LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — Here’s the short version. Fathima Rifqa Bary, the teenaged Muslim-to-Christian-convert runaway, does not have to rejoin her parents in Columbus, Ohio. She and her folks agreed that she will stay in foster care until she turns 18 in August.

Bary became a minor celebrity several months ago when she ran away from her parents, saying she feared she would be put to death for being an “apostate,” someone who had abandoned Islam. Aided by Christian church leaders in Columbus, she boarded a Greyhound bus for Orlando, Florida, to stay secretly with husband-and-wife pastors, Blake and Beverly Lorenz, for a week or so. Once her whereabouts became known, Bary entered the world of child protection services in first Florida, then Ohio, and became a poster child for religious nutjobs building up anti-Islam fervor.

In the aftermath, the Lorenzes have lost their jobs. (Their church board took issue with the Lorenzes breaking the law by harboring a runaway child without notifying the proper authorities.) Her parents have lost their privacy and a great deal of their reputation. (Law enforcement investigations found the parents posed no threat to their daughter’s safety, but Bary’s anti-Islam fans still trumpet that the girl’s life was in danger.) And Bary will likely end up with a new identity as a “persecuted Christian” who escaped the clutches of Islam — a newly minted spokeswoman for the Religious Fear-mongering Right.

You wait. There’s bound to be a book or movie deal waiting in the wings. And the obligatory appearance on Oprah.

January 22nd, 2010 | Tags: Blake Lorenz, Christian, convert, Florida, Islam, ohio, Rifqa Bary, runaway | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Well, really, I’m heading east to the West — the USA, specifically — in two days. My feelings are, strangely, mixed.

On the one hand, I will be able to see my kids and my relatives again, after 17 months’ separation. On the other, I’ll be apart from my friends here in Jishou, who themselves will scatter to the four winds after exams end on the 20th.

Then, there’s the prospect of flying, which I used to enjoy and now regard as a necessary evil to get from one place to another. (Would someone please invent transfer booths**? Soon?)

My itinerary is as follows. Leave Jishou’s Xiangxi Minzu Hotel at 9:30 am Wednesday by motorcoach to Changsha. Stay overnight in Changsha. Leave the next morning by air to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, then transfer by shuttle bus to Pudong Airport for an afternoon flight to Chicago. From there, I’ll go to Indiana or Kentucky, depending on which child picks me up.

I’ll be in the USA for just three weeks. It seems a bit short, after 17 months’ absence, but my travel plans after I return to China dictated a curtailed US visit. My Ukrainian neighbors (two piano teachers plus their son) invited me to join them on a trip to Hainan, China’s version of Hawai’i, during the last week of February. The Chinese New Year is Feb. 13-14 this year, and the days before and after strain China’s transportation network, as people travel home to celebrate with their families.

January 11th, 2010 | Tags: changsha, China, Hainan, home, Shanghai, travel | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

CHANGSHA, CHINA — Unlike my last trip to the vicinity of Changsha, this one was not fraught with peril. The disasters were limited to the movies I watched.

Our bus screened two mega-disaster movies, the American 2012 and the Thai copycat version 2022: The Great Tsunami. (It goes without saying both were pirated copies.) And, before I fell asleep in my hotel Saturday night, I watched that classic star-studded extravaganza, The Towering Inferno, with dialogue dubbed into Chinese, of course.

Disaster movies are just really stupid, you know? It makes no difference when or where they are made. They’re just mindless entertainment.

Let’s start with Roland Emmerich’s 2012. As soon as heard the Important Scientist announce ominously that a massive solar flare had sent a storm of neutrinos toward Earth, and these neutrinos for the first time ever (Now with new cleaning power!) were interacting with matter, I knew the rest of the movie would be, scientifically, a stinker.

I was not disappointed.

Physics mini-lesson: Yes, the Sun produces neutrinos. Lots of neutrinos. They are a product of nuclear fusion, the gift that keeps on giving us heat and light from that yellow ball in the sky. The sun has been pumping out these little fellows for the last five billion years, and like all other subatomic particles, solar neutrinos don’t suddenly take the notion to change their ways. Neutrinos normally sail right through the Earth (and us, by the way) like nothing is there. They only very rarely interact with atoms, detectable by little flashes of light in huge underground tanks of pure water.

December 15th, 2009 | Tags: 2012, 2022, apocalypse, disaster, movies, The Towering Inferno | Category: China, Commentary, Media, Science | Comments Off

JISHOU, HUNAN — My webhost just upgraded many of its customers to a new superduper server over the weekend. Somehow, my site got lost in the shuffle, but now we’re back!

Predictably, the outage happened while I was out of town and for the most part away from the World Wide Web. So, I had no idea anything was wrong until my buddy notified me by email. I sent a message to Planet Earth Hosting, and 24 hours later, the site was up, good as new.

The occasion for my trip out of town was the big car show in Changsha. Two of my former students were going — one to shop and one to wish — and asked me to join them.

So, Saturday morning I took the coach to Changsha. Also on board was a postgrad friend of mine and her friend. They were going to Changsha to shop and (for one of them) to sit for a qualifications exam. To my delight, the bus company has changed its normal stop — next to a swanky hotel — to a place practically next door to my usual — non-swanky — hotel. It makes catching the return bus a breeze now.

That Saturday, I shopping for some wee Christmas gifties with Tina, one of my former students from Jishou U. Her boyfriend was busy at work, and she was bored, so she squired me around the shopping district to find what I wanted. Meanwhile, she bought some stuff, too.

December 13th, 2009 | Tags: bling, car show, changsha, China, Christmas, shopping, tourism, travel | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — I read tonight that Editor & Publisher, which has been the unofficial watchdog of the U.S. newspaper industry for 108 years, is going bye-bye.

E&P was indispensable reading for us (former and present) newspaper types, even if we were only reading the classified for jobs or getting our jollies from the headline bloopers on the last page of the magazine.

The trade journal is a casualty of corporate media conglomerates, who value profit over service. E&P’s owner, The Neilson Group, is selling off some of its publications to new owners, but axing E&P completely. Journalists are protesting the move, but who knows if protests will succeed in saving Editor & Publisher.

Like the Columbia Journalism Review, E&P critiqued the newspaper trade, and especially noted the media’s servile role during the Bush administration, where it seemed most newspapers were just doing PR for the White House instead of questioning it.

Some allege that E&P’s tendency to criticize the Bush administration and point out corporate media’s dearth of fact-checking may have led to its demise.

This is as depressing as Rupert Murdoch buying The Wall Street Journal.

December 11th, 2009 | Tags: editor & publisher, journalism, Media | Category: Commentary, Media | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Child welfare workers in Ohio have recommended that teenage religious runaway Fathima Rifqa Bary and her parents sit down and talk about their religious differences. Trouble is, the girl does not want to see her parents ever again.

Rifqa fears her parents will have her killed for converting from Islam to Christianity. Her parents say they will do no such thing.

Here is the Associated Press story on this latest chapter in the Bary family drama.

There’s some mostly rational discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy. And some mostly unhinged ranting at Free Republic.

December 3rd, 2009 | Tags: Christianity, Islam, Muslim, religion, Rifqa Bary | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Leave a comment