In January, 16-year-old Reena was walking home with her sister from a restaurant when a Muslim man kidnapped her.
Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs says the news at first was not good.
“Her parents were told, ‘Oh, your daughter has converted to Islam, and she has married the man who abducted her. End of story. She's not yours anymore,’” Nettleton says.
Reena's parents would not accept that, and they mounted a battle. They hired a Christian attorney who happened to be a woman — not common in Pakistan — and went to court. The court ruled, as expected, that Christians have no rights under Pakistani law and the arranged marriage stood. The family did not give up and appealed the ruling.
Nettleton says that's when God made his presence known.
“The court — and this is the miracle — the court ruled, ‘Okay, she should be returned to her parents,’” Nettleton states.
However, they still had to go and get Reena. The family of the kidnapper tried to prevent the rescue, but Nettleton says God showed up again.
“The police went and got her, and she said, ‘I want to go back to my parents,’ and the police enforced that. They took her from him. They returned her to her parents,” Nettleton states.
Reena's family has gone into hiding because of the threats coming their way, but they are together.
“This is an absolute miracle. We have seen these stories before where the courts do not step in, they do not support the rights of Christians, and they leave these young ladies with their abductors, who are now their husbands and have complete control over them,” Nettleton says.
Roughly 98% of Pakistanis are Sunni and Sufi Muslims. Nearly 2%, or around 4 million, are Christians, but there are no accurate statics to verify the Christian population.
