued against Maira and her family are very real and must be taken seriously. We are also deeply disappointed by the High Court’s decision to return Maira to the custody of her abductor. This has placed Maira’s safety at risk and is likely why she and her family have gone into hiding.”
Stark added that Pakistan must do more to combat the issue of abductions, forced marriages and forced conversions to Islam. “For too long perpetrators have used the issue of religion to justify their crimes against Pakistan’s religious minorities,” he said.
A 2014 study by The Movement for Solidarity and Peace Pakistan estimated that about 1,000 women and girls from Pakistan’s Hindu and Christian community were abducted, forcibly married to their captor, and forcibly converted to Islam every year.
The issue of religion is also often injected into cases of sexual assault to place religious minority victims at a disadvantage, ICC said. Playing upon religious biases, perpetrators know they can cover up and justify their crimes by introducing an element of religion.
“Swedish Police Investigating Overtly Anti-Semitic Chants During Islamic Riots,”
by Igor Kuznetsov, Sputnik News
The riots in Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city and one of the country’s most ethnically diverse communities, erupted after a Quran-burning staged by members of the anti-Islamic Danish Hard Line party in what was claimed to be a gesture of solidarity with the “brotherly” Swedish people.
During the violent riots in Malmö that broke out on Friday, slogans against Jews were shouted by the crowd. Now the police will investigate the incident that may be classified as “incitement against ethnic groups”, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported.
Following the riots, clips were posted on social media with protesters clenching their fists and shouting “Jews, remember Khaybar, Mohammed’s army returns.” According to the Central Jewish Council, Khaybar was a place where Jews were murdered by Prophet Mohammad, a central figure in Islam, and his followers in 628, and the slogans are interpreted as “a call for the murder and purge of Jews”.
According to journalist Luai Ahmed, who translated the chants from Arabic, the crowd also chanted “Mohammed’s sword returns”.
“Sweden has never been safer. Islam is a religion of peace, etc”, he noted, deriding the common political tropes and media cliches.
Victor Borslöv-Reichmann, previously an active member of the Moderate Party and the Jewish Youth League, related the incident on Facebook as follows.
Okay, let’s recap: It starts with Danish right-wing extremists burning a Quran in central Malmö. After this, 300 people start a violent riot in Rosengård, where they attack the police. During the riots, the angry mob chants Islamist slogans and hateful expressions about Jews. ‘Jews remember Khaybar, Mohammad’s army returns’. And this in the city that wants to set up a Holocaust museum.
Before you, Malmö’s politicians, try to collect goodwill points for the investment in dead Jews, perhaps you should ensure that your living Jews can continue in safety and security, free from hatred and threats?” he said, calling the development “frightening”.
During the weekend, the riots continued in Ronneby, Blekinge County, where four policemen and a passer-by were injured.
The riots in Malmö and Ronneby were triggered by Danes from the anti-immigration Hard Line party, who burned one copy of the Quran and played football with another one. This in turn, was an escalation from a previous dispute as its leader Rasmus Paludan, who has made a reputation for himself with controversial behaviour such as Quran-burning, which he celebrates as free speech, was arrested and expelled from Sweden for two years, ostensibly to prevent “lawbreaking”. Paludan’s ethno-nationalist Hard Line party seeks a ban on Islam and an end to non-Western immigration, and nearly cracked the parliamentary threshold in the 2019 election.
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