 What sweet, loving parents they obviously are. How wonderfully they will treat her if the dhimmi Ohio authorities order her to be returned home. "Parents of Rifqa Bary ask court to hold her in contempt to force her to attend counseling sessions with Muslim counselor," from The Jawa Report, December 18 (thanks to Pamela, who has more here): ...and the counselor they demand she attend filed an affidavit in support of Rifqa being held in contempt! The next episode in the legal battle between Muslim-turned-Christian convert Rifqa Bary and her allegedly abusive parents will occur next Tuesday in an Ohio courtroom.
As I reported last Friday, one of the issues that will be heard by the court is a motion by the CAIR-appointed attorney to the Bary parents demanding that all Christmas cards sent to Rifqa be banned, and any cards she has already received be seized. On Monday, we provided clear evidence of CAIR's backstage handling of the media in this case. Another issue next week will be another motion filed by the Bary parents asking the court to hold Rifqa in contempt for refusing to attend counseling sessions with a Muslim counselor. Amazingly, the counselor that the Bary parents are attempting to force her to see filed a affidavit supporting the parents' motion to hold Rifqa in contempt of court. How could this counselor be remotely neutral? But wait a second - haven't all the media stooges in this case, from Meredith "Hijab" Heagney of the Columbus Dispatch to Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, insisted that the Bary family intends to respect Rifqa's Christian faith? Haven't these media stooges repeated assurances from the Bary parents that Rifqa has nothing to fear from returning home?... Her parents have defamed Christians who have attempted to help their daughter flee their abuse; they have filed criminal charges against Rifqa accusing her of being a delinquent; and now they ask the Ohio courts to ban and seize Rifqa's Christmas cards and to force her to see a Muslim counselor that has demonstrated his own partiality.
What this long sequence of events clearly shows is that Rifqa Bary has much to fear from being returned to her parents and that they have no intention to honor her personal religious choices.... With thanks to JihadWatch 
The great and heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Wafa Sultan, author of the essential book A God Who Hates, spoke in New York this morning. Pamela was there and has video -- parts 2, 3, and 4 are linked here. Watch it all! With thanks to JihadWatch
 But wait! I thought all the learned analysts had assured us that there is no death penalty for apostasy in Islam! Isn't that right, Dr. Bassiouni? Mr. Kruse? Ms. Heagney? "Turkey: Iranian Atheist Risks Death Penalty If Repatriated," from ANSAmed, November 30 (ANSAmed) - ANKARA, NOVEMBER 30 - Turkish authorities will be announcing their decision in the coming days over whether or not to repatriate an Iranian citizen who - having escaped from her country after publicly declaring she was an atheist - could be sentenced to death for apostasy if sent back. Negar Azizmoradi, Iranian leader of the controversial International Raelian Movement, was arrested just over a week ago in Istanbul on her arrival in the city with an "irregular" passport, and since then has been held in a refugee centre in the Turkish metropolis.
Raelians are part of a sect founded in 1974 by the former sports journalist Claude Vorilhon, 63, as known as Rael. His followers believe that human beings were created on Earth by extraterrestrials with biogenetical engineering, and therefore consider themselves to be atheist and support human cloning, which they believe to be the key to eternal life.
Appeals to help the thirty-something Iranian woman have been launched by both the Raelian movement and Iranian refugee groups abroad. In them, Turkish authorities have been asked to release the woman - who reportedly has caught a lung infection in jail - and allow her to go to a European country. With thanks to JihadWatch
 So says Pamela Geller in an interview with Jamie Glazov of FrontPage magazine today on the Rifqa Bary case -- the girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and then fled her home in fear for her life. Everyone is watching to see what happens to Rifqa. She has become a test case for everyone.
The Muslims, the Islamic supremacists, want to prove that a young girl cannot break free, cannot break out of their web, even in America.
More importantly, it is a case being watched by every subjugated Muslim dying to break free of the shackles of Islam.
If Rifqa can do it and is protected, so can they. This is why it is so critical that she be broken by the Islamic machine. It's a test case for free people, and for America also. Will American courts knuckle under to Islamic intimidation and implement Sharia provisions for the isolation of female apostates?
