In a move Feb. 12 seen as a human rights victory, Afzal Baig, a civil judge in Bahawalpur, invalidated the Muslim marriage of 25-year-old Shahida Bibi.
Police rescued a 12-year-old Catholic girl who had been abducted two months prior by a neighbor and forced to convert to Islam and to marry the captor.
As a measure targeting child marriages in Pakistan languishes in political limbo, girls as young as 10 in minority religious groups continue to be abducted, forced to convert to Islam and marry or sold into sex slavery.
Even though an Indonesian congregation’s construction plan has the support of local residents, the building project is encountering unexpected pushback.
The “blasphemy business group’s” actions are “said to have ensnared more than 400 innocent people, including Christians, in a surge of false blasphemy cases in the last two years,” the news sources say.