Posted on 10/14/2009 3:14:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
ORLANDO, Fla. -- First there was Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy torn between two nations. Then there was Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman torn between two families. Now comes Rifqa Bary, the teenage runaway torn between two faiths.
If you're involved in a high-stakes custody fight, Florida, it seems, is the place to be.
Could Rifqa's father in Ohio really kill her for leaving Islam to embrace Christianity? Has the 17-year-old read too many fundamentalist Christian Web sites? Or is it all just teen dramatics?
Those are all questions swirling around the 17-year-old Ohio girl who became a Christian several years ago and sought shelter with an Orlando pastor after she feared for her life because, as she says, her father is bound by his Islamic faith to kill her.
Her parents deny the charges, and are now fighting in the courts in both states to bring Rifqa back home. The case has become a cause celebre among conservative Christian groups, Muslim activists and, of course, politicians.
Gov. Charlie Crist said "the first and only priority of my administration is the safety and well-being of this child." Marco Rubio, Crist's opponent in a GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat, also urged state leaders "to use every legal tool at their disposal to properly evaluate Rifqa's best interests."
"The case in Florida began as a television event," said Craig McCarthy, a former attorney for Rifqa's mother in Orlando. "It could have been dismissed on day one."
As courts in Orlando and Columbus, Ohio, wrestle over which state has jurisdiction, Rifqa remains in Orlando in foster care. On Tuesday, an Orlando judge ruled Rifqa should return to Ohio, although no timeline was set, and when she does return, she will remain in foster care.
The girl arrived in Orlando after connecting with the wife of an Orlando pastor on Facebook. The pastor and his wife took Rifqa in after "they realized that she was someone who really believed her life was in danger," said Mathew Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando firm specializing in religious litigation. Staver represents the pastor and his wife, Blake and Beverly Lorenz. The teen was placed with a different foster family after the couple contacted authorities.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report found no evidence of any threat or abuse against Rifqa and said her allegations are "based on her belief or understanding of the Islamic faith and/or Islamic law and custom. (Rifqa) stated that she believes Islamic law dictates she must be put to death for her abandonment of the Islamic faith."
Her father, Mohamed Bary, denied making any such threat, according to the report, but he told investigators when he confronted Rifqa about her conversion last June he lifted a laptop to throw it but reconsidered, thinking about how much money he had invested in it.
The case has put Muslim groups on the defensive. Islam condones no such killings, said Babak Darvish, executive director of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Darvish said the girl's parents are distraught about her behavior. They brought the family to the United States from Sri Lanka when Rifqa was a child so that she could receive better treatment for an eye injury that eventually left her blind in one eye, he said.
Darvish accused some conservative Christians and politicians of using the story to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment. "They're trying to use this case to further this extremist political, religious agenda," he said.
Lou Engle, an outspoken Kansas City, Mo., evangelist who has taken up Rifqa's case, said, "If Florida authorities release her to her parents, who she alleges threatened her for converting, we don't know what will happen to her and we should not risk it. While we hate to see any child leave the care of their parents, these conditions are unacceptable."
For some, Rifqa personifies lingering Christian-Muslim tensions more than eight years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In late September, as more than 3,500 Muslims prepared to gather for Friday prayers at the U.S. Capitol, Rifqa was featured as part of a national call-in prayer-a-thon.
Engle, who helped organize the call, referred to Rifqa as "our little sister," and during the call, Rifqa grew emotional when she was asked to pray for Muslims to embrace Christianity.
In her few public appearances, Rifqa is at times emotional, impassioned, giddy and sometimes a little incoherent. In a YouTube video during which she shares her testimony, Rifqa calls her parents "radical, radical Muslims" and says, "they can't know of my faith because if they do know the consequences are really harsh. Just the culture and the background that they come from is so hostile toward Christianity."
She explained that a classmate introduced her to Christianity, and then grows emotional as she describes the moment she became a Christian, during an altar call at church.
"The Lord completely wraps me in his arms of love, and I break down on the floor and weep," she said. "I felt nothing but love, nothing but this great radical love."
