Coerced religious conversion in Pakistan: Difference between revisions

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In Pakistan, approximately 1,000 girls belonging to the minority Hindu, Christian and Sikh communities are kidnapped and forcefully converted to Islam every year according to abc news .^[1][2] Most of the targets are Hindu and Christian girls from lower Castes and poor families.^[3]

According to the Pakistan Hindu Council religious persecution, especially forced conversions, remains the foremost reason for migration of Hindus from Pakistan. This practice is being reported increasingly in the districts of Tharparkar, Umerkot and Mirpur Khas in Sindh.^[4]

On 18 October 2005, Sanno Amra and Champa, a Hindu couple residing in the Punjab Colony, Karachi, Sindh returned home to find that their three teenage daughters had disappeared. After inquiries to the local police, the couple discovered that their daughters had been taken to a local madrassah, had been converted to Islam, and were denied unsupervised contact with their parents.^[5] In January 2017, a Hindu temple was demolished in Pakistan's Haripur district.^[6]

On 3 January 2020, Pakistani media reported that "scores of protesters surrounded the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, on Friday afternoon, threatening to overrun the holy site if their demands for the release of suspects in an alleged forced conversion case were not met".^[7] There were also reports of stone-pelting on the shrine by a mob of angry local Muslims, that even threatened to convert it into a mosque.^[8]

In May 2007, members of the Christian community of Charsadda in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, close to the border of Afghanistan, reported that they had received letters threatening bombings if they did not convert to Islam, and that the police were not taking their fears seriously.^[9]

Rinkle Kumari, a 19-year Pakistani student, Lata Kumari, and Asha Kumari, a Hindu working in a beauty parlor, were allegedly forced to convert from Hinduism to Islam.^[10][11] They told the judge that they wanted to go with their parents.^[12] Their cases were appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The appeal was admitted but remained unheard ever after.^[13] Rinkle was abducted by a gang and "forced" to convert to Islam, before being head shaved.^[14]

Sikhs in Hangu district stated they were being pressured to convert to Islam by Yaqoob Khan, the assistant commissioner of Tall Tehsil, in December 2017. However, the Deputy Commissioner of Hangu Shahid Mehmood denied it occurred and claimed that Sikhs were offended during a conversation with Yaqub though it was not intentional.^{[15][16][17][18]}

A total of 57 Hindus converted in Pasrur during May 14–19. On May 14, 35 Hindus of the same family were forced to convert by their employer because his sales dropped after Muslims started boycotting his eatable items as they were prepared by Hindus as well as their persecution by the Muslim employees of neighbouring shops according to their relatives. Since the impoverished Hindu had no other way to earn and needed to keep the job to survive, they converted. 14 members of another family converted on May 17 since no one was employing them, later another Hindu man and his family of eight under pressure from Muslims to avoid their land being grabbed.^[19]

In 2017, the Sikh community in Hangu district of Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province alleged that they were "being forced to convert to Islam" by a government official. Farid Chand Singh, who filed the complaint, has claimed that Assistant Commissioner Tehsil Tall Yaqoob Khan was allegedly forcing Sikhs to convert to Islam and the residents of Doaba area are being tortured religiously.^[20][21] According to reports, about 60 Sikhs of Doaba had demanded security from the administration.^[22]

Many Hindus convert to Islam in order to acquire Watan Cards and National Identification Cards. These converts are also given land and money. For example, 428 poor Hindus in Matli were converted between 2009 and 2011 by the Madrassa Baitul Islam, a Deobandi seminary in Matli, which pays off the debts of Hindus converting to Islam.^[23] Another example is the conversion of 250 Hindus to Islam in Chohar Jamali area in Thatta.^[24] Conversions are also carried out by Ex Hindu Baba Deen Mohammad Shaikh mission which converted 108,000 people to Islam since 1989.^[25]

In October 2020, the Pakistani High Court upheld the validity of a forced marriage between 44-year-old Ali Azhar and 13-year-old Christian Arzoo Raja. Raja was abducted by Azhar, forcibly wed to Azhar and then forcibly converted to Islam by Azhar.^[26]

