JISHOU, HUNAN — The Rifqa Bary saga continues, but I fear there will be a tragic ending to an already tragic story.

Bary, the Christian convert teen who ran away from home last year alleging her Muslim parents would kill her, apparently is rejecting chemotherapy for her uterine cancer, claiming she was cured by a faith healer. She is also rejecting a reunion with her family, whom law enforcement officials say pose no threat to her safety.

The teenager became a poster child for the anti-Muslim and/or born-again religious crowd after she ran away from her Columbus home to Orlando, Florida, claiming her parents would kill her because of her conversion to Christianity three years before she fled. She eventually ended up in foster care back in Ohio.

In May, the 17-year-old Sri Lankan native was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and has since had three operations.

According to news reports, documents filed by her parents in Franklin County Court state that Bary is refusing chemotherapy because she claims she was healed at an event in Youngstown last month. She was allegedly taken there without her parents’ consent, and her parents want the court to force Bary to undergo chemotherapy if she needs it.

A judge will decide on the parents’ motion today.

Meanwhile, Bary, who turns 18 next week, has refused to meet with her family. Her lawyers say the girl fears her parents still.

[Oh, ye of little faith. But I digress.]

August 3rd, 2010 | Tags: cancer, Christian, Islam, Muslim, ohio, religion, Rifqa Bary | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — The developer of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” sat down for an interview recently with a blogger at Beliefnet.com. Compared to the frothing-at-the-mouth demagogues opposing the project, Sharif el-Gamal espouses true American values: rational discourse and freedom of religion.

His interview is worth reading, because it contradicts the wild assertions made by the likes of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).

Geller and Spencer consistently object to proximity of the project, which includes a mosque, to the former site of the World Trade Center about two blocks away. They claim the Muslim-backed center will somehow “desecrate the sacred ground” of the ruined buildings which entombed about 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

el-Gamal’s response:

We are not at Ground Zero. In fact we’re as close to City Hall as we are to Ground Zero. Lower Manhattan is pretty small. You can’t see Ground Zero from our current building and on completion of our planned building some years from now, there won’t be any views of the Ground Zero memorial from the building. To honor those who were killed on September 11th, we have planned for a public memorial within our future facility as well as reflection space open to all.

He also mentions that there are two other mosques in Lower Manhattan, which are too crowded. He doesn’t mention that there two strip clubs also near the “sacred” WTC site.

July 24th, 2010 | Tags: 9/11, Islam, Manhattan, mosque, Muslim, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, WTC | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Random rants | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — I am going off-script here because I am fed up with hearing about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in Lower Manhattan.

Let’s get some facts straight first.

I am a native New Yorker. I visited the World Trade Center at least twice before it became a pile of rubble and a tomb for 3,000 people. I was one of the millions of Americans who watched in horror as a part of my hometown – my hometown! — was destroyed live on TV.

The people, the terrorists who committed this horrible act are dead. They were extremists, crazy people. They happened to be crazy Muslim people.

Now, a group of Muslims in NYC want to convert a old, nearby building that was also damaged in the attack into a community center with mosque. Local community officials have approved the plan. The neighbors have no problem with it.

And I don’t either. Read the third and fourth paragraphs again. Then read my lips. I don’t care if they build a mosque near the former WTC site. (I refuse to call it Ground Zero. Sorry if I offend anyone. It’s not fucking Hiroshima.)

Now that we got that straight, it’s time for me to cut loose.

Would all the know-nothing, paranoid, conspiracy-theorist, bigoted, knuckle-dragging idiots just shut the fuck up? Get outta town.Take a long walk off a short pier. Stuff a sock in it. Dry up. Shut yer piehole. Find somebody to fit you with cement boots for a dip in the East River. Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck — I mean you! STFU!

July 20th, 2010 | Tags: 9/11, Cordoba Initiative, Islam, mosque, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, SIOA, WTC | Category: Civil liberties, Random rants, religion | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, who made headlines several months ago after she ran away from her Muslim parents claiming they would kill her as an Islamic apostate, is being treated for uterine cancer.

The Sri Lankan-born high school graduate has had two operations already, and awaits a third.

Bary ran away to Florida in July with the help of a Christian pastor who had befriended her. Once arriving in Orlando, the girl, who says she converted to Christianity at 13, lived with married pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz for nearly two weeks before the Lorenzes told child welfare officials where Bary was.

In interviews, Bary claimed that her parents were upset with her conversion and that she was afraid that her father would kill her if she returned home. Law enforcement officials from Florida and Ohio, however, reported there was no credible threat to her safety.

Nevertheless, Bary has lived with foster parents in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, after her court-ordered return to Ohio in October. She turns 18 in August, at which point she will be able to leave foster care.

Her conversion and flight to Florida have become a rallying point for anti-Islamic Christian polemicists, who have used Bary as a “poster child” for honor killings, though there was never any real threat to her life. Meanwhile, they have accused Bary’s parents and their mosque of being Islamic extremists, though again there is no evidence of the allegations.

May 26th, 2010 | Tags: Christian, Florida, Islam, Muslim, ohio, Rifqa Bary | Category: Commentary, religion | Leave a comment

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 — 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