By ICC –
Christine walked nervously to the lectern on the fifth floor of the Longworth House Office Building on a recent sunny afternoon.
Across the street stood the U.S. Capitol, with its majestic dome and seat of power that symbolizes the freedoms this country enjoys. It was a stark contrast to Christine’s journey in the dark corners of the world, where Christian girls and women like her aren’t protected.
It took courage for Christine to face a roomful of strangers, no matter how supportive and friendly, and share details of being sexually abused and forced to convert to Islam as a 14-year-old Coptic Christian in Egypt.
Hers was just one survivor’s voice, through an interpreter. Still, Christine carried the weight and horror of myriad underage girls and women who have been abducted, sexually abused, forced into unconscionable and ugly fraudulent “marriages,” and made to convert to Islam throughout the Middle East. Or in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, which mirror the same evil.
Underage girls and women have endured abuse and countless indignities for centuries, long before the Islamic State group (ISIS) reared its ugly head and until today. The congressional briefing on Capitol Hill,“Gendered Persecution: Targets of Forced Conversion,” highlighted the inability and choice of global leaders to protect the most vulnerable: girls who should be playing with dolls under the watchful eyes of their loving parents, rather than subjecting their bodies and souls to strangers.
Instead, they must endure the malicious intent of outsiders, Islamic laws and cultural norms, forced conversions, and fake marriages to radical Muslim men who are often decades older. Yes, security services can rescue them. Yet their helpless parents are often unable to safely bring them home as they navigate through a court system that protects the perpetrator rather than the victim.
Whether Christian or Yazidi, Assyrian or Copt, Iraqi or Egyptian, Pakistani or African, or anything in between, the injustices and religious creeds of radical jihadists ripple throughout the Middle East and across the globe. Sharia law, a legislative system that governs citizens based on interpretations of Islam, and cultural norms often take precedence over basic humanity. Evil practices instead of common sense. The violent and extreme interpretations of Islam, rather than moderate voices. The trampling of young souls.
A Young Coptic Christian’s Stolen Childhood
“I was the victim of rape at age 14, forced to convert to Islam,” said Christine, now 34 and living in the United States as a religious refugee. As a young athlete, she was groomed by a sports trainer who, after sexually assaulting her, falsified documents about her consent and gave her a new Islamic name. If Christine hadn’t obliged, “he told me that he would kill my parents and my family.”
While Christine’s words were heart-wrenching, borne from tragedy and a stolen childhood, the event held in conjunction with Coptic Solidarity’s 13th annual conference brought perspectives from notable speakers. They included U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Brad Sherman (D-CA), and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Stephen Schneck, Ph.D.
Other advocates included Jamileh Naso, co-founder and president of the Canadian Yazidi Association; Joseph Janssen with Jubilee Campaign & Voice for Justice; and author Sonja Dahlmans. Dahlmans wrote Coptic Solidarity’s recent report, “Hidden Crimes Public Deception: The Epidemic of Abductions and Forced Disappearance of Coptic Women and Girls.”
Moderator Karmella Borashan, a longtime champion for Assyrian believers and director of advocacy for the Susek Evangelistic Association, said the afternoon briefing served to “raise the voices of the powerless and the voiceless” like Christine’s.
Christine’s testimony moved many to tears, and other speakers corroborated her remarks with data and reports from survivors.
Seeking Justice in the Middle East
Dahlmans said Egyptian authorities present a positive image of their country to the rest of the world while girls and women are marginalized, abused, and treated as second-class citizens. Dahlmans and a colleague interviewed many victims and relatives of women and girls who were abducted, raped, trafficked, and forcibly converted to Islam. She said the media often underreport the severity of the problem and the number of victims, while government officials are complicit in the crimes. In Egypt, where the Coptic Church has existed since the first century and believers form just 10% to 15% of the population, Christian women occupy the lowest ranks of society.
“The Egyptian government has no interest in protecting these women or even investigating these crimes and bringing rapists to justice,” Dahlmans said, citing independent sources and groups that support her findings. “It is important to realize that this is not just a case of a story the Copts tell … there’s no doubt in my mind that what these victims and their families are saying to us is, in fact, true and it is happening.”
