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 — 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

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.

December 1st, 2009 | Tags: Christian, Islam, Muslim, religion, Rifqa Bary | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Comments (1)

[UPDATE 20/11/09: I ended up in my own Google news alert on Rifqa Bary. Not sure what to think ...]

JISHOU, HUNAN — I find the whole Rifqa Bary thing fascinating, if only because it highlights the paranoia and/or religious nuttery of some segments of the American populace. I have a Google news alert set up for “rifqa bary,” so I get a daily digest of wingnuttiness. (Frankly, I prefer Nutella, though Nussa is pretty damn good, too.)

Well, it turns out that one of the speakers at the Rally for Rifqa in Columbus (capital of the Islamic Republic of Ohio) was another Muslim-turned-Christian, Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born author of anti-Muslim, pro-Israel books and founder of Former Muslims United. Darwish popped up in my Google news alert because of that brief association with Rally for Rifqa.

The link was to a conservative blog called, “Ruthfully Yours: The Right News, Front and Center.” Darwish was scheduled to speak at both Columbia and Princeton Universities, but both invitations were canceled at the last moment.

Apparently, the students who had invited Darwish got wind of her anti-Muslim rhetoric a little late in the game, and changed their minds.

The blogger, Ruth King — who by the way organized the Rally for Rifqa — sees a hidden agenda in the cancellations.

For those of us chronicling the advancing islamisation of America, things have gotten decidedly worse since Obama took over. We have entered a dark age.

November 19th, 2009 | Tags: Columbia, hate, Islam, Nonie Darwish, Pamela Geller, princeton, Rifqa Bary | Category: Commentary, Media, religion | Comments (1)