'Hindu girl forced to convert to Islam, held in Pakistani madrassa',

Islamic World News

'Hindu girl forced to convert to Islam, held in Pakistani madrassa'

ISLAMABAD: A Hindu girl from Punjab province was kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam and is currently being held in a madrassa, leading Pakistani rights activist Ansar Burney said today.

Burney said his rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Trust International, had learnt that 15-year-old Gajri, the daughter of Mengha Ram, was abducted by a Muslim neighbour from her home at Katchi Mandi, Liaquatpur, in Rahim Yar Khan district on December 21, 2009.

Gajri's parents later found out that she was being held captive in a madrassa or seminary in southern Punjab and that she had been married and converted to Islam, Burney said.

The local administration is "refusing to respond to the abduction" of the girl, who is not being allowed to leave the madrassa or to speak to her parents, he told PTI.

Burney, a former human rights minister, condemned the forceful conversion of the Hindu girl and demanded her immediate release.

"Pakistan is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which oblige authorities to protect religious minorities under international law," he said.

According to Ansar Burney Trust, on 21 December 2009 Gajri disappeared from the home of her Hindu parents in in southern Punjab.

On December 26 last year, the local police station in Gajri’s hometown received a letter with an affidavit from madrassa that said she had "embraced Islam and had married her neighbour Mohammad Salim", Burney said.

http://newageislam.com/-hindu-girl-forced-to-convert-to-islam,-held-in-pakistani-madrassa-/islamic-world-news/d/2773

OBAMA’S LESSON FOR INDIAN MUSLIMS, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

OBAMA’S LESSON FOR INDIAN MUSLIMS

Such fanatics are thankfully still just a few. However a less radical but much more widespread manifestation of the minority mentality is Muslims’ insulating themselves from the rest of society and shoving themselves into residential, cultural and even intellectual ghettos. No one is sure if Atif Ameen and Mohammad Sajid, the two boys killed by Delhi Police and blamed for perpetrating serial blasts, were indeed guilty of terrorism. But they were surely guilty of living in Batla House — a teeming locality of tens of thousands in south Delhi where you would be hard put to find a single non- Muslim. Such ghettos exist in virtually every city, town or village with large or even average Muslim populations, and create a very physical dimension for the country’s communal divide.

Even until a couple of decades ago, many Muslim households — especially children — used to celebrate at least larger Indian festivals like Holi and Diwali with as much zest as anybody else. Today, Muslims’ cultural ghettoisation means that children who burst firecrackers on Diwali or play with colours on Holi are frowned upon or castigated by their elders [many of whom must have enjoyed the same celebrations in their own childhood]. Intellectually too, a number of Muslim families have turned away from mainstream education,

Preferring to send their children to madrassas and Urdu/ Arabic schools instead. Indeed, there are those who believe that reading and memorising the Quran by heart is all there is to education in this world.

http://newageislam.com/obama%E2%80%99s-lesson-for-indian-muslims--/islam-and-pluralism/d/998