An attorney for Rifqa did not return calls seeking comment; his staff cited a court-imposed gag order. Staver said the threat against Rifqa is real and that Muslims, not Christians, have turned the story into another televised courtroom circus.
McCarthy, the Orlando attorney who formerly represented Rifqa's mother, was ambivalent about those who have taken up Rifqa's cause.
"It is not a unanimously held belief that these people are orthodox Christians," he said. "Which to me is a double tragedy for Rifqa, because if she wants to be a Christian, that's fantastic. I don't think she's necessarily being taught the faith in a healthy way."
As this country goes more and more Dhimmi we may have to set up an underground railroad to protect converts from “honor killings”.
And of course they will insist that she be returned before her 18th birthday so her muslim parents can kill her. God be with this poor child.
She is 17 can’t she just keep running until she is 18 years of age? I mean hasn’t she reached the age to basically determine whether her parents mean harm to her or not?
Someone needs to give this girl some money and a ticket!
I hope that Judge knows what he’s doing.
This is why someone needs to give the girl some hiding money and a plan to travel until she is 18. Her birthday can’t be that far away.
“Could Rifqa’s father in Ohio really kill her for leaving Islam to embrace Christianity? Has the 17-year-old read too many fundamentalist Christian Web sites?”
Her father threatens to strike her with a computer (read 7 pound weight) but doesn’t do it because the LAPTOP is too expensive? But she’s just running away from home because she’s read too many websites?
I’d like to make some caustic comment here about do these people even read what they write, but obviously they don’t, because the stupidity is just so totally on display here.
Well, if she said she wanted to get an abortion, don’t they pretty much have to let her go get one? Every parental notification law has a judicial bypass. </sarcasm>
Stupid, untruthful headline
“On Tuesday, an Orlando judge ruled Rifqa should return to Ohio, although no timeline was set, and when she does return, she will remain in foster care.”
This morning I was watching CNN and the blurb at the bottom of the screen described her as a “Muslim convert”. I also watched a couple of hours later and they had corrected it to “Christian convert”.
Hey she is free to run!
Of course he loves her. Muzzies kill their children out of love. Spare the bullet, spoil the child.
Doing the right thing and not counting the cost.
This is a toughy. I don’t like it when the State gets between a family & their children — particularly over religious matters. OTOH, fear of death is a pretty compelling reason to get in the middle. Is she considered an adult under Florida Law?
Not sure of the laws of Florida or Ohio, but in Georgia a child can choose to live with someone else at 17 as long as that person states they are responsible for them.
If she’s stupid enough to go back to Ohio, and doesn’t find some way to run, and if her Dad kills her, the backlash against mouselims in this country will be huge.
Run, Lola, Run.
Although I'm sympathetic to Rifqa and would like to see her find foster/sanctuary in Florida, I wouldn't make too much of this. My father once threw a book at me when I was a rebellious teenager. I don't know if it's to his credit that he didn't appear to think about the book's cost in his anger. Then again, it was a library book.
All that is happened is that the Florida court has determined it does not have custody jurisdiction over a girl who is a legal resident of Ohio. The whole issue will now be adjudicated in an Ohio court.
Narrated 'Abdullah:Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260:Allah's Apostle said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims."
Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment.' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.' "
And the Judge bought this crap. What an imbecile.
Will the backlash be hugh? It would be understandable if retaliation took place. Of course I could never condone violence. :) But the muslims have too often followed through on this kind of threat, and it isn’t just her father she has to fear, it’s every muslim man in the community. In fact, I doubt if she’s exactly safe anywhere. That judge should be putting her into witness protection, not sending her back to the mullah. I’m reminded of that guy in NY last year who cut his wife’s head off for being too westernized.
Reading comprehension, folks. He didn’t say he was thinking of throwing the laptop AT her, just throwing it. Perhaps because she was using it to visit social networking sites when her parents had forbidden that, and he felt the urge to smash it to keep her from using it.