Will we stand up and defend religious freedom? Do Muslim girls in the same situation as Rifqa have any hope? Rifqa's case will show the answer. Read it all. With thanks to JihadWatch
 International pressure sometimes works. Some unexpected good news in an update on this story: "Freedom for imprisoned Christian 'apostates,'" by Chelsea Schilling for WorldNetDaily, November 19 After millions of prayers and numerous petitions from around the world, two Iranian women jailed for no other reason than being Christian were released from a Tehran prison today. Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, were imprisoned for 259 days - since March 5. They were repeatedly told to recant their faith and that they would be executed as "apostates," solely because they are Christians. But now Open Doors USA has confirmed the women have been released from the notorious Evin prison with no bail, a rarity for Christians released from prison in Iran. [...] Compass Direct News noted that the women may still face charges of proselytizing and "apostasy," or leaving Islam. An Iranian source told Compass the Iranian government faced intense public pressure for imprisoning the women. "It was from the international pressure, and also the government couldn't handle it anymore," said the source. "Already their detention was illegal. At the same time, the government wasn't ready to prosecute them for apostasy. They already have many headaches. They cannot handle everything." According to Facebook groups that support the women, Rustampoor and Amirizadeh had been participating in religious gatherings and handing out Bibles prior to their detention. Iranian security officials searched their apartments in March, confiscated their Bibles and arrested them. As WND reported, Rustampoor and Amirizadeh appeared before a court in Iran and were charged with "crimes of apostasy, and propagation of the Christian faith." In a display of raw courage, they told a government prosecutor that not only are they Christian, it is up to God, not a bureaucrat, to whom He talks. According to Elam, a dramatic part of the hearing came when they refused to deny their Christian faith. They explained that God had convicted them through the Holy Spirit. "It is impossible for God to speak with humans," Haddad, a deputy prosecutor identified only by his surname, stated. "Are you questioning whether God is Almighty?" Amirizadeh asked him. To which Haddad then replied. "You are not worthy for God to speak to you." "It is God, and not you, who determines if I am worthy," she said. Haddad earlier had asked if the women were Christian. "We love Jesus," they replied. "You were Muslims and now you have become Christians," Haddad stated. "We were born in Muslim families, but we were not Muslims," the women said. The deputy prosecutor asked about their regrets, and they said, "We have no regrets." "You should renounce your faith verbally and in written form," he warned. They refused.... With thanks to JihadWatch
 By Robert Spencer Previously he had said that he would not do so until the family's immigration status was cleared up, and that wasn't going to happen -- given Pamela Geller's discovery that the family was here illegally.
And despite the clear threat relayed by the girl and incompetently handled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and you can see here. Now apparently none of that matters. The gods of political correctness must be appeased.
And if a girl is killed? So what? "Judge orders Fathima Rifqa Bary to return to Ohio," by Amy L. Edwards for the Orlando Sentinel, October 23 (thanks to Pamela, who has much more here): An Orange County judge has ordered the Florida Department of Children and Families to make arrangements to send Ohio teen runaway Fathima Rifqa Bary back to her home state. A DCF spokeswoman just confirmed her agency received an order from Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson. "This order indicates that the Court has relinquished its emergency jurisdiction and orders the Department to arrange the transportation of the child to the proper authorities with Franklin County Children Services in Ohio," spokeswoman Carrie Hoeppner said. "The Department will proceed with those arrangements. Please understand that the details of the transfer will not be released, to best ensure her safety."... Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, was laughing and giddy during a brief Friday afternoon phone call with the Orlando Sentinel. He would not comment, though, citing a gag order. Source: JihadWatch
 By Robert Spencer This could result in her being able to get asylum in the U.S. -- or it could end up causing her to be sent back to Sri Lanka, where she could be murdered or institutionalized. Rifqa Bary Update: "Rifqa Bary's Family Risks Deportation," by Pamela Geller for Newsmax, October 19: Last Tuesday there was yet another hearing for Rifqa Bary, the girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled to Florida from her family in Ohio after saying that her father threatened her life. It was agreed that Ohio has jurisdiction in her case. That means Rifqa is ultimately to be returned to Ohio, but not so fast: the Florida court maintains emergency jurisdiction.
