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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.]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The Bary family of Columbus, Ohio, had one place setting empty last Thursday, because religious hysteria and rightwing busybodies have interfered with return of their runaway daughter to their care.
That’s the tale told by Shayan Elahi, the attorney for Fathima Rifqa Bary’s father, in today’s Orlando Sentinel.
Rifqa Bary ran away from her home at age 16, assisted by Christian pastors and Facebook friends who enabled her to take a bus to Orlando, Florida, where she stayed with another Christian pastor and his wife for nearly two weeks before anyone notified child welfare authorities — or her parents — of her location.
Fueled by unfounded allegations that Rifqa fled her home to avoid an “honor killing,” a complete “Save Rifqa Bary” movement has blossomed from whole cloth, led by a combination of Christian activists, Muslim-haters, and otherwise well-meaning folk who think they are saving a teenage girl from certain execution.
In any other situation, had a teenager been lured away from her home by friends she met on Facebook or while unescorted by her family, assisted in her flight to a different state and housed (illegally) for two weeks, her return home would have been swift and definitive.
But, because the parties involved are “Christians,” their interference in a family’s life somehow gets a free pass. As far as I know, no one has been charged with any crime in enabling Rifqa to run away. And official sources give no credibility to the idea that Rifqa’s Muslim parents or the family’s mosque will kill the girl because she has become a Christian.
This is a preview of Poignant story of one unfortunate family’s Thanksgiving . Read the full post (512 words, 1 image, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — The Rifqa Bary saga just gets weirder and weirder.  Now that the 17-year-old is back in her home state, her “benefactors” and “supporters” plan to hold a rally during the hearing that will decide whether she will return to her parents’ home.
In the reality-based world, a runaway child returning home would be a good thing, if the parents are decent, upstanding members of society, which the Barys appear to be.
In the apocalyptic world of the far-far-rightwing, however, Rifqa’s Muslim parents are sure to kill their Christian convert daughter, because, you know, all Muslims do that sort of thing, every day. Pamela Geller and her fellow Muslim-haters have themselves worked up into a froth, accusing the Bary family of every crime known to humanity, merely because the Barys are Muslim …
… and because Rifqa, whose own grip on reality seems kind of tenuous, has people convinced that her family will either kill her or arrange for her sudden demise once she returns to that lawless hotbed of Islamic terrorism, Columbus, Ohio.
Law enforcement officers and child welfare officials say the likelihood of Rifqa being killed is nil. Her parents are pretty normal sounding, middle-class Americans who have the “misfortune” of being dark-skinned Muslim immigrants with exotic names.
The parallels to the “birther” crusade are obvious. A lot of folks also cannot accept that a dark-skinned son of a foreign-born Muslim with an exotic name became president of the USA.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The Orlando Sentinel reports that Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim girl turned Christian (pawn), returned to her home state of Ohio, where she is in foster care pending family court proceedings.
Bary, 17, fled her Columbus home last summer with the assistance of conservative Christians, who bought her a bus ticket to Orlando, where she lived for two weeks with Christian crusaders Blake and Beverly Lorenz. Several days later, the Lorenzes reported Bary’s arrival to Florida’s child protection services.
The immigrant girl from Sri Lanka has become a poster child for those Christians who believe the world is heading for a showdown between the forces of good (Christians) and the forces of evil (Muslims). Feeding on apparently false accusations that Bary’s parents will kill her for leaving her faith, rabid Christians have flocked to her cause like bears to honey.
An Ohio judge has wisely restricted the impressionable girl’s access to the Internet and her cell phone, which has led one anti-Islam nutjob to accuse the Ohio judge of enforcing Muslim sharia law.
Last month, while under foster care in Florida, Bary appeared on a telephone conference call prayer meeting, during which she manically prayed to Jesus, then abruptly stopped, leaving her handlers fellow Christians at a temporary loss for words. The conference call was scheduled to counter the sinister and cosmic influence of the Muslim Prayer Rally in Washington, D.C.
This is a preview of Religious runaway Rifqa Bary back in Ohio, in foster care . Read the full post (407 words, 2 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
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