This is a states’ rights case, and it’s an unConsitutional abomination that this girl wasn’t delivered to Ohio authorities within 24 hours of Florida authorities discovering her presence in Florida. Ohio police had had a nationwide alert out for her for over two weeks, and this sketchy self-employed pastor who chats up teenagers on Facebook had been harboring her at his home for 2 weeks before contacting authorities (and per some reports, he never did contact authorities, but rather authorities used her cell phone and computer records to trace her to him, and then they contacted him).
Not every teenager who claims her parents are extremist Muslims who are going to kill her for converting to Christianity, is telling the truth. This girl was on her high school cheerleading squad, displaying her bare legs and pantied crotch to crowds of horny teenage boys on a regular basis. It’s not like her parents were keeping her wrapped up in a burqa and controlling her every move.
Whatever Christian outfit went ahead and baptized her, knowing she was a minor whose parents didn’t approve, was way out of line. I can just imagine the howls on FR if some teenager whose parents were trying to raise her as an evangelical Christian, hooked up with a local Muslim group that convinced her to recite the shihadeh and thus formally become a Muslim, and then some imam a thousand miles away chatted her up on Facebook and convinced her to run away and come stay at his home. Sure, when the Florida authorities caught up with her, she’d say her parents were going to viciously beat her because they were Bible-thumping maniacs who took the Biblical instruction not to “spare the rod” very literally. But that wouldn’t be a legitimate reason for Florida authorities not to send her back to authorities in the state she came from, and let them sort out the real story.
in NY state she can be emancipated at 16
How about respect the Constitution of the United States, and send her back to authorities in the state she ran away from, and let that state's authorities sort it out? And apart from the Constitutional issue, there's certainly no reason to think that the family court and foster care system in Florida, of all places, is better able to handle this than their counterparts in Ohio.
There’s every reason for the state of OHIO to get involved in this — a minor resident of Ohio has alleged that her parents are threatening to kill her, and there’s at least enough evidence to support keeping her in foster care while an investigation of her claims is conducted, especially given her near-adult age. But there’s zero reason for Florida authorities to be involved in anything but arranging her prompt delivery to Ohio authorities.
The judge should do a bit of reading about honor killings - the father would kill her for her own good and because he loves her- figure that mind set out! But that is how tese animals think.
What if the girl refuses to go back to Ohio, what’s the constitutional thing to do ?
She’s a MINOR. Have two officers put her in the back of a squad car and hit the highway. What if she was a convert to Scientology or some Satanic cult and ran away from her Methodist parents and “refused” to go back? Send her back anyway!
Ohio courts are going to handle the case, and have already said that the girl will be placed in foster care pending resolution of the case, and that both the girl and her parents will have to undergo psychiatric evaluations. Frankly, I suspect all three of them actually need this. Unfortunately, she’s likely to turn 18 before any final resolution is reached, and not be deemed crazy enough to be kept in custody against her will, and so will run off again to crackpot Christian friends who are encouraging her Messiah complex.
I had not read about her displaying herself to guys. Before I became a Christian, I also did many unacceptable things. Being a Christian centers you and focuses you on your former bad behavior, and is an epiphany for the sinner. It's a classic conversion. Now maybe she doesn't want to do that anymore.
I've read several statements from this family. None of them make me think they are just going to sit back and not give her trouble about converting. According to another news story her father said she had no business learning about Christianity, she needed to learn her own religion.
I saw an interview of the FL pastor. He seems a temperate and correct man, and went to see a lawyer after the girl showed up on his doorstep. He certainly didn't want to be accused of kidnapping her, but had very serious concerns her fears were real.
She's hired her own lawyer and feels she needs legal representation. She's letting the court system work out the problem. From what her lawyer says, her father's mosque has some Islamist influence. I certainly wouldn't immediately put off what she says as teenage tripe. There's a history of these things happening. And I certainly wouldn't trust what the mother says. I've read too many stories where the woman returned home or whatever because the mother talked her into it, only to be murdered. It's a common scenario, using the mother to lure the child back before she is killed.