And Florida Judge Daniel Dawson is firm: Rifqa will not be returned to Ohio until the family's immigration status is cleared up. That could take awhile. On Wednesday at my Web site AtlasShrugs.com, I broke the story of the immigration papers of Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, running exclusive documentation exposing his immigration status. He is in the United States illegally, and he has committed perjury to stay here. That explains why for several months the attorneys for Rifqa Bary's parents have been promising to produce but failing to deliver their immigration documents. Judge Dawson even threatened Mohamed Bary's lawyer, Shayan Elahi, with contempt of court last week for continuing to fail to produce them. The Barys were given 10 days before they will be held in contempt of court. My money says they are going to say the documents are lost. But they are not lost. They are damning. Mohamad Bary has sworn entirely contradictory things in his two applications to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. He has claimed that he entered the country illegally around 1981 or 1982, and that he lived here five years -- a claim he had to make in order to qualify for the old Reagan-era immigration amnesty of the 1980s, for which he did belatedly apply. But Mohamed Bary was not here in the 1980s. We know that because he himself said so in a different immigration filing. In an application for temporary entry into the United States, he claimed that in the three years before his application, he had lived outside the U.S. for at least one continuous year. This contradicted his amnesty application, in which he claimed that he had resided continuously inside the United States since on or before Jan. 1, 1982. He could not have lived outside the United States for one year during the same time period in which he had claimed to be living continuously inside the United States. He maintained these contradictory claims as necessary elements to file his applications under the differing statutes -- one governing the issuance of an entrance visa, the other governing the granting of amnesty for continuous illegal presence. He obviously committed perjury. Source: JihadWatch
 by Andrew Bostom On Tuesday, October 13, 2009, an ominous interim decision was reached in the case of 17 year- old Sri Lankan native, and Christian “apostate” from Islam, Rifqa Bary. Rifqa fled her Ohio community—notably, the radicalized mosque she was compelled to attend, which revealed and condemned her apostasy.
She sought refuge in Orlando, Florida, when Muhammad Bary, Rifqa’s father threatened to murder the young Muslim woman apostate—the consensus draconian punishment for “unrepentant” apostasy from Islam sanctioned by all major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Sunni and Shiite alike, to this day.
(For irrefragable examples, see these contemporary Sunni rulings by Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt, the Mufti of Lebanon, and IslamonLine [here; here], website of the mainstream, immensely popular Muslim Brotherhood cleric, and Al Jazeera personality Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as this Shiite legal opinion published in Kayhan International, an official organ of the Islamic Republic of Iran). Pending determination of her parent’s immigration status—extant public access documentary evidence revealed by investigative journalist par excellence Pamela Geller indicates they are illegal aliens—Florida judge Daniel Dawson has ordered that Rifqa Bary be returned to Ohio under the jurisdiction of an Ohio court. It is a bitter irony that Tuesday, October 13, 2009 also marked the US release of Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa Sultan’s book “A God Who Hates”—the vigorously argued jeremiad written by our era’s most courageous and insightful secular Muslim woman. Sultan is currently forced to lead a clandestine existence here in America, due to the repeated, ongoing death threats she receives for her own “apostasy,” including those “inspired” by a Yusuf al-Qaradawi appearance on Al-Jazeera television when he proclaimed, “…this woman had the audacity to affront all that is sacred—the entire Islamic nation, its past, its present, and its future. She had the audacity to affront the Prophet, the Koran, and Allah. She even said that Allah prattles in the Koran. She did not omit anything sacred.” More than two decades before Wafa Sultan’s Al-Jazeera television debate with a Muslim cleric ignited an international firestorm, she traced her own transformative “intellectual shock” to reading two books by Saudi writer and freethinker Abdullah al-Qasimi, who fled his native country after being (predictably) condemned to death for “apostasy/blasphemy.” Regarding al-Qasimi’s criticism of Islam, Wafa Sultan observes that he, …attacked Islam…in such a way as to make the closed mind stop and really think. He was an original and creative writer with an excellent command of Arabic. His style was enjoyable to read and easy to understand, and it led his readers almost imperceptibly to the point where they could not help but agree with him, at least privately. The fact that he was from Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam, gave him another kind of authenticity. Read more, and source,,,Andrew Bostom H/T: Atlas
 Rifqa Bary, a Christian convert whose parents are Muslim immigrants
from Sri Lanka, says she fears for her life.A Florida judge has ruled a teenager from Ohio must return after running away to Florida in fear that her parents would harm her for converting from Islam to Christianity. The judge ruled Ohio has jurisdiction over the case involving the teen, Rifqa Bary. Rifqa fled to Florida after her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, learned that she was baptized earlier this year without their knowledge. The parents reported her missing to Columbus, Ohio, Police on July 19. Weeks later, using cell phone and computer records, police tracked the girl to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of the Orlando-based Global Revolution Church. In an emotional six-minute interview with WFTV in Florida, Rifqa, who met Lorenz through an online Facebook group, said she expects to be killed if she is forced to return to Ohio. "If I had stayed in Ohio, I wouldn't be alive," she said. "In 150 generations in family, no one has known Jesus. I am the first — imagine the honor in killing me." But a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found no credible threats to Bary. Contacted by FOXNews.com, Rifqa'a father Mohamed Bary said he has no intentions of harming his daughter. Read more ...Source: Fox NewsH/T: W.S.
