_____________________Monday, October 30, 2006__________________
Pakistan's 'Marriage Act'
A law passed under the military dictatorship of Zia ulHaq in 1985 rules taht if a non-Muslim woman converts to Islam, her previous marriageis null and void. Radical Muslims see this law as an inviatation to kidnap, rape and bully Christian women and girls into converting to Islam. They are often forced to marry their Muslim captors, who claim that their parents and husbands have lost all right to the abducted women and girls. Through indifference, aggrement of fear, most local police simply go along with it.
In February 2001, Naira Nadia, a fourteen-year-old Christian girl, was kadnapped and gang raped by a group of Muslim men after she shared her faith with school friends. Then men forcibly converted her to Islam and sent her parents a certificate of conversion. Despite evidence that Naira was under age and therefore could not marry or convert to another faith without her parents' conscent, the presiding judge at Lahore High Court ruled in favour of the abductor. Naira has been mission for almost seventeen months. Her family filed an apeal to the Suprem court in February this year, but they are under increasing pressure from local Muslims to drop the case.
-Adapted from "True Grit"