An influential Muslim family in a village near Sheikhupura is holding a 17-year-old Christian girl hostage because one of her brothers allegedly eloped with a woman from the Muslim family.
The Muslim parents have threatened further retaliation against the Christian family if they do not produce their daughter, whom they have also threatened to publicly shoot dead as an “honor killing.”
An area clergyman identified only as Father Emmanuel called the situation “critical,” saying it has pitted the area’s 1,800 Muslim families against its 70-to-100 Christian families and could lead to violence.
“It’s always been like this,” Emmanuel said. “No one objects when a Christian girl is forcibly taken or dishonored by a Muslim man, but when a Muslim girl falls in love with a Christian boy it becomes a matter of their honor,” he said.
Abid Masih, a welder at a factory in Sheikhupura, about 40 kilometers from the Punjab Province capital of Lahore, told Compass by telephone that the family was asleep in their home in Ghazi Minara village on Friday night (May 13) when armed Muslims belonging to the village’s influential Gujjar family arrived at their doorstep.
“When I opened the door, the men told me that my younger brother, Sajid, had eloped with a girl from their family, and they had come to search for them,” Masih said.
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