Muslim World Must Stop Double Standards
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - Tawfik Hamid The story of Rifqa Bary, who recently escaped from her father in Ohio for fears of being killed after converting from Islam to Christianity (which would be in accordance with Shariah law), has raised important issues about the Muslim world and has drawn attention to how the Muslim world deals with apostates. Under normal circumstances, the lives of apostates in the Muslim world are threatened, and they are usually subject to humiliation and disrespect from their society. For example, the following innocent people and thinkers were either killed or received death threats in accordance with the Redda law, which prescribes the killing of apostates: - The Egyptian thinker Farag Fouda, who was declared an apostate by al-Azhar scholar Mohammed al-Ghazali and shot to death in his office on June 8, 1992, by two Islamic fundamentalists. - Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Taha was killed on the government’s authority on Jan. 18, 1985. Read more: http://www.newsmax.com/tawfik_hamid/rifqa_bary_muslim_obama/2009/09/23/263871.html
 by M. Zuhdi Jasser
Read part one of this article here. On July 26, 2008, our American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) was kindly invited to the Noor Islamic Cultural Center (NICC) in Hilliard by their director, Hany Saqr, to give a talk on any subject we wished. I asked to speak to them about "Upholding our Islamic Responsibility: Countering the Ideologies that Fuel Terrorism."
Take a look at short video excerpts (Part I, Part II) of my talk to the Noor mosque, selected with some relevance to the subject of reform and apostasy. While our hosts were very cordial, polite, and gracious, we first found it very interesting that there was virtually no publicity about our visit – which was in stark contrast from previous speakers.
They also completely avoided any media acknowledgment of our visit and message. AIFD worked to generate our own publicity of the event with an extensive pre-interview with the Columbus Dispatch.
But interestingly, despite the reporter's keen interest, the Dispatch never attended the talk or published any parts of the interview only posting an announcement of our visit. One cannot help but be suspicious of what influenced their absence particularly for a newspaper which has in the Bary case given more than adequate inches to the Noor Center's and CAIR-Ohio's side of the story. Interestingly, the Dispatch itself has had epiphanies about CAIR as Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) recently pointed out on the floor of the House: CAIR has waged a campaign to intimidate and silence anyone who raises alarms about the dangers of Islamic extremism. CAIR's rationale is that discussions of Islamic extremism lead to animosity not just toward those who twist Islam into a justification for terrorism but toward all who practice Islam. CAIR's concern is understandable, but its response is unreasonable. The group acts properly when it hammers home the point that only a small number of Muslims support religiously motivated violence and that targeting law-abiding Muslims is wrong. Where CAIR errs is in labeling anyone who discusses Islamic terrorism a bigot and hatemonger, an Islamophobe, to use CAIR's favorite slur. Also note that even in Mr. Saqr's introduction of me there was no real endorsement of our ideas but rather, a statement about the value of debate.
In fact, opening a debate on reform with Muslim communities is our intention but before, during, and after our visit, there was absolutely no acknowledgement on their website or in their mosque literature about our visit. It was almost as if they checked the box of inviting an anti-Islamist and could go back to the comfort of their foundational Islamism and promotion of the likes of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. In fact, in direct feedback from some who attended the talk, I was told "that the new Islamic ideas of modernity were a welcome outlook but I should have refrained from direct criticism of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, since he is so respected by many of the congregants."
And some Muslims wonder what the real impediments to reform are? If these global Muslim Brotherhood icons cannot be criticized frankly and openly as I did in my visit to Noor, reform will never become a reality.
The work of Patrick Poole locally has exposed documentation of NICC leadership connections to official Muslim Brotherhood leadership structure in the West and to Al-Qaradawi. These speakers at Noor have previously raised concerns of their ideological mindset: Salah Sultan, Ahmed Al-Akhras, Christopher Paul, Khalid Yasin, Siraj Wahhaj, and Wagdi Ghoneim. If Muslims cannot acknowledge as I did, publicly with the Noor audience, that Qaradawi and these other contacts of theirs are examples of deep seated moral corruption in the highest order, then Islamic scholarship will continue to be driven into the ground by Islamist apologists.
