Pakistani Judge Rules that Kidnapped Girls Who Were Converted to Islam Cannot be Returned to Family — Including One Married Off at 13

Pakistani Judge Mian Muhammad Naeem has reportedly ruled that two Christian girls who were kidnapped and then converted to Islam cannot be returned to their family, including Saba Younas, aged 13, who was forced to marry the son of one of the kidnappers. Naeem ruled that the girls “have converted in a legitimate manner to Islam” and therefore cannot be “restored to their family of origin”.

The family says that Saba Younas, aged 13, and her sister Anila were kidnapped last June 26 in the village of Chowk Munda, in the Punjab, when they were visiting their uncle, Khalid Raheel. He filed a report that a Muslim fruit vendor named Muhammad Arif Bajwa kidnapped the girls, and then handed them gave them to a friend, Falak Sher Gill. Gill proceeded to marry off Sada to his son.

The recurrence of such child marriages continues to shock the civilized world. This is only the latest such outrage, click here.
Kidnapping of girls is a common practice in this area and both women and girls continue to be treated as virtual chattel.

“Judges” like Naeem further demonstrate the abuses that occur in the absence of a separation of church and state. Sharia is more a religious code than an form of “law.” Like the “law of the Vatican, it is a code of enforced religious values. Both Jews and Christians have followed such religious courts. However, they should be confined to the voluntary mediation or adjudication of individuals, not imposed through state authority as in many Middle Eastern nations from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Pakistan.

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