If he says he was going to throw a laptop because he was so angry with her, that is worth examining. And if FL doesn't want to force a 17 year old to to go to parents she claims want to kill her without some process, I certainly don't have a problem with that.
Since you’ve explained Florida’s position in this, it does make sense to kick the whole thing back to Ohio.
It IS going to be examined. By the OHIO courts. There has never been any discussion of sending her straight back to her parents. The decision as to whether her parents regain custody of her will be made by the Ohio courts, and given the normal pace of such proceedings and her age, it’s highly unlikely she’ll ever be sent back to them. That’s not really the end of the story, though, nor should it be. Her parents are Ohio residents, and if they have made serious threats to harm her, the Ohio courts need to deal with THEM, and that entails having Rifqa in Ohio to participate in court proceedings. This family also has a six year old son at home, and if the parents are dangerous enough to warrant legally terminating their custody of their teenage daughter, then the family still needs to be under court/CPS supervision on account of the younger child.
Honestly, I think this girl is a drama queen and is exaggerating a lot of things, and being encouraged to do so by her Christian friends. The pastor who facilitated her running away halfway across the country and then harbored her in his home for 2 weeks without notifying authorities (a crime in Florida, and probably a federal crime as well, since Ohio authorities had a nationwide alert out for her), is hardly a normal, responsible Christian pastor. Per various interviews her parents have given, it sounds quite plausible that what she really feared was that the parents would move the family back to Sri Lanka, because they were upset about their daughter’s overall rebellious behavior.
An interesting article here http://infidelsunite.typepad.com/counter_jihad/2009/09/rifqa-bary-parents-of-us-teen-convert-brace-for-tough-fight.html is based on an interview with her parents. They don’t sound like crazed Muslim extremists. They allowed their daughter to be on the cheerleading squad at a US public high school — just stepping out the front door in one of those outfits would be enough to cause the serious violent-extremist Muslims to kill their daughter on the spot, but these parents allowed her to participate in this activity in public. And an interesting aspect to this story which I haven’t seen any real focus on, is that the family moved to the US to seek treatment for an eye injury that Rifqa sustained at home in Sri Lanka. On the one hand, with the allegations she’s making now, one thinks “Was the injury the result of her father or another male family member attacking her?”. But then you stop and think that a family that would have done that, wouldn’t have picked up and moved the family to the US and sought medical treatment for the girl’s injury here.
It’s all very weird, and I don’t take the parents’ or the daughter’s statements at face value. The girl sounds a bit mentally unstable, and it’s quite possible her parents are too. But the Constitution and federal law are quite clear on how to handle a minor runaway who’s being sought by legal authorities in the state where her parents or legal guardians reside.
Why would anyone think the Ohio courts are less able to evaluate the parents affiliation with this Ohio mosque, than the Florida courts? I have no idea if these parents are fit to have custody of their daughter. They don’t seem to have practiced any extreme brand of Islam in the past, or their daughter wouldn’t have been on the cheerleading squad. But who knows, perhaps they’ve recently converted to extremist Islam, just as she seems to have converted to a far-out-of-the-mainstream brand of Christianity. Let the Ohio courts sort it out. Just because the parents are Muslims doesn’t mean the US Constitution gets tossed out and we just forget about all that pesky states’ rights stuff.
How many times have we heard from the Islamists, the media and the apologists that Rifqa Bary’s parents could not have been that devout, since she was a cheerleader? The famous cheerleader picture is then posted as proof. How much danger could she really be in if her parents allowed her to wear the cheerleading uniform?
According to a very close friend of Rifqa’s in Ohio, Rifqa’s parents never saw her in the uniform that she was pictured in. The cheerleaders had a warm-up suit that they would wear, and when she left her home to go to games, she had the warm-up suit on, never the cheerleading skirt.
Her parents did not go to any games to see her cheer. From what I have ascertained, her parents were not involved in her school life at all...
