{"id":591,"date":"2017-08-16T07:59:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T07:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/?p=591"},"modified":"2017-08-16T07:59:39","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T07:59:39","slug":"forced-conversions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/2017\/08\/16\/forced-conversions\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced conversions of Hindu girls in Pakistan make a mockery of its constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sadiq Bhanbro, a researcher at Sheffield Hallam’s Centre for Health and Social Care Research<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a famous speech on August 11 1947, Pakistan\u2019s founder and first governor general, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,\u00a0stressed<\/a>\u00a0that the new country was being built on the idea of religious tolerance:<\/p>\n

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But 70 years later, a trend of forced conversions in the country is making a mockery of the constitution of Pakistan, which offers equal rights to all religious minorities.<\/p>\n

In early June, a 16-year-old Hindu girl called Ravita Meghwar was\u00a0allegedly abducted<\/a>\u00a0by men in the southern Pakistani region of Sindh. Within hours, Ravita had apparently embraced Islam. She was given new name \u2013 Gulnaz \u2013 and married off to a Muslim man.<\/p>\n

The next day she told journalists that she had accepted Islam and married the man without any pressure. But\u00a0Meghwar\u2019s parents<\/a>\u00a0reported the suspects, claimed she was a minor, and demanded the safe recovery of their daughter. Countering the claims, Meghwar\u2019s husband submitted an application to the Sindh High Court to seek protection from her family and relatives. The case was settled on June 23 when the Sindh High Court allowed Meghwar to\u00a0go with her husband<\/a>. The judge apparently ignored the 2013\u00a0Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act<\/a>\u00a0which prohibits marriages under the age of 18.<\/p>\n

As usual, Sindh High Court allows forcibly converted Scheduled Caste Hindu girl to go with her kidnapper, who is now her husband.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
In a similar case in early 2012, a young Hindu girl called Rinkle Kumari was\u00a0victim<\/a>\u00a0of a forced conversion to Islam. The case went to court but\u00a0ended<\/a>\u00a0with Kumari going to live with her husband.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A growing problem<\/h2>\n

Forced conversions to Islam have become a new form of violent extremism in Pakistan. A forced conversion is\u00a0defined<\/a>\u00a0as being when any person uses pressure, force, duress or threat, to make another person adopt another religion. It affects almost all religious minority groups in Pakistan but Hindu teenage girls in the Sindh province are the main victims. There are no verified numbers but according to the NGO, South Asia Partnership Pakistan,\u00a0at least 1,000 girls<\/a>, mostly Hindus, are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan every year.<\/p>\n

Conversion to Islam is a one-way process. Once a person becomes Muslim \u2013 forcibly or voluntarily \u2013 then going back will be an act of apostasy, which is\u00a0punishable by death in Islam under penal law<\/a>. There is no way for a person to go back due to an imminent danger of being killed.<\/p>\n

I have done some initial analysis of English-language newspaper reports in Pakistan of forced conversions that occurred between January 2012 \u2013 just before the Kumari case \u2013 and June 2017. In total, I found reports of 286 separate incidents of women and girls being forcibly converted. The actual number could be much higher as many cases of forced conversion are reported in local Urdu or Sindhi newspapers. As one journalist working on the issue in Pakistan told me, many cases in which influential locals and religious leaders are involved go unreported because of pressure put on the media not to report the stories.<\/p>\n

Even if families report the kidnappings to the police, the kidnappers usually file a counter report on behalf of the girl claiming she has come of her own will, has accepted Islam and is happily married. When they do take on the cases, the courts often find in favour of the Muslim men. For example, in one case in 2016 involving a 16-year-old called Shabana, the Sindh High Court\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0her marriage valid and she converted to Islam.<\/p>\n

Unabated power of madrassas<\/h2>\n

One of the reasons for the increase in forced conversions is an increase in Islamic religiosity in Pakistan. This has been influenced by the rapid expansion of madrassas \u2013 Islamic seminaries \u2013 and the unabated power of religious parties and groups across Pakistan in recent years. A\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0in 2015 noted there were 28,982 registered madrassas in Pakistan and countless unregistered ones, serving more than 3m pupils. This number stood at 2,861 in 1988 and 246 in 1947.<\/p>\n

In Pakistan, madrassas have played a key role in forced conversion and in Sindh some madrassas have become infamous for facilitating such conversions. For example,\u00a0Bharchundi Sharif shrine and madrassa<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Pir Ayub Jan\u2019s madrassa<\/a>\u00a0are notorious for promoting and facilitating conversions to Islam.<\/p>\n

Curbing forced conversions<\/h2>\n

So far those Pakistani politicians who have attempted to combat forced conversions have been unsuccessful. In November 2016, the Sindh provincial government\u00a0passed a bill<\/a>\u00a0against forced religious conversion. The bill recommends a five-year punishment for perpetrators, three years for facilitators of forceful religious conversions, and also it makes it a punishable offence to forcibly convert a minor.<\/p>\n

But after an outcry by some hardline Muslim religious groups who\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0the bill un-Islamic and demanded its withdrawal, the provincial government\u00a0immediately agreed to review the bill<\/a>. It has never been ratified.<\/p>\n

Forced conversion is, however, covered by provisions in other laws. These\u00a0include<\/a>\u00a0the 2013 act against child marriage in Sindh, and sections of the Pakistan penal code against forced marriage, kidnapping, abducting or inducing into marriage. Yet, implementation of these laws remains limited, largely because of fear a backlash from religious groups.<\/p>\n

This means the government of Pakistan must act decisively to ratify and implement the 2016 law against forced conversions.<\/p>\n

Forced conversions of Hindu girls in Pakistan make a mockery of its constitution first appeared on The Conversation, 14th August 2017<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sadiq Bhanbro, a researcher at Sheffield Hallam’s Centre for Health and Social Care Research In a famous speech on August 11 1947, Pakistan\u2019s founder and first governor general, Muhammad Ali…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9105,"featured_media":592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,29],"tags":[59,60],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","tag-forced-conversion","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/08\/hindu.jpg?fit=1028%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KEAX-9x","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":395,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/2017\/05\/31\/religious-observance-dates-for-session-201718\/","url_meta":{"origin":591,"position":0},"title":"Religious Observance dates for session 2017\/18","author":"Anna Gunn","date":"May 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Please click on the link for the main Religious Observance dates for 2017\/2018\u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Faculty Updates"","block_context":{"text":"Faculty Updates","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/category\/news\/facultyupdates\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/05\/Religious.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/05\/Religious.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/05\/Religious.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/05\/Religious.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/files\/2017\/05\/Religious.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":811,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/hwbstaffnews\/2017\/10\/03\/barcalona-independance-vote\/","url_meta":{"origin":591,"position":1},"title":"Barcalona independance vote could push clubs into Euro super league","author":"Jane Gardner-Florence","date":"October 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr Daniel Plumley comments featured in the Daily Star discussing the implications of the Catalan referendum on Barcelona FC and the Premier League. 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