As Dahlmans and others toured Capitol Hill and talked with elected officials, many asked: “How do you know it’s true? Do you have proof?”
Dahlmans noted that in the West, victims of sexual crimes can go to the police station where a report is taken, and aid is provided. Justice is served. In Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere dominated by radical Islamists, Christians who are victims of crimes, whether rape or forced marriage and conversion, are instead interrogated and questioned by police about their “alleged” promiscuity. There are no police reports, let alone recourse or justice.
More than a decade ago, ISIS ravaged Iraq and Syria and purged the region of religious minorities as it focused on setting up its caliphate. Christians, Yazidis, and others faced genocide and fled. Girls and women who were captured were taken as wives or trafficked for sex. Their families never saw them again.
“Girls as young as 9 were sold for $10 and a pack of cigarettes,” said Naso, co-founder and president of the Canadian Yazidi Association. She said more than 200,000 Yazidis are still in Iraqi displacement camps where they continue to face sexual abuse and limited access to health care and jobs. More than 1,000 are children of rape victims from ISIS fighters, home to an Iraqi government that doesn’t recognize their citizenship yet accepts their Muslim names and heritage.
Persecution in Pakistan
Janssen recited much of the same script in South Asia, holding up placards with the faces of missing girls and sharing horrific details of forced conversions, child marriages, false consent, and religious persecution in Pakistan.
“In Pakistan each year an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 Christian and Hindu girls have been abducted and forcefully converted to Islam,” Janssen said. “This all happened under the law of Sharia. They convert them to Islam and then marry them just for sexual abuse. Our daughters have been stolen away from their families. And it all happened in the name of religion.”
He noted that it occurs with “frightening regularity” because the courts, police, judges, lawyers, and society are positioned to side with Islamic law and punish Christians and others who have little sway in society.
Janssen cited several examples, including the highly publicized case of 13-year-old Roshni Shakeel. The Christian girl was abducted from her family by 28-year-old Muazzam Mazher in Multan, Pakistan. Shakeel was forced to convert to Islam and given the Muslim name “Zehr Bibi,” married under forged documents that were accepted by Islamic officials. While the girl later escaped — before she was allegedly planned for trafficking in Saudi Arabia — police retaliated against her by arresting and beating her father.
“This is the father who was looking for justice for his daughter …” Janssen said. “This is one example, but this has happened with thousands of Christian and Hindu girls and with their parents when they go and seek justice, they face this type of brutality.”
It’s nearly impossible to fight in the courts, as judges argue that girls as young as 8 or 9 years old are giving their “consent” to marry Muslim men decades older and embrace Islam.
Janssen said that judges believe girls as young as 9 or 10 are said to have consented to the marriages, yet the victims “cannot make their ID card, cannot vote, cannot open a bank account. How can the consent of a 9-year-old be accepted in court? So, this is what is happening in the Pakistani court system. They accept the consent of the 9-year-old … and instead of returning this girl to her legal guardian, who are her parents, they send these girls back to the abductor or send them to a state-run shelter.” The shelters, whose employees should represent all groups, are instead run solely by Muslims.
He recommended that the U.S. government pressure Pakistan officials to ban child marriages, raise the legal marriage age to 18 across all provinces, and sanction officials who violate human rights.
“Governments that perpetrate or tolerate religious persecution of women cannot be ignored,” Commissioner Schneck said. “They must be held accountable. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom remains committed to that end.”
The advocates said they will continue the fight, pressure foreign regimes that persecute girls and women, and push for laws that protect the most vulnerable.
At the end of the briefing, Christine retreated to the rear of the room where she was joined by supporters and friends, relieved that she had courageously told her painful story.
What happens next was left to others in the room and across the street at the U.S. Capitol.
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NB: International Christian Concern (ICC) has long chronicled the plights of persecuted Christian women of all ages in the Middle East. ICC has served persecuted believers throughout the Middle East and will soon send a petition with 1,000 signatures to Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, a Christian mother, to address the forced marriages and conversions of young girls in her country. ICC has also helped relocate victims and families in other circumstances.
