Some 800 Egyptian Christian women have been abducted and pressured to convert to Islam since 2009, according to Aid to the Church in Need.The charity was highlighting the issue of women's abduction in Egypt and Pakistan as it launched a report on religious persecution around the world called "Christians and the Struggle for Religious Freedom".
An Egyptian, the Coptic Catholic Joannes Zakaria of Luxor, told an audience in the House of Commons on Tuesday that behind the abductions lay the notion that if all Christian women are converted to Islam, Christian men will be unable to find wives and Christians in the Middle East will die out.
Asiya Nasir, a Pakistani Christian MP, said that said that in her country legislation was being devised to outlaw forced conversions and forced marriages.