Islamists will always compromise real moral clarity for an Islamist set of ethics in which the ends justifies the means (terrorism) and the Islamic state takes precedence over the secular system (Muslim supremacism). Read more here,,,,, Source: M. Zudhi Jasser
By M. Zuhdi Jasser At the center of the Rifqa Bary case is more than the plight of one teen. While we all like for our courtroom dramas to begin and conclude in a one hour timeframe including the commercials, the real world is not black and white. For this reason, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) has been very deliberate in our response to this case. Let us begin by saying that within some Muslim families and communities, belief in some type of punishment for apostasy is a very real threat.
It may be dressed differently or given a different name, but it is still intolerance for apostasy. But also significantly, in my lifetime as a Muslim, I have not met Muslim parents who personally countenance punishments for apostasy. But I have met Muslim clerics who do (Islamists). That being said, as a father, the thought of anyone – let alone the courts – usurping the place of the parents in the decisions of a teen is chilling. If we take religion out of the mix in this a priori discussion and hypothetically state that the girl was a younger teen who had run away from her family to pursue an abortion, I believe we would be having a much different discussion.
Rifqa's legal case is, however, particularly compelling in her favor due to her reports of prior abuse, verbal threats, and how close her age is to the age of majority of 18. Addressing the issue of apostasy is a very real concern for AIFD and has been since our inception. I believe that the Bary case should be used as tool to bring to light many questions that Muslims should ask themselves. While I have never heard a Muslim directly or personally justify violence against another Muslim for the act of apostasy, there is a significant amount of pathology in the way many Muslims deal with apostasy from almost every level – from the familial to the tribal to the intellectual levels.
What I will show here is that the preponderance of the intellectual evidence shows a systemic intolerance and, in fact, there is strong evidence for legal (Shar'iah-based) underpinnings for the intolerance, abuse, discrimination, and even at its worst, direct countenance of murder of apostates.
I will also show that, thankfully, there is a disconnect between rational, moral, lay Muslims (the majority) and authoritative Islamic law as defined by the ulemaa (the theocratic scholars) who still, unfortunately, drive the ideas of a significant minority of Muslims in the West.
This problem, as evident in Afghanistan's Rahman case of March 2006 is magnified manifold in Muslim majority nations where there is far less influence of Western ideas of religious freedom upon Muslim interpretations of Shar'iah law and their treatment of apostates.
But the evidence will show that even in the West, the majority of Islamic scholars still endorse some sort of Islamic punishment for apostasy with various and sundry apologetics. Some scholars provide the absurd qualification of "only under an Islamic state" or "only as apostasy is a war against Islam," which somehow makes that all right.
And we will see that other texts in the West still basically endorse the death penalty. Fathima Rifqa Bary Many aspects of the Bary case are beyond troubling. From media reports, Fathima Rifqa Bary of New Albany, Ohio is the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants Mohammed and Aysha Bary, who reportedly came to the U.S. in 2000 seeking medical care for Rifqa. According to some reports, "Rifqa, a high-school junior, had been questioning her faith for several months, her father said. She attended one church with friends from school and later attended services at another church, Xenos Christian Fellowship, a megachurch that emphasizes small groups meeting at home." She then apparently joined a Facebook prayer group and connected with the Lorenzs and their Global Revolution Church (GLC) in Florida online. She vanished from New Albany, Ohio on July 19, 2009. Her parents filed a missing person report with the local police in Columbus, Ohio. Hopefully further court proceedings will clarify Rifqa's whereabouts from July 19th to August 9th and why there was a delay in connecting her with the Ohio missing persons report.
Her whereabouts became known on August 11, 2009 after an interview with Rifqa surfaced and Pastor Lorenz of GLC reported her struggle. According to Fox News she testified in a custody hearing in Orlando on August 10, 2009 "that she'd recently changed religions and is worried her relatives will do something drastic, according to WFTV in Orlando and Central Florida News 13." Her parents denied the allegations. Going on only what they knew to be the truth from the 17-year-old Rifqa, the Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF) then quickly placed Rifqa with a foster family.
A recent report from The Tampa Tribune on September 5, 2009 reviewed some of the more salient facts and accusations in the case.
While there is no denying that many of the blogs and news stories have been sensationalized from both sides of this issue, there is no escaping the fact that the pleadings of Rifqa Bary must be given the benefit of the doubt and due process. Regardless of the implications true or false to the community to which she belonged, thankfully individual rights trump those of the community in the United States. As Herb London recently discussed, our Constitution and religious freedoms which our government officials are sworn to uphold demand this.
