Church officials are planning to review the case of an 18 year-old Catholic Pakistani girl named Mariah Manisha who was shot to death for refusing to submit to rape, a forced marriage and conversion to Islam.
Mariah was kidnapped at gunpoint by a Muslim man named Mohammad Arif Gujjar on November 27 of this year when she was on her way to get drinking water with her mother.
- St. Maria Goretti
Gujjar, along with his Muslim friends, dragged Mariah away while shouting: “You are a beautiful girl and must convert to Islam to be my wife.”
When Mariah refused, Gujjar shot her, killing her instantly. Her mother, Razia Bibi, was forced to run off to save her own life.
While the local Catholic community is already calling her the “Maria Goretti of Pakistan,” Muslim leaders are trying to buy the silence of the victim’s family with the “diyat,” an Islamic mechanism which offers the equivalent of blood money to the victim’s family. If the financial compensation is accepted, the family of the victim is expected to forgive the murderer, which paves the way for his release and puts an end to the affair without legal punishment.
Mariah’s killer belongs to a wealthy family who is said to be in contact with high profile political figures in Punjab as well as other influential Islamic religious leaders. Even though Gujjar has been arrested, Muslim leaders are already visiting the family to give their condolences and offer them money in return for their silence.
Mariah’s parents, Razia Bibi and her father Manisha Masih, who live in the village of Samundari with their five other children, are said to be outraged by these proposals.
Monsignor Khalid Rashid Asi, Vicar general of the diocese of Faisalabad, told Agenzia Fides: “High profile political leaders are moving to drop Mariah’s murder. We fear that the investigation could end up without having solved anything. Therefore, as local Church, we are following the case and we have taken it to the attention of the Commission ‘Justice and Peace’ of the Episcopal Conference.”
The Church plans to officially ask that the investigations into the case are assigned to a team of Federal prosecutors, to avoid problems of corruption and local contamination.
Monsignor Asi also said that the Church is waiting for the official conclusion of this story “and then will evaluate the case from a spiritual point of view and examine the possibility to report it as a case of martyrdom.”
This would not be the first time the Catholic Church claimed a martyr in Pakistan. Monsignor Asi says there have been several cases like this “where the believers, poor and humble, have preferred to die rather than abandon their faith under threat.”
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