Abducted and forced into a Muslim marriage

Sixteen-year-old Ameena Ahmed (not her real name), now living in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab, does not always respond when her mother-in-law calls out to her.
“Even after a year of ‘marriage’ I am not used to my new name. I was called Radha before,” she told IRIN on a rare occasion when she was allowed to go to the corner shop on her own to buy vegetables.
Ameena, or Radha as she still calls herself, was abducted from Karachi about 13 months ago by a group of young men who offered her ice-cream and a ride in their car. Before she knew what was happening, she was dragged into a larger van, and driven to an area she did not know.
She was then pressured into signing forms which she later found meant she was married to Ahmed Salim, 25; she was converted to a Muslim after being asked to recite some verses in front of a cleric. She was obliged to wear a veil. Seven months ago, Ameena, who has not seen her parents or three siblings since then and “misses them a lot”, moved with her new family to southern Punjab.
“The abduction and kidnapping of Hindu girls is becoming more and more common,” Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer and leader of Karachi’s Hindu community, told IRIN. “This trend has been growing over the past four or five years, and it is getting worse day by day.”
He said there are at least 15-20 forced abductions and conversions of young girls from Karachi each month, mainly from the multi-ethnic Lyari area. The fact that more and more people are moving to Karachi from interior Sindh added to the dangers, as there are now more Hindus in Karachi, he said.
“They come to search for better schooling, for work and to escape growing extremism,” said Motumal who believes Muslim religious schools are involved in the conversion business.
“Hindus are non-believers. They believe in many gods, not one, and are heretics. So they should be converted,” said Abdul Mannan, 20, a Muslim student. He said he would be willing to marry a Hindu girl, if asked to by his teachers, “because conversions bring big rewards from Allah. But later I will marry a ‘real’ Muslim girl as my second wife,” he said.
According to local law, a Muslim man can take more than one wife, but rights activists argue that the law infringes the rights of women and needs to be altered.
Motumal says Hindu organisations are concerned only with the “forced conversion” of girls under 18. “Adult women are of course free to choose,” he said.
‘LURED AWAY’: Sunil Sushmat, 40, who lives in a village close to Mirpurkhas in central Sindh, said his 14-year-old daughter was “lured away” by an older neighbour and, her parents believe, forcibly converted after marriage to a Muslim. “She was a child. What choice did she have?” her father asked. He said her mother still cries for her “almost daily” a year after the event.
Sushmat is also concerned about how his daughter is being treated. “We know many converts are treated like slaves, not wives,” he said.
According to official figures, Hindus based mainly in Sindh make up 2 percent of Pakistan’s total population of 165 million. “We believe this figure could be higher,” Motumal said.
According to media reports, a growing number of Hindus have been fleeing Pakistan, mainly for neighbouring India. The kidnapping of girls and other forms of persecution is a factor in this, according to those who have decided not to stay in the country any longer.
“My family has lived in Sindh for generations,” Parvati Devi, 70, told IRIN. “But now I worry for the future of my granddaughters and their children. Maybe we too should leave,” she said. “The entire family is seriously considering this.”

Why forced marriage is un-Islamic: Forced marriage is and has been a problem in all cultures and religions. From the fundamentalist Christian polygamist sects of the American west, to Israeli cult leaders, to the sale of child brides from Hindu families in India, religion has been used as a justification to enslave and control girls and women in marriages against their will. However, most of the recent stories of forced marriage and child brides in the news have centred on Islamic countries and cultures. So is forced marriage supported by Islam, or is it “un-Islamic?” The recent case of a 12-year-old Yemini girl who bled to death after being forced to marry a man (and subsequently raped by him) has brought the spotlight to shine squarely upon the issue of child brides in Muslim countries. Some scholars and humanitarians have claimed that the serious, almost obsessive valuing of female chastity until marriage in many Muslim countries and communities leads families to “preserve” girl children’s virtue by forcing them to marry before they develop an interest in sex. Others have claimed that the lack of political freedom and economic equality of women in Muslim countries contributes to the problem. Regardless of the cause and even though forced marriage is far from a uniquely Muslim problem, it seems to be rampant in Muslim countries. Tariq Ramadan, a world-renowned Swiss Islamic scholar, says that despite that pattern, forced marriage violates the basic tenets of Islam, and it’s time Muslim religious leaders began to speak out against it. Ramadan points out that Muslim religious texts, traditions, and social mores are interpreted by human beings – just like those of every world religion. Traditions and values change over time as human beings learn more about the world around them. Practices which were once acceptable to people of faith (slavery, child abuse, racism) should no longer be tolerated by religious tradition. And forced or child marriage is one of these “traditional” practices which needs to evolve with the growing importance of basic human rights for women around the world. Islam, Ramadan says, just needs to evolve its traditions into the 21st century. In addition to the Muslim scholars who have spoken out against forced marriage, the texts on which Islam is based clearly state that consent from both parties is crucial to having a marriage blessed by God. The Quran, like the Bible, the Talmud, and other religious texts, is full of statements supporting human rights for women and condemning actions like rape and forcing people into servitude. But if forced marriage is so clearly un-Islamic, then why do Muslim religious leaders sanction forced marriages of children to much older men, and why do communities of good, devout Muslims tolerate the practice? I imagine it’s for much of the same reason fundamentalist Christians bomb abortion clinics and wave neo-Nazi flags: the power of culture. The Bible, as a religious text, is pretty clear about the position Christians should have when it comes to violence and hate crimes: just say no and turn the other cheek. But in the US, some cultures have developed which value, say, being a white person above all else. So they use the Bible to support the very things the text condemns: violence and hate. In Yemen, Iran and other Muslim countries, the same dynamic plays out around forced marriage. The biggest difference is, of course, the amount of political power the extremist groups hold. As a religion, Islam doesn’t support forced marriage any more than any other major religion. That means that the forces supporting forced marriage are political and cultural, as opposed to religious. Sure, it may seem like a minute distinction, but it actually makes a huge difference, because politics and culture evolve much more readily than religion does, and people are much less willing to die for the former than the latter. It’s the difference, perhaps, between a velvet revolution and the next round of the crusades. AMANDA KLOER FOR CHANGE.