Another hearing took place on August 21, 2009 with the coalescing of a legal and media firestorm. Rifqa's parents were present and Judge Daniel Dawson ruled that his court does have jurisdiction and more time was required to gain more facts until the next hearing. In this specific case with Rifqa Bary, the courts will surely demonstrate whether the physical threat to Rifqa is real. If there is any doubt whatsoever, I pray that she be protected.
We must surely take Rifqa at her word in her television interview that her father "would kill me or send me back to Sri Lanka…where they have asylums where they put people like me."
Rifqa also said that after learning of her conversion to Christianity, her father said, "If you have this Jesus in your heart, you're dead to me, you're not my daughter." She has said that "They have to kill me…I don't want to die," noting her fear of being a victim of honor killings. At this point in the case we also need to remember that America is founded upon the premise that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. Read more here ... Source: M. Zudhi Jasser
Rifqa Bary Deserves Same Safety Concern As Terrorists
Friday, September 18, 2009 11:48 AM - Tawfik Hamid Rifqa Bary, 17, recently had to flee from Ohio to Florida, where she sought refuge with a Christian couple whose church she learned about from the Internet. Rifqa said she ran away from home because her father discovered she’d become a Christian — and then threatened to kill her. Rifqa’s parents say that whatever fears their daughter has of them have been caused by evangelical Christians hostile to Islam. The Barys said they are willing to let their daughter practice whatever religion she wishes.
If the information released to the media is correct, the law enforcement findings in both Ohio and Florida support the parents. This simply means Rifqa’s life could be seriously threatened, if what she has said about her father is correct.
Generally speaking, it is unlikely that Rifqa would have this degree of fear of her family if she was not actually threatened. If she were confident that her family would not hurt her and that she would be safe with them, she most likely would not have escaped. In other words, why would a child her age escape from her family if she did not feel threatened? Read further here: http://www.newsmax.com/tawfik_hamid/rifqa_barymuslim_ohio/2009/09/18/261872.html
September 16th, 2009 9:19 am
Jihadic Barbarians vs the Sleeping Western Giant Newspeak Triumphs, Truth Slain “They all looked half drugged or half asleep, dull, as if the creatures had been hypnotized or poisoned….they walked and moved and went about their lives in a condition of sleepwalking: they were not aware of themselves, of other people, of what went on around them.”
Thus spake Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing in The Four-Gated City. Do people really understand what is going on in our world right now? That language is being used to confuse us? America is the greatest “terrorist,” Israeli Jews are the “Nazis,” non-Muslim pro-western law Brits are called “right wing fascists” because a small number stood up to 200 angry and armed Muslim Brits in front of a Birmingham mosque, parliamentarian Geert Wilders is considered a “racist Islamophobe” and faces a criminal trial because he tells the truth about Islamist jihad. And, by the way, the so-called “fascist” Brits held aloft an Israeli flag and signs that said “Extremists Out,” “Britain Safe.” One woman interviewed said: “If people come here they should respect out laws.” The Orwellian doublespeak (or Newspeak) does not stop here. People insist that honor killings which, according to my research, are mainly a Muslim-on-Muslim and male-on-female crime have absolutely nothing to do with Islam; that Islam is a religion of peace; that 9/11, 3/11, 7/7—have nothing to do with Saudi Arabia or al-Qaeda, that Arab and south Asian Muslims did not fly planes into American buildings and embassies or blow up trains in Madrid and London. Naw. The Zionists and the CIA really did it all. But if the Arab and south Asian Muslims did do it too—they did so for a noble reason, to protest the Zionist “occupation” of disputed lands, long claimed as “Palestinian” by the Arab League, the United Nations, international human rights groups, and the western intelligentsia. Arthur Koestler, in The God That Failed describes the intellectuals who joined the communist party in the 1930s as naive idealists and those who recruited and used them as carrying on a “white slave traffic whose victims were young idealists flirting with violence.” Or, as my friend and computer genius, Mitchell Price, has put it: Those Americans who keep giving a free pass to jihadists and Islamists are flirting with “the barbarian within.” I’ll say. Read All here: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/09/16/jihadic-barbarians-vs-the-sleeping-western-giant/
 by Pamela Geller Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who converted to Christianity from Islam and then fled for her life after her father threatened to kill her, faces daunting obstacles in her quest to be free.
