The kidnapping and forced conversion of young Christian and other girls from religious minority groups is common in Pakistan, and it is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria, either. Kidnapping, forced conversion, and forced marriage of Christian girls takes place repeatedly. Authorities for the most part turn a blind eye and frequently refuse to help the victims at all, as in this case.
For information about Orthodox Christianity in Nigeria, see here.
For previous coverage of the persecution of Christians in Nigeria from ChristianPersecution.com, see here.
“16-year-old Christian Girl Kidnapped and Forcibly Converted to Islam,” International Christian Concern, August 17, 2022:
08/17/2022 Nigeria (International Christian Concern) – Child-grooming is becoming more prevalent in Nigeria due to the government’s refusal to protect Christian girls. Though the legal age of consent has traditionally taken second place to what is perceived as the parents’ right to marry their daughters when they please, Nigeria is beginning to feel the global pushback against child marriage.
Still, Nigeria’s Muslim population is resistant to the coming change. Today, 16% of Muslim girls are married before they turn fifteen. That number is as high as 48% in the predominantly Muslim north of the country. In 2013, Nigeria’s Senate rejected a recommendation that would standardize the national legal age of consent to eighteen years in all cases by abolishing exemptions for Muslim and traditional communities. The senators argued that the law would discriminate against Muslim girls, who are considered “of age” when married.
For child brides, that decision rests with their parents. The issue of child marriage in Nigeria is also an issue of religious freedom since in cases where a Christian girl is kidnapped, indoctrinated, and forcefully married by her Muslim captors other Muslims often justify the incident on religious grounds. Underage marriage is a problem across Nigeria, but it is particularly problematic for Christians in the north, where state governments often refuse to protect Christian families from abuse. As a result, Christians in Nigeria’s north have lost the right to security for their children.
The following is an excerpt from a letter written by Anna Nimmyel, a Christian woman living in Kaduna state, Nigeria. Anna is a single mother of a 16-year-old girl named Grace. Over two months ago, Grace was kidnapped by a Muslim man named Mallam Abdulra’ub. For 17 days, Anna did not hear from her daughter until the kidnapper finally called to inform her that Grace had been forcibly converted to Islam.
She contacted the police, who detained Mallam but only required him to spend one night in a police cell and was released without bail. Grace was detained in jail for 7 days but was ultimately returned to her kidnapper. She still hasn’t returned to her mother, with the Kaduna State Interfaith Office, that is handling the case, saying that they cannot return the girl to her mother since she is now of a different religion.
With regards to her appeal to authorities to get her daughter back, Anna writes, “As at the time of writing this petition the girl is in the custody of an Islamic cleric to live with him as directed by Kaduna Interfaith under the guise that they cannot force the girl to go back to her mother since she refused to. I cried and pleaded on my knees with the police and Interfaith that they should please hand over my daughter as I do not have an issue with the girl having a different religion. I told them the girl is my only child and she is all I have in this world, but my plea was not acknowledged.”…