On March 21, 2022, another Hindu girl was shot dead in Rohri, Sukkur, Sind for resisting her abduction.^[27]

According to the Child Protection activists, these forced conversions money-making network which involves Islamic clerics who solemnize the marriages, magistrates who legalize the unions and corrupt local police who aid the culprits by refusing to investigate or sabotaging investigations. According to the Child Protection activist Jibran Nasir, these forced conversions are part of a mafia that preys on vulnerable minority girls for older men with pedophilia urges.^[2] The Pakistan Muslim League politician Haresh Chopra has stated that abduction and forced conversion of Hindus and Sikhs girls is a business in Pakistan done by organized gangs of mullahs and terrorists.^[28]

The culprit involved in forcibly converting a non-Muslim girl to Islam believe that they will earn a place in heaven, according to the Amarnath Motumal, vice chairperson of the Sindh Chapter of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission. Pakistan doesn't have stronger legislation to prevent forced conversions and due to this these forced conversions go unabated.^[29]

Islamic institutions and clerics like Abdul Haq (Mitthu Mian) (politician and caretaker of Bharchundi Shareef Dargah) and Pir Ayub Jan Sirhindi (caretaker of Dargah pir sarhandi) are alleged involved in these forced conversions and are known to have support from the ruling political parties of Sindh.^{[30][31][32][33]}

Some conversions are forced while some conversions are due to discrimination of poor Hindus in jobs, government facilities and conversion to Islam is seen as a way to avoid religious discrimination and violence.^[34]

A survey conducted by the Pakistan Hindu Seva welfare Trust found that majority of the scheduled caste Hindu families doesn't send their girl children to schools due to the fear of forced conversion.^[35] According to the, Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, member of National Assembly of Pakistan, around 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Pakistan to India every year and the forced conversions are one of the major reasons behind this.^[36] According to the Pakistan Hindu Council, forced conversions is the foremost reason for the declining population of Hindus in Pakistan.^[31] Hindus in Sindh live in fear, due to forced marriage of Hindu girls to Muslim men.^[37] Many Pakistani Hindus migrate to India due to forced conversions.^[38]

Pakistan does not have strong enough legislation to prevent forced conversions, due to which the conversions are beieved to go on unabated.^[29]

In November 2016, a bill against forced conversion was passed unanimously by the Sindh Provisional Assembly. However, the bill failed to make it into law as the Governor returned the bill. The bill was effectively blocked by the Islamist groups and parties like the Council of Islamic Ideology and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.^[39] In 2019, a bill against forced conversion was proposed by Hindu politicians in the Sindh assembly, but was turned down by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party lawmakers.^[40] In 2020 "Protection of the Rights of Religious Minorities Bill" was introduced in the Senate of Pakistan that could prevent forced conversions of minority girls, but it was turned down by the Senate Standing Committee on Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony chaired by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) (JUI-F) senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri. Krishna Kumari Kolhi, a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator, walked out of the Senate during the meeting as a form of protest.^[41]

The Pakistani Nobel Laurette Malala Yousafzai spoke against forced conversions in Pakistan and said "It should be a personal choice and no one, especially a child shouldn’t be forced to accept any faith or convert to any other religion out of the will,"^[42] The Pakistani Prime minister Imran Khan has said that forced conversions are 'un-Islamic'^[43] and are against the commands of Allah.^[44] The Deputy Leader of Conservative Party of Canada Candice Bergen has said that "The reports coming out of Pakistan of Christian and Hindu girls being abducted, raped, forced into marriages and coerced to convert from their faith are deeply concerning and need to be addressed". She also called for the re-establishment of Office of Religious Freedom in Canada to address the issue.^[45]

Pakistan has no law to stop forced conversion.^[46] The Pakistani minority groups protested when Pakistani parliamentary committee rejected the anti forced conversion bill.^[47]

The All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat (APHP) general secretary, who in an interview with The Times of India said the "majority of cases of marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men were result of love affairs. He claimed that due to honor, the family members of women concoct stories of abduction and forced conversions". While the general secretary admitted that there were incidents of abductions and forced conversions of Hindu girls, he claimed that those incidents are not in large numbers.^[48]

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