As a high-profile apostate, she is a high value target for Islamists.
And she faces a Leftist media that is complicit with those who want to see her fall prey to them.
Witness the treatment that Newsweek gave to her story in its September 9 issue, and especially to Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa’s friend and confidante.
Newsweek reporter Arian Campo-Flores, Jivanjee told me, asked him for an interview “about my connection to Rifqa Bary, as well as other questions regarding her situation.” But when Jivanjee saw the Newsweek published, he told me in a detailed interview about the newsmagazine’s unfair coverage that he was “very disappointed at the clear bias that was demonstrated in the article,” and that he found many aspects of the piece “troubling.”
Campo-Flores’ Newsweek article describes Mohamed Bary, Rifqa’s father, as “a polite, mild-mannered man who seems deeply pained by the acrimony.”
Jivanjee asked pointedly, “What is the journalistic purpose of describing Rifqa’s father in such a manner?” And he supplied what Campo-Flores left out: “Rifqa has been physically and psychologically abused in the past at the hands of her family.”
These charges did not come from third parties: “Rifqa has made these allegations personally, and these claims are being investigated and will be brought out should a court trial become necessary.” Rifqa has previously recounted that her father said to her, “If you have this Jesus in your heart, you are dead to me! You are no longer my daughter…I will kill you! Tell me the truth!”
Ohio governor on Rifqa Bary case: "We have no reason to believe that she would be unsafe in Ohio" Even if the sheer level of public attention deters Rifqa's father and like-minded supporters from harming her or taking her out of the country -- and blindly hoping for that would be gambling with her life -- this is case has larger implications in the precedent it will set, possibly discouraging children like her from pursuing their right to freedom of conscience.
"Ohio governor says converted teen should be sent back home from Florida," by Rene Stutzman for the Orlando Sentinel, September 11: The office of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland issued a statement saying the teenage girl who ran away from her Muslim home in Ohio to evangelical Christians in Orlando, Fla., should be returned to her home state. "Child welfare agencies and authorities in Ohio and Franklin County are fully capable of providing for the security and well-being of Ohio's children," the statement said. "The governor believes this is a family matter and therefore would most appropriately be handled here in Ohio with the assistance of the child welfare and foster care system." Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, is living with a foster family in the Orlando area. She fled Westerville, Ohio, aboard a Greyhound bus in July, saying her father had threatened to kill her because she had abandoned his faith - Islam - and become a Christian. [...] Amanda Wurst, a spokeswoman for Strickland, issued the statement Thursday. It puts Strickland, an ordained Methodist minister, at odds with Florida's Gov. Charlie Crist.
In a statement issued three weeks ago, Crist said he was grateful for a decision by Orange Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson to keep Rifqa in Florida. Earlier that day, Crist had sent two powerful figures - Rob Wheeler, his top lawyer, and George Sheldon, secretary for the Florida Department of Children and Families - to a hearing at which the judge ruled Rifqa should stay in Florida, at least temporarily. "We'll continue to fight to protect Rifqa's safety and well-being as we move forward," said Crist in his statement. Rifqa's story has set off a firestorm of reaction. Crist's office reported Friday that it had received more than 10,000 e-mails about it. Wurst said the Ohio governor's office has received more than 400 calls, e-mails and letters.
Many people have said they're sure Rifqa will be killed if she's returned to Ohio, if not by her father, then by Columbus-area Muslims who think she has dishonored her former faith.
Columbus-area law enforcement officials say there is no evidence to support that claim. Strickland's office said the same thing. "We have no reason to believe that she would be unsafe in Ohio," his statement said.
