8/29/2025 Pakistan (International Christian Concern) — In May 2025, a 16-year-old Christian Pakistani girl was abducted from her home and married to a 28-year-old Muslim, Muhammad Asim.

Because it is unlawful for a Muslim to marry outside of the religion, Asim forced the girl to convert to Islam.
The girl told Christian Daily International, “He coerced me into putting my thumb impressions on some blank papers, which he then used to fabricate my false conversion to Islam and marriage to him.”

During the three months of their marriage, the girl was sexually assaulted, physically and psychologically abused, drugged, and forced into prostitution, which left her with serious health complications. In August, she was rescued and received intensive psychological and physical care.

This crime is not unusual in Pakistan. Every year, 1,000 girls from religious minorities, especially Hindus and Christians, are kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to their abductors. As was the case with the 16-year-old girl, forced conversions and marriages usually mask other crimes, such as sex slavery.

Efforts to make the government criminalize these marriages have increased in the last few years. In May 2025, Pakistan’s parliament passed a bill that seeks to eradicate child marriage. The police, however, do not always adhere to federal law.

If Muslim officials arrest and investigate the perpetrator, there is little chance of conviction. In the cases of minors, they often adhere to Sharia (Islamic), which overlooks forced marriages of minors.

If a case comes to court, the abductors make it difficult for the girls to win. They threaten their livelihoods, so the girls testify that they willingly converted and married them. Further discouraging them from telling the truth, many of them are shamed by their community. They know that being reacclimated does not mean returning to their old lives.

Pakistani culture values purity, particularly among women. This culture seeps into many of the country’s belief systems. In 2020, when a 14-year-old Christian girl, Neha, went to trial against her Muslim husband, her brother tried to bring a pistol into the courtroom to shoot her for defiling her purity.

In cases like this, Christian women find shelter in churches, where they receive care and healing at the hands of the local pastor and believers.

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