Further, Rifqa Bary is an honor student (GPs 3.5) - a good girl. Like what her friends, Amina and Sarah Said, she lived two lives: she was a happy productive successful student in school and a tortured, oppressed and brutalized victim at home. Many in her school were shocked to hear that Rifqa, the quintessential good girl, had run away from home; those close to her were not surprised at all. She was terrified of her father and lived in fear for years.
The “unruly delinquent” claim is inaccurate. It does not gibe. Unruly delinquents are not honor students with over 3.5 GPAs.
Secondly, even assuming that her parents are moderate Muslims, let us not forget that Sharia does not simply involve her parents. She is in probable danger from OTHER Muslims from the Mosque that her parents go to (not a moderate mosque by all reports I’ve read ).
But your point about Ohio having jurisdiction on this case is well taken — PROVIDED — ADEQUATE PROTECTION FOR RIFQA IS PROVIDED.
The point of course is this — Rifqa isn’t inventing something out of thin air. There are WORRYING PRECEDENTS HERE IN THIS COUNTRY AND AROUND THE WORLD!!
Read this for instance :
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24329
Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, smile happily in one widely circulating photo, and Amina is wearing what looks like a sweatshirt bearing the name “AMERICAN.” But their fate may have been the herald of a new, disquieting feature of the American landscape: honor killing. Amina and Sarah were shot dead in Irving, Texas, on New Year’s Day. Police are searching for their father, Yaser Abdel Said, on a warrant for capital murder.
The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, told reporters, “This was an honor killing.” She explained that Yaser Said had long abused the girls, and after discovering that they had boyfriends, had threatened to kill them — whereupon their mother fled with them. “She ran with them,” said Gartrell, “because she knew he would carry out the threat.” But Said found them, and apparently did carry it out.
Honor killing, the practice of murdering a female family member who is believed to have sullied the family honor, enjoys widespread acceptance in some areas of the Islamic world. However, Islam Said, the brother of Amina and Sarah, has denied that the murders had anything to do with Islam at all. “It’s not religion,” he insisted. “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it.”
Knowing that the mosque that Rifqa’s parents go to isn’t exactly a “moderate” mosque ( they have invited radical islamists to preach ), it isn’t bigotry for any judge to be on the side of caution.
OK, there is so much in this article I don’t get. For instance:
Around this time a friend of Mohammad logged on to Facebook as a teenager and chatted with Rifqa. She told him she was a Christian. The Barys wanted some answers.
“I told Rifqa we had to sit down and talk. But she avoided any such thing. I took away her laptop and disconnected her cell phone for a short time. Her mother confronted her and told her to tell the truth, saying, ’We have to talk about it; otherwise all of us may have to go back to Sri Lanka,’” Mohammad said.
She told a friend of her father that she was a Christian, so they take away her cell phone and laptop and tell her they may have to go back to Sri Lanka?
You see, they sound so reasonable (she can convert if she wants) but when they start talking about actual facts, things don’t seem to add up.
I never said she was an “unruly delinquent”. She was participating fully in normal American teen culture, including being on the cheerleading squad, and spending endless hours on Facebook. The notion that her parents had no idea what US cheerleaders do and wear is preposterous, as is the notion that extremist Muslims who would resort to honor killings would allow their daughter to run around unsupervised to after school activities and a part-time restaurant job.
She has gotten involved with not one, but two seriously sketchy pastors. The Florida pastor who was harboring her has sinced announced (but declined to explain) that his church (the grandiosely named “Global Revolution Church”) that only started up about a year ago is “reorganizing” — he says “The lawyers are trying to figure out which way it’s going to go”. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/orl-bk-rifqa-bary-lorenz-church-090909,0,6381208.story I also did a little digging on this church back when this story first broke. When I spotted an out-of-place looking photo on the website, I quickly tracked down its origin and contacted the copyright owner (a professional photographer and web PR consultant) who confirmed that she had no connection with the church and that it was not authorized to be using the photo. I presume that’s the least of the church’s legal problems these days.
