The Qur’an says “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). However, what constitutes “compulsion” is in the eye of the beholder. The institutionalized subjugation of the dhimma, with its regular humiliation and harassment, from which one can be freed for the simple price of converting to Islam, is not considered compulsion. Remember Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, the journalists who were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam — even though their conversions were obviously coerced, their captors made them say that they were converting freely, and the captors probably believed that themselves. After all, the journos could have chosen to be killed instead.
“Christian Girl, 10, Kidnapped and Forcibly Converted in Pakistan,” Morning Star News, March 11, 2024:
LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – The Christian parents of a 10-year-old girl in Pakistan who was abducted and forcibly converted to Islam last month fear she could be sold to sex traffickers, sources said.
A month after Laiba Suhail was abducted from her home in Chak 233-RB Ikhlaq Town, Faisalabad District, Punjab Province on Feb. 12 by four non-Muslims at the behest of a Muslim, Shaukat Shah, officials have refused to prosecute, said her father, Suhail Masih.
Shah is well-known in the area for forcibly converting children to Islam under duress, coercing them to file court statements that they willfully converted and later taking them from shelter homes on the pretext of giving them religious education, Masih said.
A court sent his daughter to a women’s shelter at her request after police on Feb. 15 informed Masih that she had filed an application claiming she had converted to Islam. Masih said that he has learned that Shah has taken custody of her from the shelter.
“This is Shah’s modus operandi,” Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “No one knows what happens to his victims after they are handed to him. We fear that he and his accomplices are involved in sex trafficking, and they sell these minor girls when they see that the families are in no position to pursue the matter further in courts.”
He lamented that the Roshan Wala Police Station has not taken action to recover his daughter despite the family’s registration of an abduction case against Shah.
“On Feb. 15, police informed us that an application had been filed by Laiba in the court of a magistrate in which she had claimed that she had converted to Islam of her own free will ‘after being impressed with Islamic teachings,’” Masih said. “We immediately went to the court where we saw our minor daughter surrounded by several policemen. We were not allowed to talk to her despite our repeated requests. The police later presented her before the magistrate where she reportedly repeated the contents of the application. She also sought to be sent to the Dar Ul Aman [women’s shelter], which the magistrate admitted.”
Masih said that the family looked on helplessly as Shah and police took his daughter to the shelter.
“We could not do anything after Laiba’s statement before the court, which I believe was extracted under duress,” he said. “We were not given any opportunity to ask her under what circumstances she was forced to give this statement.”
Masih questioned how a 10-year-old girl could convert to Islam willingly when she did not even have basic education, let alone a religious one.
“It is a blatant lie that my daughter has changed her faith willingly,” he said. “Whatever little religious education she has is from the church’s Sunday school. She has had no interaction with Muslims, because she used to stay at home all day long to take care of me and her mother.”
Masih, a member of the Church of Pakistan, is crippled in both legs, and neither he nor his wife are able to work due to health problems, he said….
Mike says
Again, if you’re a Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Jain or Buddhist (or openly atheist or agnostic) in Pakistan, for crying out loud, get out of that godforsaken country, and move to India or elsewhere.
I don’t know what the situation is like for non-Muskims in Bangladesh, but I don’t imagine that it’s much better than Pakistan.
O Lord God, please bring justice and succor to the innocent people who are being oppressed by hateful Islamist bigots in that country. Amen.
Sanatani American says
India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 or CAA does exactly that. It expedites and automatically grants citizenship to oppressed Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis (Zoroastrians), Jews (yes, there are still 200 Jews in Pakistan), and Buddhists currently living in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They do not need to present papers to seek asylum in India.
The commies, liberals, and muslims opposed the CAA. Called it “discriminatory”. Go figure.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
They have only now, after 5 years, ratified that law. Also, that law allows people who have been in India before 2014 to seek refuge: it does nothing for people who’ve gone after 2014: they’ll still have to wait 11 years before they can be citizens. But more importantly, if they go to India w/o their documents – passports, visas,…. the CAA gives them a pass if they arrived in India before 2014, but not after. That law is deeply flawed and is just used by the ruling BJP to fool Hindus into thinking that it’s doing something for them
Hoi Polloi says
What laws there allow a 10yo to make life-altering moves and men to seize a little girl and take her from her family? There are cases in the US where parents refuse to comply with gender ideology, so roughly comparable. Might makes right to these criminals.
Walter Sieruk says
That more than criminal , it’s completerly despicable and totally unconscionable.
Well, if that’s the type of man that Islam creates then that’s proof enough that Islam is a religion of the Devil
Ray Jarman says
Exactly Walter Sieruk,
I am not a Biblical scholar but I have read the Bible and never do I remember any passages where someone is told to kill than maybe in the book of Joshua 6:1–27, concerning the Battle of Jerico and a few other battles where the Joshua is told to cleanse the city. But otherwise, especially the New Testament, we are told to love our neighbors and I cannot find even one passage where Jew, Christian or Gentile is taught to hate much less kill.
Walter Sieruk says
The Bible completely forbids condemns kidnapping, and instructs in a severe punishment for those who do it, Exodus 21:16.
The point being that many Muslims do claim that they “respect the Bible.” That claim must be nothing but empty lip service. They only quote from the Bible whenever they feel that it happens to fit with their Islamic their Islamic theology.
That’s called “cheery picking of Bible verses”, It’s called called ” hypocrisy .”
OLD GUY says
How hard is it to convert a ten year old girl? A little RAPE, a little BEATING, a little threat to KILL you or your Family.
Islam showing its love and peace.
They have taken her from the love of GOD to islam and she now is a piece of property of some muslim male owner.
May the true God always be with her and in her heart.
somehistory says
Yes, She is not a mozlum. She is a poor child being horribly mistreated. Christians know how Jesus feels about little children and the **warning** He gave to any person who hurts “one of these little ones.”
Jesus and His Father will see that her outcome is a wonderful one and that those who are hurting her pay the full price. May this happen soon.
James Lincoln says
When I was 10 years old, I was busy playing marbles, Little League baseball, riding my bike – and trying to impress that cute little blonde girl in my fourth-grade class.
I feel for this poor 10-year-old Pakistani girl who will never have a normal childhood.
dumbledoresarmy says
The church of Pakistan is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Will the Archbishop of Canterbury speak out publicly on behalf of this poor little girl?? Start a prayer and advocacy campaign on her behalf???
Will any other leaders of Anglican churches, in the western world – the Episcopalians in the USA, the Anglicans of Canada, Australia, etc, put pressure on the governments of their respective countries to put pressure on Pakistan with regards to this and the many, many, MANY other similar cases of gross abuse of human rights in Islamic Pakistan? Will ANY Christian leaders representing ANY of the main Christian traditions within the western world step up??
They’re more likely, alas, right now, to be wringing their hands over the “plight of the pooooor palestinians (sic)”….
The Pakistani government, police, judiciary, wink at and connive at and no doubt gleefully APPROVE OF the wholesale abuse, abduction, rape and force-conversion of non-Muslims (especially minor children, both boys and girls) in their country. Similar crimes occur in Islamic Egypt every day, targeting the Coptic Christians.
But does ANY western non-Islamic country with any sort of leverage EVER utter a squeak??? EVER think about the sorts of consequences that could be imposed upon Islamic Pakistan, or Islamic Egypt, to punish them? (Right now , instead, most of them seem to be focusing on criticising, isolating and punishing Israel for having DARED to act in self-defence against a massive and mass-murderously violent Muslim attack!).