During January news about the UK was dominated by the issue of sexual exploitation of women and girls by gangs of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men, with literally thousands of vulnerable girls having been raped and trafficked in the UK.

Yet what the UK Home Office and police have apparently failed to realise is what's been happening to girls in places like Oldham, Rotherham and Telford has also been happening to Christian women and girls in places like Pakistan and Egypt. 

Christian women and girls
In Pakistan it is estimated that year around 1,000 predominantly Christian women and girls are abducted, raped, forcibly married and often forcibly converted to Islam. It has also been happening in a number of other Islamic countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, Syria and Iraq and even in northern Mozambique where a jihadist insurgency has been taking place since 2017.
So, why has the UK government not joined up the dots and made the links to what is happening in Pakistan and elsewhere?

The evidence
It is not as if no-one has been talking about this horrific sexual abuse of Christian women and girls in Pakistan. In fact, there have been a whole series of reports on the subject, nearly all of which were being produced at the same time as the grooming gangs scandal was being reported in the UK. For example,

2013 a report by the Bar Human Rights Committee of the England and Wales drew attention to the abduction, forced marriage and conversion of Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan and noted that such girls are particularly vulnerable because they are “considered ‘sexually available' by men of some Muslim dominated communities”.

2014 the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, a Pakistani NGO, published a report saying there were up to 700 Christian and 300 Hindu women and girls between the ages of 12 and 25 each year being abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam and forced to marry their abductor or a third party. It spoke of there being a “specific pattern or process”. It also noted that when the girl’s family tried to file a police complaint both the girls and their families are threatened and often counter accusations are made against them – what had been reported as happening in the UK grooming gangs scandal. 

2018 a report by Birmingham University on the situation in Pakistan found that “In most cases the victim is abducted and is then subjugated to sustained emotional and physical abuse often involving threats of violence towards their loved ones. Evidence provided by numerous NGOs, journalists and academics have shown that abductions and forced conversions are one of the most serious problems facing Hindu and Christian women and girls.” 

In 2019 the Bishop of Truro’s report on UK Foreign Office support for persecuted Christians observed that in Pakistan: “Christian and Hindu women are particularly vulnerable to abduction, rape and forced marriage” citing estimates of up to 700 Christian and 300 Hindus being targeted this way annually. 

September 2021 the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pakistani minorities conducted an inquiry into the issue and issued a report which provided horrific examples including the evidence of a teenage victim who had given evidence to the parliamentary inquiry of how she had been drugged, abducted and “sold” to a Muslim man who repeatedly raped and beat her:

“…She was handed tea to drink, and subsequently she lost consciousness. When she came around she was in an unfamiliar home, and informed that she had been bought by Zahoor Ilahi, who subsequently raped her.[The]  Following days and weeks meant continuous cases of rape and beatings. Her parents bravely refused to give up, sold all their paltry possessions and applied to the Lahore High Court for justice. The culprits were warned and fled, dropping a phone in their hurry. [name of girl] managed to contact her parents who informed the police and she was eventually rescued.”

November 2021 Aid to the Church in Need published a report highlighting testimonies of Christian women and girls who had been abducted, and sexually abused and forcibly converted in Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and Mozambique. In 2022 the London School of Economics published an article highlighting the issue. 

2024 an article in the Pakistani journal Paradigm Shift similarly spoke of the “typical pattern” which occurs, as well as highlighting the role of what it termed “patriarchal religious interpretations”.

So, in short it cannot be said that the information was not freely available. Clear parallels to what has been reported about the actions of Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs in the UK have actually been made. The APPG report on what is happening to women and girls in Pakistan specifically referred on a number of occasions to “grooming” gangs:

“In some cases, powerful men groom religious minority girls. However, in many cases the perpetrators use force to abduct the young girls. The focus of this report is on the act of abductions, forced conversion and forced marriages. However, it does not end there. As the Centre for Legal Aid and Assistance (CLAAS) reports: 

‘After a kidnapping, conversion, and forced marriage many girls are coerced by their abductors into making statements against their parents when they are presented in Court. Due to life threats, the girls state that they have come of their [own] wills…After some time, many are disappeared, murdered, or forcefully moved into prostitution. When we challenge abductors about these girls, they have no answer.’”

The failure to connect this to what has been happening in the UK suggests a serious institutional failure not just of the UK Home Office and police forces. It also raises real questions about how aware of the issue the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office were. This is despite the Bishop of Truro’s report on Foreign Office support for persecuted Christians having specifically highlighted this issue.

So why is this happening?
Three things are clear about the UK grooming gangs i) the scale of the abuse is enormous – 1,400 children and young people abused over a decade in Rotherham alone; ii) the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators have been Pakistani heritage Muslim men – a fact that Rotherham Labour MP Sarah Champion to her credit spoke out on in 2017  iii) the overwhelming majority of the victims have been non-Muslim girls.

These girls are referred to by their abusers as “worthless” and “trash”. This is exactly what happens to abducted Christians women and girls in Pakistan, who – as the APPG report noted – are referred to by their abusers with derogatory terms such as ‘‘Chuhri’’ (meaning “untouchables”). 

It reflects assumption in Islamic cultures that Christiasn and Hindus are inferior to Muslims – and that Muslims should rule over them. This is derived in part from what is known as dhimmi status – which the traditional textbooks of shari’a such as the Hedaya which are taught in Pakistani madrassas say should be imposed on Christians. It is essentially a non-citizen status – where they must not only be totally subservient to Muslims, but also involves a significant element of humiliation. 

So, although shari’a does not condone either rape or abduction – both of which are normally regarded as capital offences - the theology of dhimmitude creates a widespread cultural assumption in countries such as Pakistan that non-Muslims are inferior and should be subservient to Muslims.

The APPG report noted the complicity of some Pakistani mosques in the abductions and forced conversion of Christian girls. Some Islamic clerics in Pakistan have even preached in mosque sermons that it is a religious duty for Muslim men to forcibly convert non-Muslim women (which the Hedaya declares to be legitimate) – including by means of forced marriage. That sort of rhetoric is taken by a minority of Muslim men to legitimise them abducting, raping and in other ways humiliating non-Muslim women. 

The exact way this happens may be slightly different in the UK from Pakistan, but the underlying issue is the same.

However, the fact that this issue was ignored in the UK for so long – despite the clear parallels to what has been happening for many years to Christian women and girls in countries such as Pakistan and Egypt, raises serious concerns about how aware the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office actually are of the suffering of persecuted Christians in countries such as Pakistan.

Pray for the victims of grooming gangs in both the UK and Pakistan – and that the sexual exploitation of Christian women and girls in countries such as Pakistan would not be ignored by Western governments