Forced conversions Physical and psychological abuse of children Marriage of underage girls Persecution of minority communities

Pakistan: Adult by Declaration

In October, Pakistan’s Senate and its Federal Constitutional Court took up the cases of two girls from religious minorities allegedly abducted, converted to Islam and married. Senators heard that the police had held back over a petition two lawyers called fake. Meanwhile, the religious party JUI-F wants the Federal Shariat Court to let puberty, rather than the age of 18, decide who can marry.

By Delirium Islamicum Published October 31, 2026

Satirical drawing: a Pakistani judge in a black gown with gold bands watches a single signed slip of paper outweigh a stack of official birth records on the scales of justice, beside a returned envelope marked with a question mark and an empty child’s chair. — In Pakistan’s Federal Constitutional Court, a signature outweighs a birth certificate.

Stopped by a petition

On October 19, minority members of the Balochistan Assembly demanded the return of a 14-year-old Hindu girl allegedly abducted in Sibi, taken to Sindh, converted to Islam and married. Under the law the assembly passed last year, a 14-year-old cannot legally marry. The Speaker observed that if she had married in court, her age would need to be examined.

On October 29, the Senate's minority caucus took up what appears to be the same case with senior police officers from Balochistan and Sindh. They explained that no action had been taken because a writ petition had been filed. The president of the High Court Bar called the notice of that petition fake, and a Supreme Court advocate said no petition had been filed and the police had made no serious effort to find the girl. One of the officers asked for seven days. The minister of state for religious affairs pointed to a former lawmaker, expelled by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) over these very activities.

"Mian Mithu, who is behind all of this, is very powerful."— Kesoo Mal Khael Das, Senate minority caucus, October 29, 2026

No sit-in, no case

In Lasbela, also in Balochistan, a Hindu minor from Mirpurkhas was recovered on October 21 from a Muslim feudal landlord she had allegedly been married to after being abducted and converted, according to the Hindu NGO Pakistan Darawar Ittehad. It has asked the police to register a case and plans a "grand protest sit-in" in December. Its head, Faqir Shiva Kachhi, told HRCP that 36 underage Hindu girls were abducted in 2025 and 32 in the first seven months of 2026, and that activists must stage sit-ins outside police stations "just to get an FIR registered". In Tando Allahyar, it took more than a month and a visit to the station by community leaders to register the abduction of two Hindu sisters aged 13 and 14, who went home on October 19, on the orders of the Sindh High Court.

Eighteen, an un-Islamic number

Islamabad and Balochistan set the minimum age of marriage at 18 in 2025, Punjab in 2026, HRCP notes. The clerics are fighting back. When Parliament passed the Islamabad law, the Council of Islamic Ideology, the constitutional body that advises on Islamic law, ruled that treating marriage under 18 as rape did not conform with Islam.

"Made fornication easier while making legitimate marriages difficult."— Maulana Fazlur Rehman, JUI-F chief, on the Islamabad law, June 1, 2025

In June 2026, his party asked the Federal Shariat Court to declare the law partly repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah. Its petition asks that anyone past puberty, or 15 by default under the Hanafi school, no longer count as a child, and that the court overturn the clause treating cohabitation with a child spouse, within a valid nikah, as "child abuse". The same court ruled in 2023 that a minimum age of 18 was not repugnant to Islam. The JUI-F says it ruled through oversight.

Her word against her records

In Lahore, a Christian girl disappeared on July 29, 2025. Two days later, she told a magistrate she had converted and married of her own free will. NADRA records cited by her family put her at 12. Earlier this year, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the decision letting the man keep her, finding her of mature age and her NADRA and union council records unreliable, according to HRCP. Her family says a police reinvestigation found the marriage certificate forged.

On October 21, the court heard the family's review petition. Their lawyer invoked the Federal Shariat Court's 2023 ruling, the very one the JUI-F wants overruled. The acting chief justice, Hassan Azhar Rizvi, observed that the girl had "declared herself an adult before the court", that no forum had previously heard any objection to her age and that such disputes belong in family courts. Her birth certificate, the lawyer told the court, was issued ten years late. The hearing was adjourned without a date, as the man could not be served because of an "incomplete residential address".

"We don't know where they are keeping her."— The girl's mother, in a video shown at a UN Human Rights Council side event, Geneva, October 6, 2026

Her birth records were unreliable. The address of the man the court left her with, it turns out, was incomplete.

Verses and hadiths related to this article

“Do not marry polytheistic women until they believe; for a believing slave-woman is better than a free polytheist, even though she may look pleasant to you. And do not marry your women to polytheistic men until they believe, for a believing slave-man is better than a free polytheist, even though he may look pleasant to you. They invite you to the Fire while Allah invites you to Paradise and forgiveness by His grace. He makes His revelations clear to the people so perhaps they will be mindful.”

“As for your women past the age of menstruation, in case you do not know, their waiting period is three months, and those who have not menstruated as well. As for those who are pregnant, their waiting period ends with delivery. And whoever is mindful of Allah, He will make their matters easy for them.”

“A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah's Apostle (ﷺ) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.”

“Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: There are three (persons) whose actions are not recorded: a sleeper till he awakes, an idiot till he is restored to reason, and a boy till he reaches puberty.”

Narrated Ibn `Umar: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) called me to present myself in front of him on the eve of the battle of Uhud, while I was fourteen years of age at that time, and he did not allow me to take part in that battle, but he called me in front of him on the eve of the battle of the Trench when I was fifteen years old, and he allowed me (to join the battle). Nafi` said, “I went to `Umar bin `Abdul `Aziz who was Caliph at that time and related the above narration to him. He said, ‘This age (fifteen) is the limit between childhood and manhood,’ and wrote to his governors to give salaries to those who reached the age of fifteen.”

“Test the competence of the orphans until they reach a marriageable age. Then if you feel they are capable of sound judgment, return their wealth to them. And do not consume it wastefully and hastily before they grow up to demand it. If the guardian is well-off, they should not take compensation; but if the guardian is poor, let them take a reasonable provision. When you give orphans back their property, call in witnesses. And sufficient is Allah as a vigilant Reckoner.”

“O believers! When the believing women come to you as emigrants, test their intentions, their faith is best known to Allah, and if you find them to be believers, then do not send them back to the disbelievers. These women are not lawful wives for the disbelievers, nor are the disbelievers lawful husbands for them. But repay the disbelievers whatever dowries they had paid. And there is no blame on you if you marry these women as long as you pay them their dowries. And do not hold on to marriage with polytheistic women. But demand repayment of whatever dowries you had paid, and let the disbelievers do the same. That is the judgment of Allah: He judges between you. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.”

“O believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians as guardians—they are guardians of each other. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people.”