The self-styled pastor in Ohio, 21/23 year old (age varies by source) Brian Williams, declined to cooperate with Ohio police until they threatened to arrest him. Though Williams had apparently still been living in Ohio when he drove Rifqa to the Greyhound station to run away, by the time police caught up with him, he had already moved to Missouri for unclear reasons, and Kansas City police acting on behalf of the Ohio police, searched his home and were prepared to arrest him. Then Williams contacted the various people he knew she’d been in touch with via Facebook when she was looking for a place to run away to, and the Florida pastor, Lorenz, only notified Florida police that he had her after he learned from Williams that police were now hot on her trail (and his). In a typical Florida DCF screw-up, they took her into legal custody of the state but then let her stay with Lorenz for another 3 days, during which time Lorenz had a local TV news crew come in and interview her. Yep, that’ll help keep her safe from homicidal Muslim maniacs who want to kill her for converting — just put her on TV and let the whole world know exactly where they can find her. < /s> That was too much even for Florida DCF, where somebody finally noticed they’d put her in an unlicensed foster home, and got her out of there.
Lots of crazies in this story, and it could be that Rifqa’s parents are among them. But at first glance, they sure don’t stand out as the most worrisome adults involved in Rifqa’s life.
Another interesting little tidbit I bumped into:
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/09/15/rifqa_report.ART_ART_09-15-09_B1_O5F31CN.html?sid=101
“Rifqa also said a high-school teacher had offered her a place to stay to escape the consequences of her religious beliefs at home. The teacher told investigators she offered the place because there were parties with alcohol thrown at the residence when the parents were out of town. She told investigators she was not aware of any danger to Rifqa because of her faith.” (I’m assuming the booze parties were the work of her 18 year old brother, so I guess he’s not a wildly devout fundamentalist Muslim who’d be willing to help out with killing his sister.)
Supposedly the main reason they came here from Sri Lanka was to get medical treatment for her eye injury (and independent sources have confirmed that she did indeed receive treatment for the eye here, saving the eye itself, but not the sight in that eye). So they may not have originally intended to settle here permanently. And they wouldn’t be the first parents to immigrate to the US and decide to return to their native country when their kids starting adopting American culture, and being very rebellious towards their parents and parents’ culture. That’s a long way from threatening to kill her. I have some friends — an American born woman, and her Indian born husband, both lifelong Catholics — who met and married here in the US, and seemed settled here for a while, but then elected to move overseas, first to Switzerland and then to India, in part because they felt the cultural environment would be better for their children.
It appears that the Barys’ concerns went beyond just Rifqa’s conversion, to her sneaking around with people they didn’t know. Who knows which one really bothered them the most, but normal parents object to their teenagers spending most of their time, online and in person, with people the parents don’t know anything about.
Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist, and honor killings are rare there (basically nonexistent, except presumably among the Muslim Tamil Tigers guerrilla group which hangs out in remote jungles, training suicide bombers) and certainly not tolerated by the government. Mr. Bary would have a better chance of getting away with it here, and even if caught would face much less unpleasant consequences.
Let’s look at the other side of the story :
* She’s 17. Can’t she be emancipated? She’s just a few months away from being 18, which means she can leave home if she wishes. If 16-year-olds can be tried as adults in criminal cases, the same standard should be applied in this case, with someone old enough and intelligent enough to know what she is doing. The fact still stands -— she is within the AGE OF REASON and her opinions has to be given weight.
* Let’s assume that no one can know what is in the hearts of this young woman’s parents. What we DO know, is that Islam DOES allow honor killings, and especially for those who reject islam for Christ ( I just cited one example ij Texas above ). The court must do all that is in it’s power to protect this child from the worst. All of us pray that her parents love her too much to murder her, but reality is often cruel, and for the court to err, and cost Rifqa her life would be a far worse tragedy than to keep her safely away from her parents until she turns 18.
