A federal court in Pakistan has granted custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl, Maria Shahbaz, to a Muslim man who had kidnapped her, converted her to Islam, and ‘married’ her.
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A federal court in Pakistan has granted custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl, Maria Shahbaz, to a Muslim man who had kidnapped her, converted her to Islam, and ‘married’ her. Judges rejected the birth certificate Maria’s parents provided, and disregarded earlier judicial findings that the marriage was illegal. Such cases follow a recurring pattern. Every year in Pakistan, an estimated 1,000 girls and young women from religious minorities (many of whom are Christians) face abduction, rape, forced marriage to their much older abductors, coerced conversion to Islam, and various other forms of abuse.
