Plight of Forced Conversions in Pakistan
The case of Arzoo Raja has brought light to a grim reality of forced conversions of Pakistan. Recently a minor Christian girl named Arzoo was abducted from her home in broad daylight by a man named Azhar Ali. Azhar, a man of age 44 years claims that Arzoo came to him out of free will, converted to Islam from Christianity, and married him. According the birth certificate of Arzoo which has also been circulating widely on social media since past few days she is just 13 years of age. And according to the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, the minimum age of marriage is 18 years. So as per the law, the girl is not eligible to give consent for marriage even if she wanted to (which is in itself a highly doubtful claim)
The problem is the fact that this is not the first time we have heard this oft-repeated story of a girl belonging to a minority religion, fleeing her home, and marrying an adult Muslim man. In the case of Arzoo too the man is more than two decades older than her. Many times the family of a poor girl files a case against the abduction and forced conversion of the girl but rarely any such case results in the safe return of a girl to her parents. The girl is almost always made to state that she wasn’t forced to do anything against her will. Being a psychology student myself I know how little value such a statement should hold considering the amount of stress any such girl has to face when they are not just kept away from parents but faced with constant threats against their family and themselves. Such girls are also faced with sexual assault and rape as per the law such marriage holds no value and is blatant rape.
The men who kidnap these young girls, convert them to Islam, and marry them always have to say that these girls were inspired by Islam and wanted to leave their religion and family behind. One might ask why mature Hindu/ Christian women are not converting to Islam at this exponential rate despite the fact they have better understanding and decision-making powers. Also, one might be curious to know that why are men from minority religions in Pakistan are not so interested in Islam as are the women especially teenagers?
Eshwar Lal Makhija is the mukhiya (chief) of Sukkur’s Hindu community has also shown concern over the same issue saying, “Once a girl is raped, she is blackmailed into giving whatever statement they want to be recorded in the court,” He questions why it is Hindu girls alone who are so eager to change their religion and elope. Why aren’t Hindu boys, who enjoy more social independence than the girls, doing the same?
Under-age girls from poor farming communities are especially vulnerable to conversions. Wealthy Muslim farmers see them as fair game for abductions, rape, and prolonged sexual exploitation in incarceration. Some notorious religious establishments proudly legalize these alleged crimes. And now in the case of Arzoo as well, the court has claimed that the conversion as well as marriage of the thirteen year old holds legal grounds.
The Peoples Commission for Minorities’ Rights and the Centre for Social Justice compiled the data of 156 cases of forced conversions which had taken place between 2013 and 2019. The results were nonetheless horrible; it revealed that the majority of such girls were minors, with numerous girls as young as 12 years old.
According to the latest report on State of Human Rights by The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) released on April 30, on average over 1,000 cases of forced conversions take place in Pakistan every year. And a majority of these incidents occur in the Hindu community of Sindh. Prior to this a 2015 report by the South Asia Partnership-Pakistan in collaboration with Aurat Foundation also bore similar results revealing that at least 1,000 girls are powerfully converted to Islam in Pakistan every year. The report highlighted the Thar region as the hub of forced conversions, particularly the districts of Umerkot, Tharparkar, Mirpur Khas, Sanghar, Ghotki, and Jacobabad.
Media is often silent on the problem of forced conversion. Many cases in which influential locals and religious leaders are involved go unreported because of pressure put on the media not to report the stories.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Pakistan is a participant states that the right to freedom of religion includes the right to change one’s religion and that no one shall be subject to the compulsion to change their religion. The European Court of Human Rights has given some guidance regarding the distinction between permissible religious persuasion, on the one hand, and compulsion on the other. Despite this young women are forced into conversion by force.
The offenders kidnap young girls which are usually minors. They are either subjected to sexual assault while in captivity or coercively married to adult Muslim men. The documents of girls are forged to make it appear that they are not minors and the same age is written on the Nikkah Nama, the marriage certificate. As per the laws of Sindh, 18 is marriageable age but that is not the case anywhere else in the country. Thus, the girls are taken to Punjab like Reena and Raveena where the marriage takes place.
Also, once the women convert, there is no going back, as estrangement would mean a death sentence. Pakistan is one of the thirteen countries in the world where if a person changes their religion from Islam to any other religion they must be subjected to a death sentence as per the law. In many cases, women are also told that their families are ‘kafirs’ and they cannot meet them. Thus, these young women are kept away from their families for life. No one hears from these women directly after they ‘abscond’.
In March 2019, nearly 2,000 Hindus staged a sit-in to demand justice for two sisters, Reena and Raveena, who they claimed were forcibly converted and married. The Islamabad High Court ruled the girls had willingly converted and married the men. They also issued a video statement that they had converted to Islam without any coercion. Much like Reena and Raveena, a week later, Simran could also be seen in a viral video clip, saying that she had changed her religion without any coercion and had married her husband Afaq out of her own free will. And like Reena and Raveena’s parents, Simran’s uncle kept pleading that she had been made to issue the statement under sheer stress and threat.
Some girls might marry these men with choice but the vast amount of evidence claims otherwise. Cases of kidnapping and forced conversion in Hindus are always accompanied by controversy over whether the girls involved converted and married of their own free will.
Religious groups oppose a minimum age for conversion or marriage on the basis that this is not sanctioned by Islam. Some have argued that there should be no limit of age for marriage and as soon as a girl reaches puberty, she is eligible for marriage. The age of puberty, they say, is different for girls and no consensus can be called on a unanimously agreed marriageable age. Despite that Council of Islamic Ideology proposed a bill in 2019 stating the marriageable age to be fixed at 18 years of age. This bill faced numerous criticisms in the house, even by the ruling party PTI itself.
Imran Khan, the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, took a firm ground against inhumane acts like forced conversions but to our dismay has failed to do any substantial good to the suffering Hindu community of our country.
We need serious reforms in the legal system so that heinous crimes like forced conversion and marriage of underage girls belonging from minority religions does not take place. Courts must operate free of prejudice towards any particular community. Also, psychological well being of girls must be confirmed before they issue a statement in the court. It is a high time for the state to realize that the rights Hindus and Christians citizens of Pakistan are as esteemed and crucial as their Muslim counterparts.