Contact information for Ted Strickland can be found here, and for Charlie Crist, here. Source: JihadWatch.org
 By Nonie Darwish The US government must protect its citizens not only from the terrorism of jihad, but also from Islamic Laws condemning Muslims to death and that encourage vigilante street justice. How can a former Muslim like Rifqa, or like myself, live in peace in America when there are neighborhood mosques reading scriptures, to their believers telling them to kill Muslims who left the religion?. Even if 10% of Muslims in America follow Sharia as it is taught, we are in trouble. Muslim scriptures such as the Sahih hadith by Mohammad 9:50 states: “No Umma (a member of the Muslim community) should be killed for killing a Kaffir (an infidel). . . Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” There is no peace for the apostate, not even in the West. The above threat is real and will increase exponentially with the growth of the Muslim population and those who demand Sharia as a religious right. No religion should give the right to its followers to kill others, period. In spite of the clear danger to the life of Muslims who leave Islam, both the legal system and mainstream media still don’t get it. The most recent case in the US of the 17-year old girl, Rifqa Bary, is an example. US courts need proof (even though it is clearly stated in Islamic law books) that Islamic Law condemn apostates to death and encourage any Muslim on the street, even family members, to kill them. The Western media do not seem to be interested in the topic. That is the same media that dedicates weeks of valuable air time to ridiculous claims of human rights violations. Read more ...Source: Hudson NY
 By David J. Rusin The ongoing saga of Rifqa Bary — the teenager who fled from Ohio to Florida, citing fears that her Muslim parents would murder her for becoming a Christian — has underlined the dangers associated with leaving Islam. A 2008 Islamist Watch article summarizes the problem: All major schools of Islamic jurisprudence stipulate that a sane adult male must be put to death for abandoning Islam, though varying interpretations persist on whether females should be killed or merely imprisoned. Many Islamic states outlaw apostasy and seven list it as a capital offense. However, freelancers such as angry relatives present the greatest danger to ex-Muslims, as Sunni and Shiite scholars largely agree that Shari'a empowers individuals to punish converts. This tradition has followed Muslims to the Western world. A related menace is that Islamists often employ accusations of apostasy as weapons against moderate Muslims. Given the perils faced by converts from Islam, such charges are meant to intimidate anti-Islamist Muslims into silence — or worse. Islamic scholar Khalid Durán was an early Western target; in 2001 a Jordanian cleric deemed him an apostate following an attack on one of his books by CAIR. Two recent events indicate that Islamists continue to use similar tactics against those whom Durán would term "critical Muslims": - Taj Hargey — a British imam who has opposed the niqab, endorsed the marriage of Muslim women to non-Muslim men, and promoted gender equality in mosques — won a lawsuit in April against the Muslim Weekly, which had asserted that he belongs to a splinter sect whose members are considered by Islamists to be apostates. (On a side note, last year the same paper apologized for defaming Daniel Pipes.) Hargey lamented that "iconoclastic thinkers, liberals, and non-conformists who dare to challenge this self-assumed religious authority in Islam by presenting a rational or alternative interpretation of their faith are invariably branded as apostates, heretics, and non-believers."
- Souad Sbai, an Italian MP and prominent activist for Muslim women's rights, went to court in June to testify against a man charged with appealing for her death. "I have heard very bad things about you and you have thus been exposed as a Christian," he wrote. "The claim by Akrane is an accusation of apostasy," Adnkronos International reported, "which under Islamic law calls for the death penalty, which can be carried out by any Muslim at any time." Sbai also criticized anti-terrorism police for "underestimating the 'Islamic value' of his words."
Why do Islamists label Durán, Hargey, Sbai, and other moderates as apostates? Because they fear them. We must respond by working not only to protect anti-Islamist Muslims from violence, but also to support and amplify their vital message of reform. Source: Islamist Watch
 By Pamela Geller The leftist/Islamic alliance is pulling out all the stops to blunt the impact of the word of a 17-year-old girl, Rifqa Bary -- who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her family after her father threatened to kill her. In Islam, apostasy carries the sentence of death. And -- according to Bary -- her father was intent on carrying it out. The Leftist/Islamic spin machine was slow on the uptake. They assumed that Rifqa would be sent back to Ohio at her jurisdiction hearing last Friday. But she wasn’t. The candor and integrity of this girl’s desperate plea set freedom-loving people alight. Emails, faxes, and phone calls from blog readers, talk radio listeners, etc., pleaded for this brave girl’s life. And thank G-d, she was saved. But now, the cultural jihadists are at work. The Orlando Sentinel is busy propagating the statements of Rifqa Bary’s devout Muslim family and the family’s lawyers. CAIR, according to the Jawa Report blog, has “instructed supporters to circulate rumors that Rifqa had been carousing with infidel boys and engaged in acts of immorality.” But it looks awfully bad to keep going after a little girl. So they’re also blaming the American people’s alleged “ignorance of Islam.” Ahmed M. Rehab, executive director of CAIR, wrote to the Sentinel complaining about the “public’s ignorance of Islamic history, culture and contemporary affairs,” and charging that “Rifqa’s parents are judged not by who they are but by what the pundits say they are.” Read more ...Source: Human Events
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What sweet, loving parents they obviously are. How wonderfully they will treat her if the dhimmi Ohio authorities order her to be returned home.
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