* Rifqa Bary says she ran to Florida to save her life: “I was threatened by my dad.” She says that her father told her, “If you have this Jesus in your heart, you’re dead to me. You’re not my daughter. I will kill you.” But now her father is trying to regain custody of Rifqa, and he and the Islamic Society of Central Florida say she has been “kidnapped” and “brainwashed” by a “cult,” and that she’s a “rebel,” a “troubled teen.”
Well, which is it? She hitchhiked to the bus station and took a Greyhound from Ohio to Florida. How is that a kidnapping?
* Rifqa Bary’s father is also claiming that she was “brainwashed” by the pastor of the Global Revolution church in Orlando. Pastor Blake Lorenz denies that, saying, “she has been a Christian for four years, long before we ever met her.”
You said she has a page on MySpace. Well what does that tell us ? Rifqa’s MySpace page, to which she last logged in two years ago, shows that she had already converted by then. Her MySpace page is evidence that she was a Christian at least by 2007.
There is more evidence on that same MySpace page. Rifqa chose a “Christian layout” and says that her favorite movie was “A Walk to Remember” — a good Christian flick. The movie is about a pastor’s daughter, a good Christian girl who changes the life of a popular but rebellious teenage boy through her indomitable spirit, purity, and goodness. Reviewer Jeffrey Overstreet said in Christianity Today: “The main character is portrayed as a Christian without being psychopathic or holier-than-thou.”
Further, under Rifqa’s favorite book, there is a small icon of a page from the Bible. The passage highlighted? Love is patient. Notice how it’s all done cryptically, as if she is hiding. “My Savior is JC,” she writes — JC, of course, is Jesus Christ. The movie is a Christian movie. The book is the Bible. And Rifqa wrote all this in 2007. THAT WAS BEFORE SHE EVEN MET THIS PASTOR.
* In contrast, Islamic Society of Central Florida President Imam Muhammad Musri charges that Rifqa is “nothing more than a troubled teen” and a “rebel teenager running away from home.”
The Pakistan Daily carries even worse charges: “The family maintains that the girl was into drugs, promiscuous behaviour and raunchy messages on Facebook. She was discussing sex with multiple older married men. When the parents tried to control her behaviour she refused to do so. On her return to the home she conjured up a story of conversion to Christianity.”
* The fact is -— No one who knows Rifqa has come forth with any stories of drug abuse or promiscuity.
* That makes it likely that all of this “troubled teen” propaganda is a yarn spun (taqiya) to con the authorities into sending this girl back to a dangerous and deadly situation. Let’s say that Rifqa is not in jeopardy from her father and other family members, if so, Let’s not forget the danger from all devout Muslims, for she committed the worst of all sins, apostasy. And she broke the code of silence.
* Let’s say you don’t trust this pastor because of the strange, cultic name of his church — THE LEAST WE SHOULD ALLOW IS LEGAL PROTECTION BY THE LAW UNTIL SHE REACHES 18.
This website seems to show a little nuance :
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/
EXCERPT :
Check out Mohamed Bary’s missing immigration documents. Mr. Bary lost his application for amnesty. He lost his appeal for reconsideration of the administrative law judge’s denial of that amnesty application, (or, application for change of status to temporary resident legal alien, to be more precise.)
He and his family are subject to immediate deportation and further exclusion. He claimed he came to America to tend to Rifqa’s eye, when in fact he came illegally through Mexico (according to the document) and the “doting” father never got Rifqa medical treatment.
For the several months the attorneys for Rifqa Bary’s parents have been promising to produce their immigration documents. And yet they still have failed to produce them. First, Craig McCarthy (since discharged) and then the new, improved, CAIR-approved Shayan “Shaytan” Elahi repeatedly promised to produce them here and here and here and here. The Barys have ten days before they are in contempt of court. My money says they are going to say the documents are lost.
Here’s the bottom line :
If she has NOT been telling the truth, then she needs to face the consequences of making unfounded claims such as these.
But if what she has been saying is true then we have to ask ourselves if we going to continue to allow people freedom of religious expression or if that is something that parents can decide for their grown children.
Your father wasn’t a nutcase who believed in killing his child over a religious conversion. That makes all the difference.
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